Accordingly, the same farce, of barriers and police, is enacted again, with the same disappointment; for, to the inscrutable wonder of the Executive Committee, the number of visitors during the Whitsun holidays is even less than the week before, and then ensue various speculations as to the cause, and the following reason is, after much cogitation, gravely propounded in explanation of the anomaly:—“The self-denying patience of the people, their habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to business, and their little inclination to rush madly forward in quest of what can be seen as well, or better, a week or a month hence—these seem to be the natural and truest solutions of the result.” Now, unfortunately for this pretty compliment, a trip to Greenwich Fair or Hampton Court, on this same Whit-Monday, would soon have convinced the Executive Committee that “the shilling folk” were neither remarkable for self-denial nor extreme patience in their enjoyments; while the general observance of “Saint Monday” by the operatives might have assured any one, in the least acquainted with their characters, that, far from being distinguished by any habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to business, they are peculiarly prone to make business give way to pleasure. But it was necessary, in order to account for the disappointment, to put some sentimental gloss on the occurrence; and, therefore, men whose lives were passed in toil, and to whom pleasure is therefore the highest possible luxury—merely as rest to the body and recreation to the faculties—were made to prefer work to enjoyment; while patience, self-denial, and every virtue under heaven, were ascribed to people, who, as contra-distinguished from the moneyed classes, are ignorant of the advantages of saving, and who, getting their money hardly, are ever ready to taste the delight of spending it. This disposition to cant, and varnish matters over with a sickly sentimentality, angelizing or canonizing the whole body of operatives of this country, instead of speaking of them as possessing the ordinary vices and virtues of human nature,—as being the same patchwork of black and white,—the same chequered chessboard, fitted for the game and moves of life,—this tendency to put high and heroic motives on every-day conduct is the besetting sin of the age.