The Express.
London, England, 1868-06-01 00:00:00

FiR

guest witl a real sample of June weeAbse. Let us
hir•.•=:, that the month will be tru9 to the promise cI
its opening, and earn, by persistence in well,-
doing, the mote, Qactlis al) incept°, which Sir STAF-
FORD Nossuours suggests for the Abyssinian
army.
Apart from these fanciful considirstions every
one who feels how much more miserable is a day
of spoiled enjoyment than a day of hard work,
will rejoice that the poorer pleasure -.Akira ,f
England are promised a dozen hours of brie
weather for a holiday, older probably than
Christianity, though it has assumed now
a Christian guise, a holiday which their fors-
fathers kept in German and British fawns,
which Awrittist, flower of kings, celebrated in
Caerleon, and which has been held, with con-
stantly diminishing honours, ever since. The
m; very-plays which were the delight of our Roman
Catholic ancestry on this day have given 'way, in
spite of LUTHEIt's approval, to the less. profane
drama of the secular stage. The Morris-earners are
gone. In their place, we have, in 'London at
least, only the street " Christys" who do honour
to the day by fame rather More ermacieritiously
blackened, and new wardrobes. The Lord and
Lady of Whitaun-ale have became a tradition. The
Ipilgrians of Greenwich, more numerous than the
Canterbury pilgrims, have ceased to make their
1 anne,al a:session to that sons sacer Greenwich-
! hill, and to illustrate by charging down its
ale the frteii.is desrenus A uerni, and by losing
their footing, the difficulty revaeare grtularn when
once a false step has been made. Thu South-
Eastern Railway, by reduced chargesand the proffer
of trains every few minutes, still invites pilgrims to
the shrine of departed greatness at Greenwich ;
the Old Kent-road is still open ; the river
steamers ply. But Whit-Monday at Sydenham
is more attractive than Whit-Monday at Green-
wich ; and the "Pekes of the People's pleasures,"
to quote the alliteration of the advertisements,
the one place for a holiday," with its hospitable
entreaty to " come early," and its con-
siderate arrangement for " children at half-
-1 " price " is in possession of the field.
" Little All Right " and the Japanese
tumblers, the Messrs. PAYNE and the amusing
monkeys, the African hairless horse and
the banks of rhododendrons in full bloom,
possess attractions to which Greenwich Fair
in all its glory might have succumbed, and with
which Greenwich in its decline vainly competes.
But Whit-Monday in London is a mere working-
day when compared with Whit-Monday in the
towns of Northern England. Harmless Sunday
school teachers and less innocent Sunday
school children, then imitate the customs
of the fierce Scythian hordes, and mi•
grate in waggons to remote parts of the country,
accompanying their progress with wild cries, and
hideous music, and flaming banners which but for
the scriptural names and benevolent maxims in-
scribed upon them might strike terror into every
heart. The towns, as has been said, are in posses-
/6m of the children ; and it is creditable to
them that they do not use their power to retaliate
upon the local authorities—say the mayor of each
borough—the tyranny of King HEROD, and reverse
the massacre of the innocmts by an assault
on the grown-up population. The courage
with which the teachers of these thousand
and tens of thousands of emancipated children
venture unarmed in their midst doe{ honour to
human nature. Except a lost child or two on every
expedition of this sort, we never heard of any harm
coming of them. A visit of some six or seven hun-
dred or a thousand persons is scarcely favourable,
perhaps, to that "inward eye which is the bliss of
" solitude," or to that quiet contemplation
of t lie beauties of nature which refreshes
the habitual dwellers in cities. But at any rate
the thing is not much worse than Mr. COOK',
popular excursion parties, or joint stock societies
for foreign travel. The children and their
guides obtain health and amusement ; they
get the year's dulness divided by a day upon
which they can look back, and a day to which
they can look forward with interest. Even this
scanty relief is not to be despised in lives monoto-
nous and laborious from infancy. In furnishing
it Whit-Monday, or, as it properly is, White-Mon-
day, deserves its name. It is crehi autto.(lo.