The discussion in the House of Lords on Tuesday night
con- cerning the opening of certain popular places of amusement—like parts of the British Museum and the Zoological Gardens—to the people on Sunday, was more liberal and promising than usuaL The success of the experiment in the Kew Gardens and Hampton Court was appealed to by many speakers, while the Duke of Westminster stated that in 1875 he had opened the picture-gallery in Grosvenor House on both Saturdays and Sundays to the people, the great majority of visitors attending on the Sunday, and comparatively very few on the Saturday. In the course of two months, 11,000 visitors had passed through his rooms. The Lord Chancellor, however, rested his resistance on the unwillingness of the people to permit a practice which they looked upon with jealousy as likely to lead to the loss of the day of rest for the employes, and perhaps as not unlikely to lead gradually to a great invasion of the Sunday holiday. No doubt the popular majority in the House of Commons has been year after year very unfavour- able to this motion,—not on Sabbatarian, but on economical grounds. Lord Cairns, however, did not confine himself to this ground. He also resisted the change, on the plea that nothing should be done to sanction the idea that the Government approved of getting rid of " the sanctity of Sunday." Did he not mean the sanctimoniousness?
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