The Express.
London, England, 1864-04-11 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS.

Timm is some virtue in the instincts of the
multitude. They may sometimes shout at the
trappings of the vulgar great ; curiosity is the
condiment of dull and weary lives. The visible
presence of power has an irresistible fascination for
the untutored minds ; but, after all deductions,
there is a profound suggestiveness in the saying—
" the voice of the people is the voice of Goo."
The English people will be better represented to-
day by the thronging masses in the streets and on
the housetops than by a few acute and cultivated
sneerer% who have about as much capacity for
generous enthusiasm as a worn-out stomach for
bread and cheese. The criticism which pretends
to sneer down every sympathy and aspiration it
cannot share, and to sit apart from the follies of
the crowd in a discreet superiority—the snarl of
envious and indigent natures—sinks into silence
and contempt. In spite of all the pedantry of its
political doctors, the heart of the English people
remains "in the right place." They do not
pause to consider the prudence, or to cal-
culate the policy, of honest emotions. They
have small respect for the rank and dignity
of a woman-flogging Austrian general, though
all the orders of all the potentates in Eu-
rope cover his breast. They do not appreciate
nice distinctions between public and private mo-
rality ; but when once in fifty or a hundred years,
a man uncrowned, untitled, comes before
them in all the splendour of a stain-
less soul—a man whom neither good nor
evil fortune, neither triumph nor disaster,
neither favour, nor flattery, nor proscrip-
tion, nor all that this world desires and applauds,
has seduced from fideliti to the cause of the
suffering and the oppressed ; why, then, even in
this hard-brained, hard-hearted city of London,
half a million of people rush into the public ways
to greet him, rather as one greets a much-loved
friend and benefactor, than with the staring and
empty loyalty that salutes the pomp and majesty
of monarchs.

It is not upon our guest to-day that the banner.)
and music, and the procession, and the acclaiming
thousands will confer honour, but upon the capital
that sends them forth. And it will
be to the great working people of
England—the most patient and laborious people
on earth—that we shall owe whatever credit
we may deserve or get for doing honour to a man
whose life redeems the baseness of au age. if
there is a common understanding and sympathy
among monarchs, it is well that the people should
have an Ale-unwell ;lc Gotha registered in its breast,
in which a GARIBALDI is registered as an un-
anointed sovereign. Foreign Governments and
nations will watch with astonishment and something,
perhaps, of envy, the spectacle in the streets of
London to-day. France will confess that seventy
years and more after her own revolution, which
she still calla "great," and by right of which she
still assumes the spiritual supremacy of mankind—
such a welcome to such a man would be impossible
in Paris. "GA RIBALD' cannot set his foot in France ";
nor could the Liberator of Italy be welcomed by the
German people in either of their capitels. Ard
yet uho shall say that England is leas conservative
than France, or Austria, or Prussia, or that London
is more revolutionary than Paris or Vienna t No
doubt official writers will be content to chars.-
terize the honours we pay to GARIBALDI Si the
homage which vice pays to virtue ; the homage
of a people of shopkeepers to a hero of romance ;
the homage of a city in which a thousand altars
steam for ever with incense to false gods ; the
homage of the worshippers of Mammon to virtues
they half denpise while they worship. Nor
can we take upon ourselves to affirm that
in the heartfelt sincerity of this national
ovation there in not a particle of alloy. At the
East, and even at the West-end of London, there
are, doubtless, many who regard the character of
a GALIBALDI as almost an outrage against the di-
vinities of lucre and success, at whose shrines
they kneel, who console themselves to-day with the
reflection that he is but "the puppet of an hour."
()there there are who speak tenderly of GA-
LLI:ALIA as an honest enthusiast ; as if with more
of the statesman's caution and the statesman's
craft, the leader who captured Sicily in a small
packet steamer and Naples in a carriage, who de•
feated a whole army with a handful of volunteers,
could have created a new Italy 1 GARIBALDI is no
puppet of the hour because he is not the creature
of success ; and if he loves this England as a
second country, it is because England loved him
never so well as when he lay wounded and a pri-
soner. It is the privilege of a man of GARIBALDI'S
mould to rise greater from disaster than from