The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-01 00:00:00

to allow it to 1
Sitz ir,vrriz. i paradoxical —too thriving • people
exist. Owing to the generally rf.gular administra- I
tion of the laws and habits of seid-government during
TO CORRESPONDENTS. ' many centuries past, the cxe wive elevation of or:, '
A he, gd K.Ktion of 'TN! Mtge.," not
the *able evre,ite•• • .8 others has bun prever.ted. '
..ti ame," i, plashed 'eery Tweelay not eralay asibt, is tune Cl"— in a city above the
tot vow". prosperity running t.nrongh I
Attu rtigstenn latennlect for "The Kneen.," Lofoten F.,•• if ft paper, • . ,
There has been a genet ai
7, rather than an extravagant 1
ins-t be nt the IWI e, la, Ilwantiegtreet, by Two o'clock au the tne wocue communit
as) .4 pahltratton. I success falling to '..fr., lot of individuals or classes.

11101 i WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE. i Many have become rich, but few have become
/ma Der -R. falai, tit. 3: la
To-NUS lon —Montag, tit. 211. _ ... Oita," lA. 111 a. derity, lt.ten, has not been to build palaces fur pride,
but 'amuses for comfort. But the ideas of com-
LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPTENTER 1. f'.ct change, and enlarge and improve. The
. !tenant, who comes into a house of moderate
---..-
pretensions built by his predecessor, has his
own ideas of a comfortable house, and ho has no
scruples about pulling down or altering his abode to I
suit his rimy or to follow the fashion. This is a"I
process which can rarely be adopted with palaces, and I
can never be adopted except amongst a people who !
are in good circumstances. Englishmen, however,
have always been rich enough to build their own
houses. Level any town in England, and no long
time will elapse before it is built up again.
Each successive owner of a house is gene-
rally enabled to alter or build it up again
at will. An Italian is very frequently unable
to stop up the hole through which the rain,
inundates his palace. Abroad a large number of the
population are obliged to be stowed away in all
imaginable corners of palaces. In England most
classes can afford tenements of their own, and are
rich enough to repair them if damaged. An English.
man's house is not too large to prevent his
meddling with it. The consequence has been that
successive generations have pulled down the
houses of tho previous generations, and con-
structed them after a new pattern, which,
while it has done little for the beauty, has done
much for the comfort of our streets and the habita-
tions of which they are composed. We have the
most comfortable dwellings in the world, but they
are the least picturesque.
If "everybody" lays these considerations to heart,
he will return from his peregrinations delighted with
what he has seen, but more than ever ready to prize
the institution, of his country, which have been pro-
ductive of a state of society, which has done perhaps
little for the picturesque, but has spread comfort and
prosperity throughout the land.

Tut, fashionable world is making its ar,oust
Exodu4. Grosvenor-square is deserted. T:,-ournia
no longer echoes with sharp reports procev.ding from
"doors with double knockings." Belgravia shows
by closed windows the absence of its princes and ,
millionaires. London, we aro told by miserable-
looking individuals in the deserted halls of the clubs,
"is empty." No one is in town. It is true that
there were two millions and a half of people in Lon-
don a few months back, and that there are two
millions and • half, minus a minute fraction ;
of the whole, in London now. It is true
that • stranger might walk about for days
in the capital without finding out any alteration is
its appearance. unless he had been beforehand made
acquainted with the locus where a deficiency exists.
It is true that the manufacturing activity of London
is just as gnat, that its commercial thoroughfares
are just as crowded, that the stream of life runs just
as thickly as before. It is true also that a good mil-
lion or more of its inhabitants are as ignorant that
the total number is diminished, as the water on the
Surrey shore of the Thames is of the abstrac-
tion of a pailful from the Middlesex side.
All these facts are indisputable. 'fhe fashion-
able world, by its self-expatriation, makes but so
little impression on the great whole, that from a
distance, et which the whole can be embraced in one
view, the difference may be expressed by an iucon-
siderable fraction.

However, let us take the formula for what it is
worth, and see what can be made of it. Let us be-
lieve implicitly that "nobody is in town." Let us
try hard to convince ourselves that the few thou-
sands who have gone are "everybody," and
the millions left "nobody." Where is "everybody"
gone to? Stretch your eyes to follow "everybody,"
and you see the numerous units making up that
corporation, hurrying across the Channel, whirling
along the continental railroads,steamingupeontinental
rivers until at last they will be discovered domiciled
in gaudy hotels or dirty palaces. A small detach-
ment may be found, indeed, in the provinces com-
mitting slaughter amongst the grouse, and others to-
day doing similar damage to the partridges. But
the great portion of " everybody " will he found
very shortly to have settled themselves down over the
surface of France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland,
—a few stray individuals only stretching far up to
the North, or towards the East and West, to Constan-
tinople, or it may be to Spain.
What does " everybody " mean by this migration ?
How are we to aceount for the fact of " everybody "
regularly transporting the great portion of himself to
foreign countries? How is it that the English, who
have the most comfortable homes in the world, are
mot easy unless they quit them as regularly as birds
of passage? Ask the majority of the travellers this
question, and although you will get a variety of
answers, you will find an amazing preponderance in
favour et one. A few went abroad to see scenery,
a few to study life and manners and lan-
guage, a few for health; but the overwhelm-
ing majority went in search of " the picturesque."
They went to see " those charming old towns"
—those grand streets made up of lofty palatial build-
ings, grey with age--those grotesque tenements
bristling with gables—those enigmatic erections
pitched at random throughout the towns—those
magnificent gates—those stately approaches—all
objects of unspeakable attraction to eyes wearied
with gazing upon the tame monotony of English
towns. The picturesque on a large scale has de-
parted from us. There is scarcely a town in Eng-
land, with the exception of Chester, that is full
of than antique irregularities so beloved by painters
on search for subjects. " Everybody," then, has gone ,1
abroad to refresh his sense of beauty, and so far
"everybody" is right. An Italian palace is a more
pleasing object to the sight than a brick house with
a flat front. The great market places of the Conti-
nent, surrounded by magnificent structures, are some-
thing different to English markets surrounded by
low houses of no architecture at all. Take for
example Malin*, a town at which probably many
travellers will make their first halt. There are few
towns in England which are built in a manner to
make such an impression on the eye as Malian. The
wide lofty streets, the noble houses, the spacious
market place, have but few equals in England-
" Everybody's" admiration is not wasted when
lavished on a town like this; and the Continent
abounds in such.

THE interest of all classes in a good harvest can
scarcely be overrated. To the industrious consumer
it is a question of plenty or the reverse for the next
year. To the farmer it is one of success or failure,
comparative wealth or poverty, the influence of
which may extend over his business for several years
to come. To the landowner a good or bad harvest is
no less important, for the punctuality with which his
rent will be paid during the ensuing year mainly de-
pends upon a good harvest. The husbandman's fortune
at harvest time is mainly dependent on the weather;
prices then rise or fall from day today with the tempe-
rature of the atmosphere ; dealers in grain become shy
or ready buyers according as the market day is bright
or ov,rcast. The present season has been re narkably
untoward. Rain unceasingly fell during the autumn
and winter; then succeeded frost and snow, which
prevented wheat sowing until so late in the season
that a large portion of the land properly coming into
course for wheat could never be sown, and
I much was planted so badly that bad crops were
inevitable. Next followed five or six weeks
of dry cold weather, during which vegetation
made little or no progress ; this again was followed
by extremely heavy rain until the month of August,
during which the weather has been moderately good.
The wheat now being carried is generally light in
the sheaf, and in some places has suffered from blight.
The yield cannot be large, though the quality pro-
mises to be better than was expected. New wheat
has been sold in Mark-lace at more than GOs. per
quarter, and an apparently steady demand for wheat
from other European countries to supply the defi-
ciency of their own gross th leads to the expectation
that wheat will yet rise. The potatoes, too, areshowing
symptoms of increased decay. The weather is not by
any means settled, and a large proportion of the grain
crops still remain in the field. It is now certain there
will not be anything like an average produce of
wheat, and very severe loss will be the consequence
to many farmers who occupy heavy land, and in many
districts consisting of good wheat land. The season,
too, has been a very expensive one, for in order to
enable farmers to overtake the work necessarily left
undone during the wet weather, more than ordinary
quantities of horse and manual labour have been, and
must during the coming autumn be, employed upon
their farms. If the ordinary classes of farmers get
through the ensuing year, as we believe they will,
without succumbing to the difficultie:, they must
suffer, it will be duo entirely to the energy
and self-reliance which have so much increased
amongst them since the bane of Protection
has been removed from British agriculture.
This much, however, is certain, that events of the
pest year, notwithstanding the rise of prices, have
cast a shade of anxiety over the farmer's counte-
nance.

Chant then that "everybody" is not making the
worst possible use of his time in his search after the
picturesque, but let us see whether or not there is not
• useful lesson to be drawn from a pleasing spectacle.
It would be as well that "everybody" should be in-
structed as well as amused by a migration which
makes very heavy inroads on the purse. Did
" everybody" ever ask himself the question how it was
that so many continental towns abound in
elements of the picturesque, while so few of the Eng-
lish towns contain anything of the sort? The
answer to this question will go far to prove that it is
much better that England should pay for the privi-
lege of viewing picturesque towns, than encourage
the growth of them herself, and that the picturesque,
in many instances, is much better as a sight than a
possession.
What is the great impression, then, that k indeli-
..

But that anxiety will be only temporary ; a natural
incident to his business, the consequence of bad
weather, over which he has no control. His general
views, notwithstanding the precarious season, are
satisfactory. For some time past his determination
to accept the realities of his situation, to make up by
energy and increased produce for the somewhat
lower prices his commodities will probably in the
long run command, has been producing the best re-
sults. There is no giving up of cultivation ; there is
no withdrawal of capital from husbandry; there is
no lack of enterprising tenants where good farms
are to be had on rational terms. On tho con-
trary, the reverse of all these things is strikingly
apparent in all the rural districts.
The sayings and doings at the various agricultural
gatherings, so long ago as last autumn, full• con-
firm all we have said on this point. For instance,
Lord Ilsnewoon, at a meeting of his tenantry. con-
gratulated them on their good crops and." Nourish-
log condition "—telling them at the same time that
protection was dead and gone. And lie stated that'
one of his tenants recently, when admitting the
goodness of his crops, had added, " Free Trade can
do me no harm." So at the Perth meeting of the
Highland Society, the President, the Duke of Box-
nuniinE, told the assembled farmers that a new and
more extensive field was then before them in the
discoveries and new applications of science and me-
! chanics to husbandry, and that the landlords of Scot-
' land would do their utmost " to foster and promote that
spirit of improvement now abroad." Lord Pssmuit E,
going more boidly on the debatcabl, ground of agricul-
tural politics, and the relations of landlord and tenant,
said that "called upon to put forth their energies,
the agricultural classes had shown themselves as full
i of energy as any other body of men in this country;'
and added " that the farming never did more credit
to our country, that farmers were never more ener-
! getic than they then were, and that land was never
more sought after by tenants."

. .
bly marked upon the minds of those who have I
exercised any thought upon the appearance of one
of the towns alluded to? Few will deny that they I
have been profoundly struck with the fact that the
inhabitants were not made for the towns, nor were ,
the towns built for the inhabitants. Look at the
denizens of that magnificent street in that Italian
town that " everybody " has taken up his abode in.
You will find that the proprietors cannot live in
their own houses, or only in the cellars, or in the
garrets. You will see a separate family at least in
every flat. You will notice that, with the
exception of the travellers, scarcely a single
tenant was born for the magnificence amidst
which he vegetates in pride and poverty.
You will sec, in fact, that the town is magnificent,
because it was built by a magnificent race some cen-
turies hack. And you will have little trouble in
perceiving that now, if the town were swept away
by an earthquake or an enemy, the inhabitants
would not have the means or the energy to build it
up again, or if any building did take place, that
hovels would generally stand where palaces once
stood. You recognise a certain sort of fitness in
this. You are gild that once at least in the history
of the people, there was a period when a sudden
blaze of prosperity enabled the existing race to build
habitations for their po,terity, who you see clearly I
will never be able to build them for themselves.
A little further reflection points out the secret of
our deficiency in the "magnificent and the pictu-
resque." We have been always—it may appear

This season we have few landlord speeches. Pikes
of all kinds of agricultural produce have risen con-
eiderably, and but for the casualties of the season the
I present year would have been one of great prospe-
rity for farmers who have the means of farming their
land properly. Farming is now no longer a pecu-
'liar or protected trade; each man engaged in it