The Express.
London, England, 1853-12-01 00:00:00

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day of rabhestaos.

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Ih-holahw-11262211h2, 2k. ....thershoe, 2h. 21s.

LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1.

4. . . ...-....-

To-ii Y we begin our winter; the three
autumnal months, dreaded by hypochondriacs, and
reprobated by foreigners, are gone, and their
amount of fatal disease ascertained and recorded.
The terrible November of England, for which
all the world pities us, is gone for this year,
with its fogs and other penalties. Perhaps nobody
is very sorry to part with it ; but fair-minded people
are beginning to assert and prove that November in
England has been much slandered, and that it by no
means deserves, as a matter of fact, the imputations'
ander which it has suffered for centuries. For
instance, it is found that the suicides, for-
merly charged against it, are actually fewer
than in most other months of the year.
There may have been a time when that
month, and every other, was more unhealthy
in England than in other European countries. In
the infancy of the arts of life, climate is of more
consequence, and of a different kind of consequence,
than when man has obtained greater power over
nature. le the old days when our people wore
nothing but woollen, and seldom thought of washing
it ; when the poor lived on floors of damp clay, and
the rich trade on rashes, foul with all manner of dirt
dropped from the board and carried in by the
feet ; and when draughts whistled through the
ill-constructed houses; and when there were no plea-
sent %sacs tempting people to due exercise; and
when it was the custom to gorge with gross meats
at every meal, and with such sour and muddy wine
am the old chroniclers tell us of—it is exceedingly
likely that the popular health was inferior to what it
was in sunny countries, where life was passed chiefly
in the open air, with light clothing and diet. But
the whole state of things has changed with the pro-
gress of civilisation ; and we now find ourselves the
most long-lived people in all Europe. In former
days our soldiery were strong, and our peasantry
sould do great things in athletic games; but them
were picked men—the survivors of a system of living
which killed off the weakly. If there had been
a registration of births and deaths through the
past centuries of our history, there is no daubt
that the amount of deaths (in childhood espe-
cially) would have astonished us. It was pro-
bably much like the mortality in Russia at this
day, which is (according to the sixth annual report
of the Registrar-General) 36 annually to 1,000

living. At present the mortality in England is
only 22, to 36 in Russia, 30 in Austria, 27 is Prus-
sia, and 24 in France. With a salubrity like this
proved before the eyes of the world, we may well
leave off complaining of our climate, and doubt whe-
ther our landmarks could bare been set up for us in
a pleasanter place. _ . _

Each nation, co doubt, prefers its own abode.
Tho Frenchman loves his bright atmosphere—the

clear outlines of his cities against the sky—his
evenings on the Boulevard, his sunny vineyards, his
fruit diet and light wines; but he does not live so long
as we do. The Prussian adores the Rhine, and revels
in the literature, and, yet more, the art, of his chief
cities; but, as Cohertince said, if the Rhine
washes Cologne, what washes the Rhine? and what
hope of average health is there at Berlin, en that
sandy plain where drainege is impossible, and where
the greatest blessing of the year is the frost which
seals up the fetid vapours in the grour.d ? With
one single warm day in mid-winter out comes fever,
to run its course for weeks. The Prussian lives a
shorter time, or at greater risk, than the Frenchman,
and the Austrian than either. The Austrian domi-
nions spread over such varieties of surface that the
causes of the higher mortality may not be very easy
to assign; but the fact is certain. There are in that
empire wide unshaded plains, where the sun beats
down with tropical heat at one time, and the frost
winds drive fiercely and unchecked at another; and
there are swampy river banks, and misty
mountains, and close old towns, haunted by
the maladies of bygone ages ; and there
is, in addition, throughout the nation, a singularly
unwholesome mode of diet—crude, acid, oily—am
counting for the intestinal maladies which beset the
Austrian constitution. The same may be said of the
Russian, with abundance of aggravation from other
causes. The extreme cold of Russia would not pro-
bably be very injurious it it were well managed, and
if it did not alternate with excessive heat : but, see.
kg what life is in Russia—the contrast of excessive
laxury with extreme hardship, the want of gradation
of nuke, the absence of equable action of the brain
through the whole of society (a main condition of pre-
valent good health), the gross method of feeding
among some order+, and the deficient com-
fort in others—the wonder is that the corn-
pars tin mortality is not even greater than
we see it to be. The formation of the land, through-
out the greater part of the Russian empire, is such
as to require all the resources of civilisation to neu-
tralise its effects on human health; and that civilisa-
tion is as yet scarcely instituted outside of a few
great cities. When we look at other countries where
Englishmen go to reside, we find none so favourable
to life as our own—unless, perhaps, our own Canada,
where, we believe, the average of life and health is
high. In Italy, with all its charms of climate, there
is malaria, fever and painful cold in winter, from
the structure of the dwellings. Sicily is notoriously
unhealthy. So is the greater part of Spain, from
exposure, heat, dirt, and damp. In the Limited States
the average duration of life is dismally short, and
the state of health so remarkably bad that
it has been freteiently proposed to hold a
National Convention on the subject of Health, to see
what resistance can he made to consumption, diger
tire maladies, and nervous diseases. Part of the
mischief arises from the fact of the greater part of ,
the soil being recently settled; but much also from
the methods of diet and the excessive excitability of
our I xcellent relatives over there. No doubt, in all'
these cases, and in our own, more experience and
a higher wisdom would ensure an amelioration of
health and a prolongation of life. There is no cause
for boastfulness in our superior advantages. We Sr.
nut now imputing our favoured condition to any
merits of our own ; and heaven knows it would be
unspeakably absurd and wicked to do so, while we
sin, daily and hourly, on a large scale, against the laws
of the human constitution. We may not boast
while we have our defiled rivers and fetid sewers
under our noses, and our Hooded fields and smoking
chimneys, and crowrlid graveyards, and Unit vesti-
bule, the gin palace, before our eyes. What we do
say is that, noble as are the American prairie and

forest—beautiful u are the sunny and starry skies of
Italy—majestic and charming as are the rivers of
Germany and Spain—and gladsome as existence
be in some of the gay valleys of France—we
au7t. a more easy and a longer life in oar
dear old England with all its mist, and
werpiap of the sky. We have tot a las-