A British Fast (By our Parliamentary Correspondent)

It has so happened that since the House of Commons adjourned last Tuesday not a single political event has occurred which could serve as a text for the most meagre of sermons. On Friday, however, I had an opportunity of seeing how the English people spend one of their most sacred fast days, the holiest day of all the year – at least so their Church says – and, with your leave, I will tell them what I saw. It was, as every one knows, very wet, and I was unable to do what I usually do on Good Fridays. The Crystal Palace, however, being easily available, I determined to go there, not as much for the sake of any particular personal amusement, but in order to learn what a Good Friday at the Palace was like. After a journey of unusual difficulty, caused by the number of the trains, we succeeded in reaching the entrance to the Palace, and I was amazed to find myself in the midst of a crowd as dense as that which was collected at the Handel Festival. It was not a crowd of quite the same kind, but was almost entirely made up of the lower, middle, and upper working classes. There were a great many young men from shops and warehouses, accompanied by young women ; there were also a great many mechanics with their wives and children, and later on the excursion trains from the country brought their contingent of unmistakeable rustics. All were well-behaved, and together they made up a very fair specimen of the great mass of what is called "the people." They were a fair representation of England, and so they attracted me. The dresses were most extraordinary. Blue neckties, dark and light, very much predominated, and I inferred that this predominance had something to do with the late boat-race. The confusion of colours was enough to drive a painter mad. Women with dark-coloured gowns had scarlet shawls, and red hair was relieved by light-green ribbons. It was comparatively early, but the refreshment stalls, although it was a fast day, were doing a roaring trade. I saw two youths cast anchor by the first stall to which they came, and each one ordered a large pork pie, as big as the top of my hat, and a pint of stout.

Thinking that the extra sixpence required for the aquarium would keep the place quiet, I made for it, but it was crammed so that it was almost impossible to move. The interest taken in the wonderful creatures there was very great, and it was only by strenuous pressure that the police could keep the stream moving before the most popular glass tanks. It was pleasant to see so much excitement at the sight of these fishes. They, no doubt, taught a very wholesome lesson to those who looked at them. Their beauty for one thing is very remarkable, but more than that, their strangeness and their infinite variety give hints of the boundlessness of Nature, and seem to remove the commonplace limits of ordinary existence. "To think," said a man near me, "that there should be such things as these in the world !" No doubt it was difficult, poor man ! for him to think it, shut in, probably, by houses, by smoke, and a monotonous occupation above which his imagination could hardly ever lift itself. To think that beyond Whitechapel there was really the ocean, the Pacific, fro example, with its thousands of miles of sea caverns swarming with life. The thought was an inspiration.

Wombwell's Menagerie was attached to the Palace for the day, and thither I went next. The band was outside the entrance playing what is called "sacred" music. Being Good Friday, no other music was permitted. What a curious superstition is this of "sacred" music ! Blow in B and Greene in D, and all of the dreariness of the compositions of the organists of the British school are legitimate and religious, and the Choral Symphony is profane ! The inconsistency is all the more marked too at the Crystal Palace, because no restriction is really laid upon any of the amusements. While the "sacred" performance was going on below, all secular strains being rigidly interdicted, the sports in a gymnasium were in active operation in the gallery just above, and marvellous feats on the swings were accompanied by hymn tunes. The glory of the menagerie seemed to have faded very much during the last thirty years, or possibly it may be that the glory-investing faculty of thirty years ago had faded somewhat. However that may be, the place was very disagreeable and very damp, and I escaped from it as soon as possible. By this time the Palace was so full that locomotion was difficult, and being tired I went home. On my way one or two reflections occurred to me.

The first was that fasting is a thoroughly un-English institution, and should be abolished. It is an Orientalism entirely foreign to our habits, and I must say that I think our habits have the right on their side. Fasting to a certain extent in order to prevent sin is comprehensible, but why, having sinned, we should fast , is incomprehensible. Fasting, too, as a physiological effect of grief, is comprehensible, but predetermined fasting to commemorate grief is an absurdity. To the great mass of the people in this country fasting is a mere pretence, and frequently on Good Friday it means the pork pie and the pint of stout, as it did with the young men just mentioned.

The second reflection was that Good Friday should be abolished. On this day we are supposed to bear in mind the most miserable event that ever happened in the world's history, a dismal judicial murder, typical for all time of the murder of the best in man by the worst in man. Whatever theories we may hold about what was done on the first Good Friday, the crime of that day fills us even now with horror, and it is still so near to us that when we think about it we are more disturbed than at the darkest deeds of contemporary or even personal history. It is quite impossible for us to summon up to order at a particular moment the emotions proper to meditation on this murder, and even if they could be made to come when called it is doubtful whether they should be called. One thing is quite certain, that the people generally do not feel them on Good Friday, and that they turn the day into a holiday but little less lively than Christmas Day. To a reflective person, no matter how superior he may be to ecclesiastical prejudices, this is not pleasant. I did not like to see a mob of laughing young men and women "celebrating" the anniversary of the death of Christ by means of this excursion train, swings, wild beast shows, and unlimited guzzling. There was no particular wrong done, because probably they never thought about what they were doing, and naturally welcomed Good Friday as nothing but a day's outing. But would it not be better to get rid of the incongruity ? Let Good Friday drop, and let us have in its place a real holiday, say on the 1st of August, sacred to the memory of the walk through the corn-fields, and the liberation of the soul achieved there for all time from the bondage of a dead tradition.

The last reflection, or at least the last with which I shall trouble your readers, was that we are all guilty of a great deal of very empty homage to what is thought to be religion, and that this homage, too, should be abolished. The Crystal palace Company advertised the attractions of the Palace on Good Friday. the Octopus, Sims Reeves, and the beasts all figured in the newspapers. But to save appearances the concert was to be "sacred." That was just the touch of the hat to the Church. The House of Commons has prayers before business commences, and members worship in order to secure their seats. It is to be hoped no recording angel moves for returns of the number of prayers really prayed by those gentlemen who at four o'clock so solemnly turn their faces to the wall. My neighbours go to church rigourously every Sunday, but I observe that they openly boast that their measure of the value of a sermon is its brevity, and that the quicker the Litany is galloped through the better they like it. Soon I expect it will be the fashion for people not to go to church, but to leave their cards, and those who do not leave their cards will be set down as great infidels, just like those who "go nowhere" now.