The Express.
London, England, 1864-07-21 00:00:00

MGR WATER AT LONDON DEIDOIL.

Ting DAY gora.-3.110*.
Yo-moaauw Yeeetee, 422. Oes...—/Airael" 4 220.

LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 21.

Jusr as Mrs. HOPLEY had been ordered back to
her husband with the compliments of Sir Jamas
Wrtnr, another husband of a widely different stamp
had "constituted himself," to use his own words,
"Judge of the Divorce Court," by committing sui-
cide in Nnnhesd Cemetery upon his mother's grave.
This man, J sins W nal •If TRIRTE, had behaved very
badly to his wife and child, having first, by his
own culpable act, rendered himself unable to pro-
vide for them, and then turned them out upon
the world. Before destroying his own life he
addressed a letter to his "dear wife" full of ex-
pressions of affection, of the genuineness of which
there is no reason to doubt, so compatible is mere
good sentiment with unprincipled conduct. This
letter, which we published on Tuesday, is a psycho.
logical curiosity. Addressing his wife at a most
solemn moment, when the most confirmed
affectations might be expected to give way to sim-
plicity and nature, he is the "individual who writes
" these lines." Committing suicide is "taking the
" liberty of taking a view of the future state of
"society." He talks of " first love ripening into
" manhood's devotion," and then in the coolest
manner devolves the care of his wife and children
upon friends, relations—anybody—bringing in
also the doctrine of Providence, a revelation
vouchsafed to sustain and encourage men in
honest exertion, to excuse his cowardice. " I
"go to see my mother"—no misgiving as to
the best of welcomes awaiting in another world
one who was basely deserting his post, and leaving
those whom he was by every consideration bound
to protect to want and suffering. "You remain
"to look after the boy"—the deserter readily
appointing the duties of others in the field which he
abandons. " GOD will raise up for you what I
" wanted—friends :" this from the man who bad'
deservedly forfeited a good situation by absenting I
himself from its duties, who had been assisted
and advised by his wife's friends, although he
spent in intemperance the money that ought to
have been devoted to the support of his family.
Then he vaunts his courage in quitting the
world in which he had played so miserable a part,
and leaving his wife to fight her own battle. He
quotes SHiXESPELHE and Bri.woi, from which, we
hope, no writer of able articles will draw inferences
unfavourable to those eminent authors, and then
in the most complacent manner declares—he too—
that he " has followed reason and not vice," and
that his faults have been those of the bead, not
those of the heart. It is easy to see on what food
this man's mind had fed, in what school his views
of life and its duties were formed—easy to mark
in his letter the facility with which a sophistical
and self-deceiving heart draws from literature, phi-
losophy, and religion itself, and wrests and appro-
priates to its own mean purposes, ideas which, ac-
cepted in their true character, might have guided
it in the path of honour and safety. But the moral
is as old as the world : teach what you will, men
will learn what they please.

THE Bishop of OXFORD 'a
Bill, relating to Divine
Worship in Public Schools, adopted so lightly
by the Lords, has failed in the Commons, where
it encountered a serious disposition to examine its
character and tendency. The Bill was withdrawn
yesterday after a short discussion, which, how-
ever, was long enough to show that the
subject ought not to be legislated on without
farther inquiry. Mr. II ARDVESTLE pointed out
features in the measure which we cannot conceive
the House of Commons as sanctioning except by
inadvertence. The Bill has a much larger
scope than is generally supposed. It has been re-
commended chiefly by approving reference to the
experience of the great public schools, and to
the advantage which the boys have derived from
such religious teaching as that of ARNOLD at Rugby
and VA VGHEN at Harrow, in the chapels of those
foundations. But, in point of fact, the Bill
applies, as Mr. HARDCASTLE showed, not to them
but to the ordinary grammar schools throughout
the country. These schools are attended fur the
most part by boys who live with their parents,
and who at present worship with them
on Sundays in the parish churches or
elsewhere. Under the Bill this natural and salutary
practice would come to an end, for one of its provi-
sions is that the children shall be taken from under
their parents' control on Sundays, and required to
attend the school chapel, where their parents would
have no right to be present. Sir GroßnE GREY,
referricg to this feature of the Bill, observed that
it had excited a good deal of " exaggerated
" alarm" among Nonconformists, a piece of parlia-
mentary fastidiousness which we do not pretend to
understand : but if this Bill should be intro-
duced to the House of Commons next year,
Sir GEORGE GREY will find that the objections
to it are as strong on the part of Churchmen as
on that of Nonconformists. Parents, whether
they attend church or chapel, will require to know
why their children are to be withdrawn from
religious services that are open to public observa-
tion, and dealt with apart in private chapels. The
Bill appears to have been introduced for no other
purpose than to give a more absolute and decidedly
ecclesiastical character to schools the usefulness of