The Express.
London, England, 1864-01-30 00:00:00

Efte erpreoo.

COEILEMONDINTL

Alvertliaasenis intended-
for " tondos Tussles
1,190 C, malt b. as the COM 10. 3011•1111046/11114, by Two
Wawa on the day of publication.

OOH ENT-GARDEN.

TEM Tram, FASCHEI TE. Miss L Pyne and Mr. K. Har-
rison.—And HARLEQUIN ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.
Warm W. B. Payne, 11. Payne, F. Payne, the &ethos
Btonette, Mdlle. Esther—Commence et 7.

HAYMARKET.

THIS Evlsrreto, orr. AMERICAN COir9IN. Means. Bothers,
Buclutoae, Chippendale, Gordon, Rosen. Coe, and Clark;
Mesdames 4Dgel and Spowdon.—A ud KING ARTHUR.
Mr. Compton , Mesdames L Keeley, Wright, Undies, E.ltomer.

PRINCEsi*S.
TEM EcrYINO, DONNA DIANA.—And HARLEQUIN
LITTLE TUN TUCKER Mews. Sexton, Cathcart, A. and C.
Lenten:4, Hans and Son, Milano, Naylor, and Chaptoo;
Mesdames Barnett. Adana. and Howard.

LYCZIIIL

Tlll9 ETINOIO. iHe war CH MD. Yr. WUldtocanto and
Mho P. Leclerc(.—BßL DIVONIO. a Lom Story. Messrs.
gutter, Brougham, Emery, Chutes, and Jordan , Mass
M. Jimmie, Invenue, and Laworiay, and lbs. Lea

.11.11.11ANNL6

Tuts Emma. the New lantOrilime HICKORY, HICKORY,
Dom. Mrs S. Lane and Ent-rate Pantomimlsta.—The Marvels
of Peru. - THE GREAT GHOST ErlPECT.—trthvir and Bertrand.
—The Fairy Yountaln..-And THE GORILLA HUNT.

HIGH WATIZ AT TONDOS RAMO&
MI DAT Moeda& 5h 43m... .Lifornoss, sh. Pas.
rO4IOIROW Morntng, eh. 15m . . Ationlocia. 6h. 37na.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30.

Ir is impossible to read with no more than the
regret which a great loss of human life must always
inspire, the account of the terrible calamity at
Chili, given in yesterday's Express. When thou-
sands fall on the battle-field we remember that,
however unnecessary and unjust the war,
the loss has been anticipated and the risk has
been accepted in view of some compensating ad-
vantage. When an earthquake like that at
Manilla swallows up ten thousand people, the
mind, appalled by the magnitude of tho cata-
strophe, and oppressed with a sense of the help-
lessness of man, finds consolation in falling be*
upon an innate and indefeasible belief in the good-
ness of the Power which reigns over nature
and makes its most destructive agencies
the instrument of His inscrutable designs. No
such lenitive thoughts as these come to our
relief as we think of the two thousand ladies who
perished on the Bth of December in the Church of
La Compania, at Santiago. It is possible, indeed,
that some in the Old World, as they read of
the death which overtook so many of the faithful
while they were absorbed in the outward cere-
monies of religion, will envy—or at least try to
think they envy—them their favoured exit
from this world in the very act of piety and
devotion—" going," as the priest cried to
them in their agonies, "direct to Maxv." But
with every respect for sincere conviction, we must
say that the eHesiastical frivolity and dissipa-
tion in which these unhappy victims were over-
taken by death, will in the eyes of most sober
people, whether catholics or proteatanta, only make
the narrative more distressing. Not that it would
be right to adopt the language of the South Ame-
rican writer whose account of the conflagration we
borrow, and speak of it as an " awful judgment of
" GOD." It was thus, indeed, that the reigning
POPE assumed to interpret the Divine counsels,
when • few years ago the spirit of King Vu-roe
EMMANUEL was bowed down by a succession of
family bereavements; and we can easily imagine
what touching reflections wo ild find a place in his
next allocution, if two thousand Italians were to be
burnt alive while listening to Father PASSAGLIA
preaching on the Unity of Italy. To him and
those, by whatever name they call themselves,
who share his spirit, let us leave such presumption.
Without going beyond the evidence of sense and
understanding, we may trace a r %tura' connexion
between the destruction of these urhappy lades
and the sea of church muslin and drapery,
the inflammable pasteboard " propertier," and
the " twenty thousand lights in long :estoons of
"coloured globes" hung beneath a wooden roof.
Yet accepting as true all that is said of the ent"•e
abandonment of the congregation tothe excitement
of superstition, the intoxication of the crowd was
surely not greater than that of the maw uers at
the ball when Covent-garden Theatre was

burned down but a few years ago, and when not
•reveller perished. The temper of mind which
is always looking for signs from Heaven, is not
favourable to the calm, constant, and practical
recognition of the eternal laws by which the world
government of the world is carried on. It rather
shows a neglect of those laws, or implies a feeling
of their insufficiency. Not wholly to lose
the benefit of the lesson which this calamity
has for us in England, let us ask whether
we have not public buildings larger than the
church at Santiago, and as much frequented,
where a similar, and possibly an equal, loss of life
might occur ? We are told that when the alarm
sprend in the Church of La Compania, " at once
" nearly the whole people rushed to the principal
"door, and fainting ladies fell down and were
" trampled on. The scene at the door was in-
" describable. As jammed, squeezed irto one solid
" lump, the door was blocked by the people, arms
" were wrenched from bodies which could not be
" extricated, and from the lintel to the arch of
" that awful passage became a crushed heap of
" mangled bodies." This is what always
happens when a panic seizes people in a
crowded building, insufficiently provided with
means of egress ; and it is well known that we
have public buildings in London to which our
best members of society resort in crowds, which,