An Open Question
“It is the king’s highway, that we are in, and in this way it is that thou hast placed the lions.”
—Bunyan.
WHAT! shut the gardens! lock the latticed gate!
Refuse the shilling and the fellow’s ticket!
And hang a wooden notice up to state,
“On Sundays no admittance at this wicket!”
The birds, the beasts, and all the reptile race
Denied to friends and visitors till Monday!
Now, really, this appears the common case
Of putting too much Sabbath into Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
The Gardens,—so unlike the ones we dub
Of Tea, wherein the artisan carouses,—
Mere shrubberies without one drop of shrub,—
Wherefore should they be closed like public-houses?
No ale is vended at the wild Deer’s Head,—
Nor rum—nor gin—not even of a Monday—
The Lion is not carved—or gilt—or red,
And does not send out porter of a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
The bear denied! the leopard under locks!
As if his spots would give contagious fevers;
The beaver close as hat within its box;
So different from other Sunday beavers!
The birds invisible—the gnaw-way rats—
The seal hermetically seal’d till Monday—
The monkey tribe—the family of cats,—
We visit other families on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
What is the brute profanity that shocks
The super-sensitively serious feeling?
The kangaroo—is he not orthodox
To bend his legs, the way he does, in kneeling?
Was strict Sir Andrew, in his sabbath coat,
Struck all a heap to see a Coati Mundi?
Or did the Kentish Plumtree faint to note
The pelicans presenting bills on Sunday?—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
What feature has repulsed the serious set?
What error in the bestial birth or breeding,
To put their tender fancies on the fret?
One thing is plain—it is not in the feeding!
Some stiffish people think that smoking joints
Are carnal sins ’twixt Saturday and Monday—
But then the beasts are pious on these points,
For they all eat cold dinners on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
What change comes o’er the spirit of the place,
As if transmuted by some spell organic?
Turns fell hyæna of the ghoulish race?
The snake, pro tempore, the true Satanic?
Do Irish minds,—(whose theory allows
That now and then Good Friday falls on Monday)—
Do Irish minds suppose that Indian Cows
Are wicked Bulls of Bashan on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
There are some moody fellows, not a few,
Who, turn’d by Nature with a gloomy bias,
Renounce black devils to adopt the blue,
And think when they are dismal they are pious:
Is’t possible that Pug’s untimely fun
Has sent the brutes to Coventry till Monday—
Or p’rhaps some animal, no serious one,
Was overheard in laughter on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
What dire offence have serious fellows found
To raise their spleen against the Regent’s spinney?
Were charitable boxes handed round,
And would not guinea pigs subscribe their guinea?
Perchance the Demoiselle refused to moult
The feathers in her head—at least till Monday;
Or did the elephant unseemly, bolt
A tract presented to be read on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
At whom did Leo struggle to get loose?
Who mourns through monkey tricks his damaged clothing?
Who has been hiss’d by the Canadian goose?
On whom did Llama spit in utter loathing?
Some Smithfield saint did jealous feelings tell
To keep the Puma out of sight till Monday,
Because he played extempore as well
As certain wild Itinerants on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
To me it seems that in the oddest way
(Begging the pardon of each rigid Socius)
Our would-be keepers of the Sabbath-day
Are like the keepers of the brutes ferocious—
As soon the tiger might expect to stalk
About the grounds from Saturday till Monday
As any harmless man to take a walk,
If saints could clap him in a cage on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
In spite of all hypocrisy can spin,
As surely as I am a Christian scion,
I cannot think it is a mortal sin—
(Unless he’s loose) to look upon a lion.
I really think that one may go, perchance,
To see a bear, as guiltless as on Monday—
(That is, provided that he did not dance)
Bruin’s no worse than baking on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
In spite of all the fanatic compiles,
I cannot think the day a bit diviner,
Because no children, with forestalling smiles,
Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor—
It is not plain, to my poor faith at least,
That what we christen “Natural” on Monday,
The wondrous History of bird and beast,
Can be unnatural because it’s Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Whereon is sinful fantasy to work?
The dove, the wing’d Columbus of man’s haven?
The tender love-bird—or the filial stork?
The punctual crane—the providential raven?
The pelican whose bosom feeds her young?
Nay, must we cut from Saturday till Monday
That feather’d marvel with a human tongue,
Because she does not preach upon a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
The busy beaver—that sagacious beast!
The sheep that owned an Oriental Shepherd—
That desert-ship the camel of the East,
The horn’d rhinoceros—the spotted leopard—
The creatures of the Great Creator’s hand
Are surely sights for better days than Monday—
The elephant, although he wears no band,
Has he no sermon in his trunk for Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
What harm if men who burn the midnight-oil,
Weary of frame, and worn and wan in feature,
Seek once a week their spirits to assoil,
And snatch a glimpse of “Animated Nature?”
Better it were if, in his best of suits,
The artisan, who goes to work on Monday,
Should spend a leisure hour amongst the brutes,
Than make a beast of his own self on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss
(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some fellows, thus
Had somehow mixed up Dens with their theology?
Is Brahma’s bull—a Hindoo god at home—
A papal bull to be tied up till Monday—
Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,
That there is such a dread of them on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough
To make religion sad, and sour, and snubbish
But saints zoological must cant their stuff,
As vessels cant their ballast—rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero2 up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the dandelions on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Note.—There is an anecdote of a Scotch Professor who happened during a Sunday walk to be hammering at a geological specimen which he had picked up, when a peasant gravely accosted him, and said, very seriously, “Eh! Sir, you think you are only breaking a stone, but you are breaking the Sabbath.”
In a similar spirit, some of our over-righteous sectarians are fond of attributing all breakage to the same cause—from the smashing of a parish lamp, up to the fracture of a human skull;—the “breaking into the bloody house of life,” or the breaking into a brick-built dwelling. They all originate in the breaking of the Sabbath. It is the source of every crime in the country—the parent of every illegitimate child in the parish. The picking of a pocket is ascribed to the picking of a daisy—the robbery on the highway to a stroll in the fields—the incendiary fire to a hot dinner—on Sunday. All other causes—the want of education—the want of moral culture—the want of bread itself, are totally repudiated. The criminal himself is made to confess at the gallows that he owes his appearance on the scaffold to a walk with “Sally in our alley” on the “day that comes between a Saturday and Monday.”
Supposing this theory to be correct, and made like the law “for every degree,” the wonder of Captain Macheath that we haven’t “better company at Tyburn tree” (now the New Drop) must be fully shared by everybody who has visited the Ring in Hyde Park on the day in question. But how much greater must be the wonder of any person who has happened to reside, like myself, for a year or two in a continental city, inhabited, according to the strict construction of our Mawworms, by some fifteen or twenty thousand of habitual Sabbath-breakers, and yet, without hearing of murder and robbery as often as of blood-sausages and dollars! A city where the Burgomaster himself must have come to a bad end, if a dance upon Sunday led so inevitably to a dance upon nothing!
The “saints” having set up this absolute dependence of crime on Sabbath-breaking, their relative proportions become a fair statistical question; and, as such, the inquiry is seriously recommended to the rigid legislator, who acknowledges, indeed, that the Sabbath was “made for man,” but, by a singular interpretation, conceives that the man for whom it was made is himself!