NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Gus. solemnity of national humiliation and prayer on Wednesday is one of those public occurrences which tell their own news. In no part of the kingdom, probably, was the public uninformed as i to the effect of " the Fast," or the manner in which it was gene- rally observed,—with closed shops, full churches, and a sober demeanour. Down to the eve of ?Wednesday, indeed, there had been some doubt as to the possibility of rendering the observance strict. The proclamation originally issued was not so worded as exactly to carry out the statute regulating high holydays for the suspension of business ; but a second proclamation, in a special supplement to the Gazette, remedied the defect ; and those who had anticipated the necessity of attending to pay bills of exchange fall- ing due on the 26th, were able to get the duty fulfilled on the 25th, and were thus released. It is probable that of the ten mil- lions who are in the habit of attending some church or chapel in the United Kingdom, by far the larger proportion were in their praces. The churches of the Metropolis were not only well filled, but in not a few instances crowded. The subject is one alike open to the abuse of cant or to the ridicule of cynicism ; and in the ser- mons as they have been reported, there might be materials for cen- sure, as there were in the observance of the day certain decided exceptions. Sect, or the crotchety eccentricity which emulates sect, prevented a perfect uniformity in the behaviour of the people. The Quakers, of course, habitually stand excused ; some few Roman Catholics, irrespectively of a mutinous feel- ing, which is dying out in Ireland, have at the present mo- ment particular grudges against Government on the score of conventual establishments ; some Dissenters deny the authority of the Crown to appoint a day of religious observance at all ; and there were Churchmen who denied any authority not stamped by Convocation. The sermons delivered in some degree reflected these varieties. In one place, the occasion of the war was seized to enforce some peculiar doctrine which the preacher believes him- self to have specially in charge; in another, a fashionable Jere- miah prophesies the victory of Russia in rescuing Turkey from the Saracen ; and a third preaches against the war for which he was officially appointed to pray. On the whole, however, the ge- neral injunction of the clergy, conveyed from the several pul- pits of the country, was, that the people should sustain the arms of our soldiers by the sacrifice of our means, and by such conduct in our public and private life as may receive the Divine approval. It was generally felt, as a thoughtfuljournal remarks, that the observance of the day constituted " a solemn appeal to Heaven, as the arbiter of right and wrong in a great national quarrel"; and there is no question that the people reflected upon the one subject with greater earnestness than they had yet devoted to it ; closing the day with a firmer conviction that the cause which Government and the country have espoused is a just one, meriting the sacrifices and the faith in which the people have undertaken it.
