I wanted a Sunday in London to hurry about alone without any “sweet encumbrance.” That I obtained on the promise to her who had already assumed the right to have a good share of my attention and time, that it should be the only one I should have alone. Some one has said that the best form of government is a monarchy, if the monarch be a perfect one. I had chosen my monarchess, and was not all disinclined to obey her sweet will. On this privileged day I took a cab, and went from early morning into and out of a number of churches. In one of them I lingered longest, for there was to me a grand tamasha on the boards, so to speak. There were a number of priests dressed as gorgeously as clowns in a circus. They were processioning, genuflecting, beating their breasts, and rolling their eyes, as if in great distress from an inward pain. There were innumerable candles, though it was broad daylight, an indication of their religious darkness, or a reflection on the Almighty that He had not made light enough for them, or else that He was not able to see what they were doing without the aid of their flickering dips. There was incense burning, floating everywhere, in the stifling air, that brought tears, not of contrition, but simply of water, to my eyes. It was a show worth seeing, yet it made me think of the story of the boy, who, when making his first flies for fishing, impatiently asked his mother, if God made everything? “Yes, everything.” “And flies as well?” “Certainly,” she said. “Then God has horrid fiddling work to do,” replied the boy. I thought if the Infinite God could be pleased with such a performance, styled a religious service, then He is interested in horrid fiddling, trifling matters. But, as I am only a heathen, my opinion may not be worth the breath spent in giving it. The contrast to this was in a place really named a “circus,” where there were a lot of paradings, shoutings and groans accompanied by a band of base drums, base horns, base viols, base voices and a base crowd. The people shouted and tooted as if their god was deaf or asleep, or had gone on a journey. I could not help asking myself, “Is it possible that God can be pleased with all this noise and confusion?” The other performance had something æsthetic about it, that while I could admire it as quite a decent Sunday show, there was nothing to grate upon my physical senses though much to disturb my religious sense, but the other was so bombastic and horribly discordant that I delayed not in leaving it.