The Express.
London, England, 1864-12-02 00:00:00

ghe erpreos.

HA YM ARK T.

THT4 ETENza. THE SUN AND THE RIND.—BUNNY
VALE FARM. Hours. Bore, Ferree, Clark, Braid, and Coe.
Ilaaaames Beatrice, Snowden, and Fitzwilltana.—PßlEND
WAGGLES. Mr. Comptou.—mal MY tiI:sBANDA OHuST.

PRIICCLS.M.

Evisroit DORN To CAW LUCK. Mr. D. Marry.
And THE ATRIETS Or LONDON. Mews. Vining, J. W. Ray,
D. Fisher. D. Murray, I. Nelson. U. Forrester. .amt H. Mellon ;
lin U. Manion, Ilium Barnett and Gwynn,.

LYectli,

rat. Etilarma, EiVERD.—And THE KINGS
ECT:LRFLY. Ileum Fe.hter, Ryder. Wlddleomb, Charles,
licluty re, Raymond. Clnlorn, Collet'; Mimes C. Leclercy.
Y. Denman. Laren, and U. tartan.

aItITANNIA.
MS EMMA UPAIDE DOW N.—St/Wag by 31,.. Alhort
Meek. the Great Vauet, and %Me DoutL—Dauctnic by lidlle C.
Steph.ul —Au,' I/1E 11t/THElt'a DYING CHILL/. Atm &tam.

HIGH WATCH AT LONDON.BEIDGE.
Tim DAT Morning, 3h. 4304....After00py 4L 3e.
Zumoriow Mums& 4h. 24m.....Atkrisook 4h. 4414.

LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2.

PEOPLE who can live where they like, or shift
their abode when it does not suit them, often dis-
close a good deal of character by the choice they
make, or the evils they run away from. It is a
matter of the first consideration with many people
to be free of the neighbourhood—to be subject to
no interruption in their own affairs, and to no in-
terference with their own ways, and, above all,
not to be tortured in their sympathies, or
made uncomfortable in their selfish feel-
ings by living in the vicinity of peril or
misery. Such people had better divide themselves
between London and our dull old cathedral
towns—those of them in which no manufacture is
carried on. Those stagnant cities may prove safe
harbours, for generations, to people who are afraid
of their own sensibilitiee ; for, unless a visitation
of cholera should come, there seems to be nothing
in the way of general calamity which co.ild happen
in such a place. In Landon, too, thousands of
households live on in their own way all their lives,
without knowing so much as the names of the
inhabitants of the same street. In London only,
perhaps, can grown-up women set to work to re-
member whether they ever in their lives spoke
to a poor person, and tied that if there is any
cue on the record, it is only the charwoman or
the washerwoman. Such a life se this cer-
tainly may be, and is, led in London ; and
possibly in some of our largest provincial
towns. It does not follow that people thus
fond of comfort, and afraid of the pains of sensi-
bility, may not be very charitable in their way.
They may be among the most liberal subscribers
to all aorta of charities ; but they prefer leaving it
to others to see painful sights and deal with dis-
tresses which weigh upon the heart.
There is enough in this that is natural and com-
mon to us all that we can admit the great diffe-
rence there is between living in full view of ter-
rible distress and frequent disaster on the one
hand, and easy and perpetual comfort on the
other. At this season of the year residents on
our sea-coasts feel what a serious thing it is to
dwell within sight of wrecks, and within hearing
of the cries of the drowning and the wail of the
widows and orphans. The owners and tenants of
abodes near a fishing village, or near any
harbour in a rocky coast, find it all
very charming through the summer, as their
friends and visitors tell them. The wide sea-view,
with the fleets or the flying yacht shining in the
sun, is a great luxury ; and so are the charms of
the beach, and the caverns below, and the downs
above. It is a constant luxury to see the flags of
all nation a, and to have tho imagination carried
into all the scenes symbolised by those flags ; but
the penalty has to be paid when November comes.
The obstinate g•.le, the rain splashing against the
wiudows hour after hour, become a great strain
on the nerves when the associations of the winter
season are once established. A heart-sickness
arises which comes more easily, and feels more
painful from year to year. It is impossible
not to watch the weather and the scene,
and yet it is but too certain what the
sight will be. Boys, women, and girls run through
the rain to some point of view, or to the beach ;
and that is a sign that some ship is in danger.
Then follows the whole series of phenomena. The
vessel behaves like a wilful or a doomed creature,
edging or driving towards the fatal sandspit or
group of rocks. Then follows another and another.
One goes to pieces ; another founders ; another

gore slowly over, and is washed onwards with her
sails lying flat on the water. Then there is the
horror of seeing the steam-tug overwhelmed by
a wave, its fires put out, and too probably
a man or two carried overboard. Then there
is the agony of the life-boat, out for hours
with well-known men for her crew. The sus-
pense is serious suffering, even if no lives are
lost; and it is seldom that lives are not
lost. Of the cries from the wreck, the doubts and
the anguish of the crowd on shore, trying to help
amidst the confounding horrors of the storm, we
need say nothing. The awful facts of last week,
and especially the story of the wreck of the Stan-
ley steamer at Tynomouth, must have spread the
sensation through the whole country. More re-
mains behind, however, for residents in such
places ;—the disgust of seeing the trooping down
of men, women, and boys to lay hands on whatever
they can carry away—planks, ironwork, sailcloth,
coals, or richer prizes, if they can be bad. One
such day or night in November weakens the nerves
for the whole winter following, or for all winters
to come.

There are other places where a permanent resi-
dence is subject to similar conditions—as the
neighbourhood of collieries where accidents on a
lags scale happen from time to time. Since the
catastrophe at Holmfirth, and afterwards at
Sheffield, the same description may be given of an
abode near an artificial reservoir. Timid and
selfish people wonder how the residents can bear
such sights, and live under any notion of a repeti-
tion of them. In • lesser degree the liability attaches
to an abode in fens, or the valleys of ill•kept rivers,
where floods make beggars in a day or night of a
whole population of farmers and villagers, and
serve their death-warrant by fever or consumption
on • certain proportion of the people. The lie-
bility exists, in its degree, in mountain districts,
where snow-drifts bury all the sheep of a valley,
and overtake somebody or other on the hills, and
pauperise some small farmers, and make orphans
of some children every few years when Christmas
comes. There are too many villages where •
spread of fever takes place in the autumns, and
very fatally in some particular autumn. There
are accidents in the fields as in the towns
—shocking accidents from agricultural ma-
chinery (as yet a novelty) as well as in
cotton-mills. What it must be to live in a rick-
burning district, or in country places where a
whole row of cottages must go if one catches fire,
because there is no way of putting it out, we can
all imagine. On the whole, it seems scarcely poi-
Bible to live anywhere in any comfortable security
against the torture of one's sensibilities.
This is true ; and it ought to be true ; and there
ought to be no exception even for the most
money-giving residents of the most respectable
London streets. These cannot but know that there
are homeless poor gathered before the gates of
the workhouses every winter's night, with no
shelter from the cold and the wet ; and the sensi-
bilities cannot be very acute which are easy under
this knowledge as long Si the spectacle is not
before the eyes. It is a different sort of sensibi-
lity which sends the members of the Society for
the Relief of Distress into the very haunts of
misery—less afraid to witness the sight than to
leave fellow men to perish unaided. These volun-
tary almoners put us in the way of learning how
it is that the dreariest spectacles may be en-
countered, often, and even periodically, without
saddening life essentially.
The explanation is in the old truth, that active
helpfulness is so great a relief to the sensibilities
as to reduce the sympathetic pain to something
quite endurable. GRACE Dkauxo was certainly
far from miserable while rowing with her father
that stormy night which the world will never for-
get ; and the same may be said of the kind house-
wives who make hot coffee, and send it down to
the wrecked as they arrive, and to the lifeboat
men. The working the rocket apparatus, a pull
on the rope, stirring up the fires and bring-
ing the benumbed to them, making up
beds, and even the effort of checking
lawlessness and folly, and suggesting ideas
to the stupid and unpractical, yield a wonderful
solace in the most distressing moments. Those
who do not know this by experience may see the
truth of it in the cues of the many benevolent
persons who are as cheerful as anybody, while sub-
ject to the spectacle of human misery ; and espe-
cially of those—not very few—who have in all
times chosen to live where there was most misery,
or the most terrible kind of misery for them to try
to relieve. Without expecting to find missionaries
of mercy in every house, we may hope that the
most saw-loving of Londoners, who dread nothing
so much as their own sensibilities, will be unable
to escape knowing all about the homeless people
outside the workhouse doors, so that the pain of
the thought may quickly lead to a state of things
in which every human creature in our great city
may have where to lay his head.

bt Court.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Dec. L

The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise,
walked and drove is the grounds this mauling, attended by
Ledy Augnata Stanley.
Prince.' Helena rade is the riding achooL
Prince Leopold drove ont, attended by Mr. Bail.
Princess Louise, attended by the Hon. Emily Cathcart,
took a drive in the alterscoa.

Mr. and Mn. A. Wigan had the honour of reading a
selection of English poetry before her Majesty and the
royal family at Windsor Castle last night.
The Queen and Princess Louise went out on Tuesday.

A Cabinet Council was held yesterday at the
official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury
in Downing•street The ministers present were—
Viscount Palmerston, the Lord Chancellor, Earl
Granville, Sir George Grey, Earl Russell, the Right
Hon. Edward Cardwell, Earl de Grey, Sir Charles
Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Duke
of Somerset, the Right Hon. T. Milner Gibson,
Lord Stanley of Alderley, the Earl of Clarendon,
and the Right Hon. C. P. Villiers.

Despatches were sent yesterday from the Colonial-office
to the Governors of Canada, the West India blends,
British Columbia, and Bermuda.

THIS PRINCE AND PRINCESS. or Waters,-0n
Tuesday • private meetiag of the West Norfolk Runt wee
arranged to be held for the purpose of accommodating the
royal party at Sandringham. The meet wu appointed a►
the neighbouring preserves of Anmer. The Prince of Wales
wee attended by Major Tamale, and was accompanied by
Colossi Bug, Vie:mint Hamiltoo, Colonel Kiogscote, &e.
The Princess of Wales drove to ►h. " meet," attended by
the Counter of Macclesfield. Foxes were speedily found,
and • good run obtained. Oa Wednesday the royal party
commenced shooting on the Appleton aide of the estate.
Yesterday there was • grand Mhos shooting, and her
Royal Highness the Princes. of Wales's birthday was cele-
brated at Sandringham by • ball. At the neighbouring
town of Hing's Lyon the bells were rung, dogs were plenti-
folly exhibited, and an illumination was being arranged.
Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales at-
tained her 30th year yesterday. and the event wan cele-
brated with much rejoicing at Sandringham and Windex.
The Marquis of Lansdowne arrived at Lana-
dowse Rome, Berkeley-square, yesterday, from Bowood
Park, Wile'.

The Earl of Derby is gradually regaioing
strength. His lordship is still co:trued to his bedroom

LATEI3T INTELLIGENCE.

THE DUOMES.

A telegrams, in the Amos, dated Vienna, yes-
terday, says :—" The mediation of Austria having
been accepted, there is no longer any danger of
a collision between the Prussian forces in Hol-
stein and Lauenburg and the Federal troops in
those duchies."

(IZIITIWIS TZLIGWIB.)
THE ITALIAN PARLIAMENT.
TURIN, D. 1.

In today's sitting of the Senate, Signor Durando
spoke in favour of the convention, and Signori
Tacco and Pareto opposed it, General Della Mar-
mon made a speech in refutation of the arguments
and assertions of Signor Pareto.