Note Back to Main Text — Chapter I

What the so-called friends of the working classes are aiming at in England, has already been effected in France. The public museums and picture-galleries are open on Sunday. But you look for the working people there in vain. They are at work in the factories, whose chimneys are smoking as usual; or building houses, or working in the fields, or they are engaged in the various departments of labour. The government works all go on as usual on Sundays. The railway trains run precisely as on week days. In short, the Sunday is secularised, or regarded but as a partial holiday.[99]