The Express.
London, England, 1846-12-14 00:00:00

qtte OrairtgO•

MAILS.
The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and Gibraltar,
will be made op oa the morning of the 17th December.
The West twills, excluding those for :dexico, Honduras, and
the Ilavannah, will beds,
made up on the morning of the 17th Decemher.
Orden,l nt mails fnr Gibr.dtar, MaiXt, Greece, the lonian Islanda,
Firypt, Ade Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, and China, ria Soutnampton,
will be made up on the evening of the 19th December.
The overland closed mails, roe Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Erupt. Aden, Cm lon, India, (long Kong, &c., will be made up on the
evening of the 21th December.
The mails for New South Wales. Van Diemen's Land, and New
Zealand will be made up on the evening of the 91st December.
The mails fur Briti 41 North Muerte Bermuda, and the United
States, will be mule up on the eveni.tg of the 4th January.
erna
he mails for the Brazils, the River Plate, Monte Vvleo, P
T m-
buco. Bahia. Ma leira, and Buenos Ayres, will be dispatched on the
evening of the Ith

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
;• Advertiwinenta intended for The Repress, London evening paper,
must be at the Office by Two o'clock on the day of publication.

MGR WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
Tots DAY.— Naming. Is min. past 10; A 49 min. put U.
Itanoon, 54 min. put O.
To-Mons,,'--Morning, 21 min. past 11; Aftenuon.

LONDON, MONDAY, DEC. 14.
THE King of the FRENCII, we learn from private
letters, has lost his usual coolness, consistency, and
self-possession. The events of Cracow following those
of Madrid, the startling fact that the three Eastern
courts were and are leagued and lying in wait to take
advantage of any slip on his part, the marked cold-
ness of .tustria, the prospective " war of succession"
which Lord PALMERSTON. holds over his head, and
the more imminent war of provocation which even
the most pacific of his friends and subjects seem deter-
mined to enter upon the moment after the royal
demise,—all these circumstances have thrown the
mind of the Kiug of the FRENCH into an intermittent

fever.
His Majesty rises in the morning determined to
regain at all price the English alliance, in
which for the moment he beholds the sole
guarantee of peace, and of his dynasty's surety.
He passes the morn in calculations, how the fragments
of this wrecked alliance can be picked up and put
together. Ile foams at the rancour of PALMERSTON,
and weeps over the evanescent friendship of Queen
VICTORIA, who cannot forgive that innocent pastime
of the rape of the Infanta. He summons DE
BROGLIE ; he communes with MOLE; he even sends
messages to Tingles. But not one of these saints of
the political calendar can help him. He then con-
sults the English themselves, wheedles NOR-
HANBY, pokes the hon. member for Coventry, who
gruffly refuses to get up a French party .for his
Majesty in London, and, as a last resource, he fees
BROUGHAM.
The roval mind being piqued at the utter inutility'
and hopelessness of all meditations and efforts,the noon
brings on the cold fit towards England. He cannot win;
therefore he must hate. He cannot cajole; therefore
he must calumniate. And not even the editor of La
Prease could pour forth more bitter vituperation of
Jons BULL, or indulge more dread and lengthy de-
monstrations of his ingratitude, villany, and utter
worthlessnem, than the King et the FRENCH, when
his Anglophobic fit is on. The general ides, which
people entertain of LOUIS PHILIPPE THE FIRST, is,
that he is a cold, deep, calculating, calm, dissembling
politician. This is quite a mistake. Never was
statesman less calm, more restless, more self-betraying.
Never was the old BOURBON characteristic of treating
national alliances and peace and war, and the fate of
nations, as questions of personal and royal caprice,
more fully developed than at the present day in their
great representative. People talk of the leg/Teti,
the uncertainty, of Tnieus. Never did states-
man betray each legerete, such sudden tarns and
caprices, and even precipitate acts founded on those 11
caprices, as LOUIS PHILIPPE and M. GCIZOT have
done during the last three months. The virtues of
gravity sad consistency, for they are political virtues,
seem really to have been lost in France.
Some years since, when unpleasant differences
arose between England and France, the people of
the latter country lest their wits, whilst the govern-
ment and the court maintained prudence and self-
possession. The very contrary seems the case now ;
the French people display prudence and self-pos-
session, whilst the court and government seem
ready to run mad : the only preventative is, that they
know not in what direction to run. From all
we hear, some act of precipitate folly on the part
of the French government is much to be feared.
We have described the court hobby-horse of the
morning to be the English alliance; that'of the even-
ing is the Russian alliance. The CZAR is then the
pet and hero of meditation. He has swallowed
Poland, to be sure; but in this he bat frankly and
boldly pursues his metier of despot, which is to
conquer and to absorb. Instead of idly fretting
against him, why not imitate him ?—why not join in
the spoil ? If Austria take Cracow, and Russia
Bucharest, why not France take Mayence and Cham-
ber',? These would be great, gloriousi and popular
acts, which, done with Russian connivance, might be
accomplished without war. It would be jumping
with the national whim; and by thus gratifying the
spirit of the French nation in a bold foreign policy,
it would secure a parliamentary majority more broad
and more generous than existing ones. The
present majority in the French Chamber keeps
a court ministry in existence by its votes ;
but it gives little more than existence. It
grudgingly refuses apanages, dowries, credits, and
actually forces the monarch to look to the civil list and

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