"But this narrow Sunday observance is worse for the lower than for the upper classes. At that time the great dispute was just beginning as to whether the people should be admitted to the Crystal Palace, to museums, and suchlike institutions. The question was discussed in Parliament, and decided in the negative. It was feared that the churches would remain empty, and that morals would suffer if the people began to like heathen gods, works of art and natural curiosities, better than going to church. At least, this is the only explanation one can give of such a decision. The churches and the public-houses remained the only public places open on Sundays. The churches were all very well for a few hours in the morning, but what about the afternoon and evening? Then the beer-house was the only refuge for the artisan or proletarian bowed down by the weight of hard work, unused and untaught to wile away the idle hours of Sunday in any intellectual occupation, and having no friendly attractive home to make the peace of his own hearth the best refreshment after the exhausting week. And so it turned out: the public-houses were full to overflowing, and the holiness of Sunday was only too often desecrated by the unholy sight of drunken men and, more horrible still, drunken women; but this was not all, for so strong was the temptation thrust upon them, that the workman's hardly earned week's wages went in drink, and the children were left without bread and not a penny was saved to lighten future distress. The coarse animal natures of the only half-human beings became coarser and more animal through the degrading passion for drink that only too often has murder in its train, and murder in its most terrible and brutal guise!" There is not one idea or argument in this passage that I have not heard over and over again from the lips of every German who has anything to say about our English Sunday, and every German who has been in England or heard much of English life invariably attacks what he considers this weak joint in our armour. "What is the use?" he asks, "of going to church in the morning if you get drunk and beat your wife at night?" "But the same man does not usually do both things in one day," you represent to him. "One set of people goes to church and keeps Sunday strictly, and another set goes to public-houses and is drunk and disorderly. You should try to get out of your head your idea that we are all exactly alike." "But you are--exactly alike. Everyone of you goes to church with a solemn face, sings psalms, and comes back to his roast beef and apple-pie. All the afternoon you are asleep; and at night the streets and parks are not fit for respectable people." "At night," you explain, "all the respectable people are at home eating cold beef and cold pie. The others...."