The Express.
London, England, 1847-10-06 00:00:00

Irbe Mrama.

PitINCESS*6.—A new after-piece, apparently from
the French, entitled "A Romance of the Rhine," wu pro-
duced here last evening. The heroine, Conetnnee, heiress
of a German proprietor, has been saved from drowning in
the Rhine by a young French officer, Hector Dusiorteau,
who, however, imagines her to have been loft in the con-
fusion of the rescue, and this impression is shared by her
uncle and his son, Fritz, who, on her supposed decease,
enter into possession of her estate. The usurpation is
favoured for awhile by the young lady, for the purpose of
marrying her poor cousin, Lucille, to her rich cousin, Fritz,
and sbe aceorasgly obtains admission to her own chateau in
the character of an old goimernante, Lucille being in the
secret. She has, of course, fallen in love with her young
deliverer, and be, of course, loving in return, if very sad by
reason of her supposed loss. She accordingly manages to
bring him to the chateau, and, after Leaving him as the old
gouvernante, and fearfully fascinating him as the spirit of
herself, gives him her hand, having first secured the desired
husband for Lucille. The comedietta is amusing enough,
and very well acted. Miss Emma Staeley impersonated the
heroine with great spirit, and she was excellently supported
by Miss Villars, a moat welcome accession to this theatre.
Mr. J. Vining was the young officer, and Mr. Compton
richly absurd as Frif:. " Love, Law, and Physic" was
repeated.

liICHOLSON-STREET UNITED PENIDITERIAN CnuRCII
AND ITS sitaIO.COMIC SOIREE.— We a:0 now enlightened
in the topography of the Nicholson-street Church, referred
to in our correspondent's remarks, and in Mr. Johnson's
letter which appeared on Saturday but. It is in Greenock,
and not in Edinburgh. The Witness copied the account of
. Poetic complete era pocr di G. Gelsri, cots
etaLlTieEißAed
aTURfe.
collection are all political and
the entertainment as given and commented en in the Express,
aligloeiunle.meLieugtuathoi,elSt7
and supplied the missing word left out by us.
prts
the Wantss has never been challenged for this, it is
mimed that the traneaction took place inGreenock. Should the
minister of the Greenock Church, like his Edinburgh brother, satirical. In the present state of Italy they are both
deny the accuracy of the statement, our columns are open interesting and instructive, as showing the popular
to him for that purpose. We doubted the correctness of
ritatewine.thNe
esewlecieteiomnanof
wobjillectsto faorriadavoepottiavesaatinsnd for
the
JhuiavthenrYal,aaort°ofb°GmeorgwehilBV.ohroPinmioth° eofilITTO-i-
-the programme the lea, as some two years ago the Witness
SlSMlnllnginserely on a similar exhibition in one of the
elage sow is the pale of the United Presbyterian Church. tievernsiforenmof .
LOST GREENLANDEUE.—On Wednesday last, 17 of
the Seamen belonging to the Bon Accord of Hull, and the penny Postbag ;' and yet there are no materials of
Med of Bo'nees, arrived in Aberdeen by steamer from
uhisitomrpey
rmtemoret
tioulknuaobvile thwhematptohpeularcomlimbtemlsity Itthiisnkq,uiotor
Ingedek, where they had been brought by the l'eru, of Co-
penhagen, from Egedinnunde, a Danish settlement on the
vv desire, Ana Want they like to complain of, as to
pretend to think, of their rulers—what they profess
east alas of Davis' Straits. The po:r fell:wo, having loot ell ~,
_, ,_
__
their clothing, were dressed in the sealskin attire of the Es-
quimau:, and, Al was to have been expected, attracted no ascertain the acts ana private inte'itions of kings
small attention as they passed along the quay. Some others or popes. The Prussians delight in the grace-
of their shipmates went to Copenhagen, intending to go from ful and cutting satire of Heine or the gro-
ammo to Bull. Others—about nine of them—remained in tesatie fictions of pries, from a consciousness
Gesenland, there not being accommodation for the whole of .
them on board the Peru. They seem to have under- that they hit the weak points of the King's
gone much privation, having had to remove from character and conduct, without seriously be-
oac settlement to another, on account of the inauffi• lieving him to be half so much a tyrant, or quite so
ciency of provisions. The intelligence that they bring much an old woman, as he appears in the contraband
of the other vessels leads to favourable expectations.
When the Bon Accord and Alfred were lost, on the 9th
of July, the other vessels in their company,paten of Deutschland or the Wochenstubc. It is
were a long way ahead of them, with open water, half a IS for the present extinct among us. Public and pri-
milewhs. last seen, perhaps to the credit of England that political satire
dayelgtodat
throy there
ueh wtosathneotwanytesseTlhieny
rsigepttn, theytht vate decorum are, without any extraordinary eaten-
having distant;eviden
several vessels had fish. The Pacific is said to have one, honest y o
and a vessel that they saw, passing down the straits, oppo- muc
farmed even by their opponents—to leave h
site to Egedwmunde, sitting very deep in the water, and rec re
apparently full.Juvcnal or evert for a Beringer. There
aionof hypocrisy,
rzli,estooandstatesmen widely diffumedis among
too
generallyn s
opening fora
THII Llau JUSTICE CLERK Hort AND JENNY LIND.— would be no humour in accusing an. English
The Inverary Circuit fell this eary to be holden upon Than- ministry of dealing, as Guisti insinuates of the
or
day, the 16th current. Could any of your readers Oars A Neapolitan government, with their enemies by
.
correspondent of the Glasgow Gottstataional) inform me ison ; nor is society, with all its faults and its
whether the Lord Justice Clerk was present in the City as to take a plea-
Hall, Glasgow, hearing Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, upon grP%minblilnookingg,
Friday, the 17th i The object of this, spparently, Is to sure so
diasaat iteetifilfediawiththe disco mirror mirror which

the modern Italian satirist, like his predect agora in all
countries, holds up to nature—cant and meanness are
not certainly without their use, even in England, to
those who wish to thrive, but we have risen above the
lower stage of degradation in which base practices are
openly recognised as indispensable to worldly success.
In a literary point of view, Guisti seems to us to
have considerable merit. We could perhaps wish
him a little more savageness and irritability. Ile says
strong things too coolly and indifferently, as if he only
half believed them, A satirist should be a thoroughly
good hater :
,facie indignatio recites. In the more
poetical qualities of fancy and metrical facilities,
he is entitled to greater praise. Wo should
be disposed to place him above all the con-
temporary German writers of the same class,
with the exception of Heine; and he is beyond
comparison more graceful, pointed, and musical, than
the overpraised Irish rhymers of the Notion. With
the best writers of the school to which he belongs
—Beranger, Heine, and Moore—he has, at present, no
pretensions to be placed en an equslity.
That the Papacy in general should be regarded in
an entirely different spirit in the poems which were
written during the reign of Gregory, from those
which express the popular feeling in favour
of Pius IX., is
.perfectly natural and unob- '
jectionable. A satirist is not bound to be moderate
or consistent. When, a year ago, Guisti had occasion
to exult in the prespect that the notice appigionasi,.
Tr be let, would soon be posted on the Vatican, he did
not think he would lire to denounce all opponents of
the chair of St. Peter as traitors or would-be mur-
derers. In the days when popes were put up with
kings and emperors in general, to be shot at by poets,
much amusement appears to have been derived by the
liberal public from the financial distresses of the holy
see. Either Guisti, or some anonymous benefactor to
mankind, has supplied the enemies of the church with
• pun which is new to us, and so excellent that we re-
gret that it is untnnalateable—L'infallibile t
.fallito.
The infallible has failed, is a phrase which places the
real or supposed bankruptcy of the pope in a singu-
larly humorous light.
Oh' put on black raiment,
Ye faithful believing,
Mid with loud Lamentations
Proclaim to ull nations,
A test prat conceiving—
The Pope has stopped payment.
Or, as the poet proceeds, with a change of metre :
lie has fulled, the King InfsEible,
Who over hinds has reigned
Who often In hi. people's Mood
His sacred hands ho. stuind.
He has failed, the great infsllible,
The spendthrift wild, who yet
Shall see upon his Vatican
The notice " To be let." -
Bat it is, we fear, impossible to express in English
the full force of the words :
Yallito
borran del sovroni.

In a more serious and yet humorous poem on the
coronation of the emperor at Milan, Giusti strikes off
some very kucecasful portraits of the sovereigns of
Italy. Perhaps at the present time he might be dis-
Eel!t° touch the King of Sardinia and the Grand
of Tuscany with a more favourable pencil, but
as we have already said, he was not bound to look
into futurity. We have no more doubt that his por-
traits are like the originals than we should have if
they were drawn by H.A. No doubt they are
caricatures, but a judicious exaggeration of the
oddities of the face more often increases than
injures the accuracy of the likeness. The crowned
heads are assembled to do homage to their chief—
Behold the first to and his servile knees,
The consiaenee-atrkiten yellow Pied.montrv,
Who purged the Mud-bred fault that made him hero
So sell on Troeadero.
Tour duke, ye Carbonari—view him well,
Who dragged you to the block and dungeon cell ;
lie now maintain., in truly royal tone,
The paths of Twenty-one.
MITI. trailing cloak behind hire blusters in
The I. eble torarine Paladin.
Thi• year, in him, Palermo knew again
The old and cruel strain.

The poet might now add Rhegium and Afessina to
the trophies of the King of Naples. The grand duke
is handled somewhat less severely :
The Truce° Morpheus follows WOW and slow
With poppy-wre ,th and lettuce on his brow—
Who, in has thirst for immortality,
Drams bogs and pockets dry.
Woh courts and dull statiqic lists he dribbles;
And though he lulls his subjects into fribbles,
Yet when his grandson he would imitate
He still hears something grate.
Maria Luisa, of Parma, next joins the assembly :
To whispered scoffs that 11l the guilty place
ghe, the degraded. turns a shameless face—
She who the exiled Corsican consoled
With horns of Austrian mould—

The iiaeilf;;;; who is at present known in
England principally by his anxiety to save hie plate
is his Hight to Milan, appears to enjoys character at
home both for free living and fres thinking,
Gay, mid the glue contrivers &our ruin,
Trips in our Jesting Protestant Don Juan—
The light Luccbese, who lathe kingly dish
Is neither flesh nor Sak.

Tim Duke of 'Modena, " the Joshua of Este, who
would stay the sun," closes the list of minor poten-
tates, and is followed by the Pope, a name which had
not, at the coronation of Ferdinand, become the
watchword of liberalism.
General social satire, whether of a grave and que-
rulous kind, or indignantly ironical in its tone, is inti-
mately connected with the spirit of hostility to go-
vernments which inspires political poets. In a free
country, the community in general feels that as it
cannot openly lament, though it may ridicule them, it
is responsible for its own vices and follies. It seems
idle to complain of them instead of reforming them :
nor are they represented by any visible institution
against which the satirist can direct his attacks as
the symbol and cause of social degradation. The
private corruption which Juvenal denounces is always
understood, both by the poet and the readers whom
he addresses, to be attributable to others besides
the individuals who are degraded by it. Profli-
gate and tyrannical emperors, a servile senate, &c.,
degraded people, are implied, if nogopenly mentioned,
in every line which speaks of prevailing avarice or
licentiousness. Above all other vices, servility and
meanness form the counterpart of oppression and bad
government. When llerwegh or Freiligrath inveigh
against the apathy or sycophancy of their German
countrymen, they mean to strike a back-handed blow
against the six and thirty " landfathers " of their
much governed land ; and in the same way, Guisti,
when he shows the advantages of baseness to candi-
dates for Italian promotion, is only denouncing in
another form the potentates who repress and discou-
rage the mere honourable struggles of ambition.
This is one of his favourite topics an astrologer
offers a lady the choice of a career for her unborn
child : she will not hear of his being a philosopher,
because she remembers Galileo—or a soldier, when
she thinks of Napoleon's fall. To wish him a patriot
would be equivalent to letting him be born in prison.
At last she determines on the safest choice—to make
him a blockhead, as the best chance for happiness. :
Perth nu! felltria!!mo

We are very far from thinking that the application
of such a satirical moral as this is confined to Italy or
to the subjects of absolute monarchs. In England,
too, in several senses, and for many purposes, it is a
great advantage to be a blockhead, and a source of
popularity to be illiterate. If our freer and happier
condition deprives us of a satirical literature, we may
End abundant matter for self-reflection, and self-
criticism, in the general invectives which our foreign
neighbours bestow on themselves. The advantages
of crawling are more fully developed in a lullaby sung
over the cradle of a baby, called Gingillino (Sneak) :
By tumeortbun and by neerlity,
Intrigue, Anil lumen, and venality,
And other deities of the government mythology,

Who all in ehorus sang this nursery rhyme,
Moe worthy of themselves and of the time.
0 Baby, don't cry, To the tolling and moiling,
You were naked when born, The care and the danger,
But if you would die, Of a name thit it famous,
Not so bare and forlorn, Be ever a stranger,
Come list to the maems Grow to, and remember,
Which ever hold good, That blundering, by chance
And will float you like corks With an honest Intention,
To the top of the food. More hurts your advance
With a back early bent, Than the perfidy cool
And a pliable marrow, Of the mil-balanced liar,
Cringe and crush yourself under Premed the meet within rule,
The pedagogue's barrow. And the most like a friar.
With strangers and friends Still hold ass sign
Still preserve your Identity, Of the utteremet delneee,
By becoming, as near. The fault frankly shown
as you can, a nonentity. By the heart in he fames.
The brilliant, the daring, On the dirtiest of Sneers
By you be forsworn, Clean gloves may be worn.
If you would not die naked Do thus, or die naked,
As when you were born. As when you were born.
Mead and heart be unstirred Of God and the devil
By the spells of old story, Boni think in the least—
By drmminge of honour Deny the deniable—
And phantoms of glory. Fawn on the priest.
A few stanzas more lead to the closing moral :-
-

AtiotioldilaW Hold then by tie- ono*
Never outworn,
Xko= z: notu &evoked
Mal bob. ire sr. wem
The last of our extracts shall be taken from one of
the apocryphal or anonymous poems in the collection,
which describes, in sufficiently ingenious doggrel, a