The Express.
London, England, 1853-11-26 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 26, 1853

any Conference mast Greene. The treaties that
have put Turkey in a false position wit► her neigh-
bour are now waste paper, and in accepting
th.it lac% it is possible that a stop might be,
found for the wounded vanity of the defeated CZAR.
He pretended that the Christians were the objects of
his special care, and that if they were " protected "
he would withdraw. France and England—with
Prussia, if she likes to come in on the strong side—
may arrange some explanation or accept some friendly
guarantee on the part of their ally the SULTAN that
no Christian shall be illegally treated in Turkey, and
the other Powers being satisfied on the point, Russia
may, if she is wise enough, safely and smilingly admit
that she ►aa no longer any fears about Christian
grievances; and so with a tolerably good grace get
out of a position she ought never to have assumed,
and which, against England, France, and Turkey,
she can never maintain. The Treaties may then be
settled with an eye to the prevention of future ag-
gressions. Any little civilities to Russia, after she
has been coerced into honesty, nobody would criticise
very severely—but she must be first made honest, by
being sent home again. Out of the Principalities she
must go. Her withdrawal is the first thing to be
insisted upon, and that, agreed to and done, the
treaties re-arranged, and the Dardanelles and Black
Sea opened, Lord ABERDEEN may be as civil as
" Ling sync " leanings make him wish to be. When
NICIIOLA. visited London, Lord ABERDEEN and the
Duke of WELLINGTON were the two English subjects
whom the Russian AUTOCRAT called upon. The visit
was a great feather in the bonnet of the Earl of
ABERDEEN, but, however flattering the compliment
might be, our present Pants MINISTER must not make
us pay too dearly for it. He may well be polite to the
Cz.►x whilst doing a distasteful duty to his country
and to Europe. But the duty must be done—unless
he likes to resign and leave others to do it.

THE London weather of this November has a
political effect, among its other influences. It makes
people hope that Lord PALMERSTON will remain in
office, and in his present office, till London fog
is definitively abated. The mists of diplomatic
council may have been beyond his power to disperse.
Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that he
enjoys raising that kind of fog, and seeing blind
wayfarers stumble and knock against each other, after
he has put them in the right way, and left them to
blunder or stray. Bat he is the man to lessen our
homebred literal London fog, if it can be done: and
we may fairly hope that the thing will be done, some
day or other. From the moment that we choose to
pronounce the nuisance intolerable, something will
be attempted to reduce, if not to abolish it; and, if
even reduction be proved impossible at present, why
then resignation will be easier. Lord PALMERSTON
is the man to make the attempt, and we must urge
it upon him. He is actually doing, with regard
to London burial-grounds, what all his predecessors
declared to be impossible. There they are, ao-
tually shut up—no small number of them ;
and the parishes are setting to work, as it
wu certain they must and would do, to find
another "GOD'S acre " for the night season of man's
existence, among the many which are appropriated
to his daily uses. When the practice of burying the
dead in our chief city is entirely abolished, and the
graveyards are all asphalted down, the nanie of the

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statesman who administered the necessary compul-
sion will not be forgotten. Nor, if the nuisance of
London fog is ever got rid of, will the process fail
to be recorded in the history of the City which is
famous abroad for its supposed November suicides,
and among provincial persona at home for lighting
candles at soon.

During this week, the smallest mischief that has
happened from the fog has been the interruption of
engagements of business and pleasure, for several
days, among upwards of two millions of persons.
Dinners have been cooked, and nobody has come to
eat them; and lighted drawing•rooms have been left
empty. This is the small end of the mischief. Plaoes
of public amusement have been unattended; and the
losses t 3 the proprietors must have been consider-
able. Children have been kept from school, or have
gone and returned in no little periL Heads of
households have been puzzled, once out, to get home,
and children and servants have suffered panic " by
the fog". Public meetings for important objects
have foiled. Traffic in the streets and on the
river has been almost entirely suspended during
great part of three days. Worst of all, several
lives have been lost, in the streets or on the

water—few as were the people abroad. Such
• keeping at home as there was on Wednesday
night is • strange circumstance even in the City of
London. Except in time of siege, or of some
" plague that walketh in darkness," nothing like it
can happen. It was a remarkable experience to be
abroad that night, and observe the muffled City,—its
noises hushed, its pavements almost empty, its lights
reduced to glow-worm sparks, except where the
link-boys' torches and lanterns were making red
circles in the yellow air. No carts but those of the
baker, or the laundress, or the carrier, " giving up the
job," and peering out the way home, with a torch at
the horse's head! No carriages but those of
medical men, or of some rash pleasure-seekers,
who were frightened at their mistake in
coming out! In one place, a woman killed,—in
others broken limbs or other injuries from falls
and collisions. Here, a person fumbling about in
the roadway, and unable to get back to the pave-
ment; there a horse on the pavement, taking the
area railing for that of the park. Such was the state
of things abroad ; and otherwise, every family in
London in its own home. A thing which happens
at no other time. We shall all agree that this is a
domestic institution which we could well spare—this
home-compelling fog.
Now, what is it ? Do we know anything more
about it than that sudden cold condenses the warm
atmosphere of the city, when there is no wind to
carry off the cloud thus formed? What are the
elements concerned in making the cloud? The
laundresses are the people to tell us how
largely smoke is concerned in it. Let any
one hang out a damp towel in such a fog, and see
what is deposited upon it If we could get a bucket-
ful of fog analysed, we should be curious to find how
much of it came from our chimneys, how much from
the Essex marshes, how much from tanpits, grave-
yards, sewers, the clay of Regent's Park, the mud of
the Thames, and other sources which might all be
_ _

abolished, and which will in time be all abolished. I
Our island is a misty one, it is true; but it is not
foggy it the sense of London fog. Leeds is foggy
in that sense ; and a few other large towns,
as ill-drained, and smoky, and mismanaged
as London and Leeds ; but the climate of
Great Britain is not to be blamed for anything worse
than the blue damp mists which curl round her
mountains, and ascend from her lakes, to form the
lustrous white clouds that deck our spring and an-
tumnal skies. For all beyond this our own igno-
rance and apathy alone are answerable. When we
have duly drained our marshes, and encouraged our
rising woods, our rural districts may be dry and
clear; and whee our spirited HOME SECRETARY
shall have seen that all our men of business do their
duty by their neighbours as well as Messrs. Pilot,
at their candle works, consuming all their smoke,
and kindly showing all applicants how easily and
certainly it may be done, we may expect to be
relieved of the murkiest element of our own particu-
lar fog. By the time that is done, the drains and