The Salvationist Bands which perform in and out of London--(would
that they were restricted as the Moore and Burgess Minstrels restrict
themselves to one hall, never or "hardly ever," performing out
of London!)--everywhere and anywhere without respecting illness,
or the hours of public worship in our Churches and Chapels, or
the necessities of repose, show thereby a distinct want of that
consideration for the feelings of their fellow-citizens which simple
Christian folk call Charity. These Booth performers--which designation
savours suggestively of Mountebanks--would do well to play their
peculiar music and sing their peculiar hymns within the four walls
of their own places of worship, employing the intervals essential
for gaining of wind and for rest of muscle in meditating, perhaps
breathlessly, on the inspired Pauline teaching which will inform them
that even the works of an Apostle, if he have not charity, will be as
"sounding brass and tinkling cymbals," making indeed a great noise in
the world, but as one WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE has said, being mere "sound
and fury signifying nothing." "Liberty of Worship" by all means,
but not such Liberty for any one particular form of worship which,
interfering with the freedom of others, speedily degenerates into
fanatical licence, and so becomes a nuisance as intolerant as it is
intolerable.
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ANGLO-AMERICAN FRENCH.--A new word must be added to our French
dictionaries. In _Le Figaro_ for Feb. 15, in an article on HECTOR
MALOT, occurs this expression, "_en ce temps de puffisme littéraire_."
In English we have had the word and the thing too, since the time of
SHERIDAN's _Critic_, but is any student of French journalism familiar
with it in the Parisian newspapers?
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