The Express.
London, England, 1863-07-02 00:00:00

Lircx!rit.

TO TOM. ♦ Mewl. Shore and
Intklioth ; YW Mande and Mrs. 1••.—••1 THE DUOS
norm. ribebt.r. Shore, Jer•••._Brouir•aa. and
Ispeoad ; Owe C. Leclerc% L. Tam a dOrworO.

BRITAf!NIA.

TEfo Erritwo, 11111 WISHING OLIN ; or, spirits of the
Departed introducing THE onoar, with Professor P •
adaptation of Mr. Dlrehi• Soietral lUndon.—Ttie Brothers
Conrade and Mr. C. Woodman. -And PAVED WITH GOLD.

NIGH Waal& AT LONDON BALDOL
?IDS DAT Donnas. 2% 2111...• Afternoon. DA CIL
Zaltosacir—Norols& .Allentoon, Se. Sess.

LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 2.

Ores evening last week an Italian ropewalker
lost his balance and broke his back in the presence
of a gay and gaping crowd for whom this unre-
hearsed catastrophe was but an episode in the
evening's amusements between the dancing and
the fireworks. The proprietor of the pleasure-
gardens in which the accident occurred instantly
wrote to the newspapers to assure the public
that no such performance should again take place
under his management. This very prompt and
creditable resolution was perhaps as sensible a
relief to the feelings of the proprietor at the mo-
ment as to the feelings of the public on the follow-
ing day. The impulse and the motive which
inspired the resolution were partly perhaps a
certain remorse at having, however reluc-
tantly, permitted • public entertainment liable
to such risks, and partly a very proper des;re to
anticipate the first gush of public indignation.
Before the circular could have been written, however,
and before the body of the poor performer could
have been on its way to the hospital, the spectators
were dancing and making merry again, having
paid their tribute to humanity by • moment's con-
sternation, twenty minutes' curiosity, five or six
shrieking women, and two or three positively faint-
ing. The report of the Inquest probably drew some
sympathetic sighs of wonder and some angry excla-
nations at the "shame that such things should be
" allowed" from the British family circle at the break-
fast table, and that is all. The death of • stifled
sempstreas at a fashionable dressmaker's has seized
the attention of society • little more forcibly, and,
though it happened nearly a for .night ago, is not
even yet entirely forgotten. Milliners may
be said without metaphor to move in the highest
circles, so that the death of a poor girl with a
bell-dress in her band, though she was only one
of the rank and file who die by hundreds, is hon-
oured with much high-bred whimpering compas-
sion, when it happens at the height of the season,
and "gets into the papers."
For thus it is that every now and then the
world of fashion affects to be startled by the
death, in a more than usually painful and almost
public manner, of one of the innumerable
defenceless victims of the pumps and vanities
of a London summer. It is not the death
of • poor milliner-girl, who has dropped into an
early grave in search of rest, less happy in her
brief existence than the flower that the sun has
withered by day or the wind has laid low in the
night ; it is not the death—for what is the life of
such a girl but a lingering fever and a weary
stupor?—but it is the death before the public gaze,
the death which is not hushed up, and which
becomes a scandal and an outcry—that flutters
the jaded nerves of many delicate creatures of
luxury and fortune, who through the hectic hours
of summer nights and listless afternoons try to ex-
orcise the demon of ennui, and fly from one dull
gaiety to another, as if balls, and promenades, and
drums, and garden-parties were religious rites.

The authoress of " Lost and Saved" is anxious
to impress upon her readers the moral of the well-
worn incidents and real characters of her story ;
and this moral seems to be, that in England,
as in Venice, " their best conscience is not
"to leave undone, but keep unknown." The
great offence of the Divorce Court is its publicity.
So, too, when a milliner girl becomes the subject
of a coroner's inquest, Society is not only pained
but indignant at the scandal Stringent is the
morality of English Society ; but its hypocrisy is
more stringent stilL It has the holiest horror of
being found out.
What is there in the circumstance of the death
of a sempatresa in a West-end workroom, that
it should take the world of fashion by sur-
prise I The social tournament of the Season,
when trade is good and town is full, is anything
but a sham fight for the performers in the arena ;
but the brunt of the battle is borne by a set of
obscure and friendless drudges, whose names are
never heard of except when the Coroner makes
them a nine days wonder. One dying gladiator is
immortalised by a poet's stanza ; but bow many
thousands of his fellows have been dragged out of
the circus and forgotten before the dust
could lick up their blood T From time to
time we awake to the horrible and unpleasant fact
that infants are being murdered by shame-stricken
and deserted mothers--that men and women are
dying of starvation, and that milliner girls,
where they are not dying of starvation,
are dying for want of sleep and air, in order that
elegant and probably pious ladies may have the