A SUNDAY IN LONDON.*

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    <span style="cray">* Part of a sketitted in the preg editions.</span>

    IN a preg paper I have spoken of an English Sunday in the try and its tranquillizing effect upon the landscape; but where is its sacred in?uence more strikingly apparent than in the very heart of that great Babel, London? On this sacred day the gigantister is charmed into repose. The intolerable din and struggle of the week are at an end. The shops are shut. The ?res of fes and manufactories are extinguished, and the sun, no longer obscured by murky clouds of smoke, pours down a sober yellow radiao the quiet streets. The few pedestrians we meet, instead of hurrying forward with anxious tenances, move leisurely along; their brow<cite>..</cite>s are smoothed from the wrinkles of business and care; they have put on their Sunday looks and Sunday manners with their Sunday clothes, and are sed in mind as well as in person.

    And now the melodious gor of bells from church towers summons their several ?ocks to the fold. Forth issues from his mansion the family of the det tradesman, the small children in the advaheizen and his ely spouse, followed by the   grown-up daughters, with small morocco-bound prayer-books laid in the folds of their pocket-handkerchiefs. The housemaid looks after them from the window, admiring the ?nery of the family, and receiving, perhaps, a nod and smile from her young mistresses, at whose toilet she has assisted.

    Now rumbles along the carriage of some magnate of the city, peradventure an alderman or a sheriff, and now the patter of ma annou procession of charity scholars in uniforms of antique cut, and each with a prayer-book under his arm.

    The ringing of bells is at an end; the rumbling of the carriage has ceased; the pattering of feet is heard no more; the ?ocks are folded in a churches, cramped up in by-lanes and ers of the crowded city, where the vigilant beadle keeps watch, like the shepherds dog, round the threshold of the sanctuary. For a time everything is hushed, but soon is heard the deep, pervading sound of the an, rolling and vibrating through the empty lanes and courts, and the sweet ting of the akin<bdi></bdi>g them resound with melody and praise. Never have I been more sensible of the sanctifying effect of church music than when I have heard it thus poured forth, like a river of joy, through the inmost recesses of this great metropolis, elevating it, as it were, from all the sordid pollutions of the week, and bearing the poor world-worn soul on a tide of triumphant harmony to heaven.

    The m service is at an end. The streets are again alive with the gregatiourning to their homes, but soon again relapse into silenow es on the Sunday dinner, which, to the city tradesman, is a meal of some importahere is more leisure for social enjoyment at the board. Members of the family ow gather together, who are separated by the laborious occupations of the week. A school-boy may be permitted on that day to e to the paternal home; an old friend of the family takes his aced Sunday seat at the board, tells over his   w<cite></cite>ell-known stories, and rejoices young and old with his well-known jokes.

    On Sunday afternooy pours forth its lesions to breathe the fresh air and enjoy the sunshine of the parks and rural environs. Satirists may say what they please about the rural enjoyments of a London citizen on Sunday, but to me there is something delightful in beholding the poor p<tt>..t>risoner of the crowded and dusty city ehus to e forth once a week and throw himself upon the green bosom of nature. He is like a child restored to the mothers breast; and they who ?rst spread out these noble parks and mag pleasure-grounds which surround this huge metropolis have do least as much for its health and morality as if they had expehe amount of cost in hospitals, prisons, aentiaries.

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