The Express.
London, England, 1867-07-06 00:00:00

BRITISH ORPHAN ASYLUM, Slough.
The MIDSUMMER ELEITION will tab place at the
London Tavern. Sieltopaeate /Meet. on TUESDAY, the nth of
July, between 12 and 2 o'clock.
Pourteen orphans will be admitted—r@.. six boys and eight
&IA
TUBS. TILSON, J.P., Chaim/an.
STEPHEN REED cATTLEY, M.A., Hoe. Secretary.
ALFRED MACKENZIE, Secretary.
Odlces, 7J, awepekk, louden.
-- •

THII FP/Milli CLEILOY AND THZ PARIS EXHIPI-
TION.—We read in the Slide of yesterday :—" The Bishop
of Nantes has just addressed a pastoral letter to his clergy,
pointing art the danger of universal exhibitions, and for-
bidding them to visit the Palace of the Champ-de-Mars.
We should be curious to see what argument the prelate
use■ to consider as injurious the sight of the grandeur.
accomplished by human genius." _

Tue FUUKTII DUCH CSiri or GORDON. —She was
the daughter of a Scottish baronet, and spent the
early part of her life in Edinburgh. Her family occu-
pied a mansion in one of those narrow wynds in the
Old Town where the arms of the Scottish nobility may
still be seen on the mouldering fetid walls. Young ladies
in those days enjoyed an amount of freedom in the north
difficult to reconcile with our modern ideas of feminine
propriety ; but Jane Maxwell went a little further than
her compeers, and was known even in her girlhood as one
Of the fastest of the fast. She might be seen at any hour
drawing water from the pomp at the corner of the street,
engaging in contests of wit with the passers by. She was a
sort of Scottish Topsy, wild, natural, irrepressible. She
did and said thing. which no one but herself would have
ventured to do or to say, and all this with such a charm
as none could resist. One old gentleman relates that
while passing up the wynd to visit the baronet, he was
overturned in the gutter by his madcap daughter, who
came scampering past on the back of a pig. It is easy to
see from the way he relates his story, that the old gentle-
man, irate though he was at baying his nankeen* spoiled'
(a Scottish gutter is none of the cleanest), would rather
have been overturned ey Jane Maxwell than by any one
else. It was the same everywhere ; she played many a
wild prank, but her wit and beauty carried her safely
through. She was as untamed and untameable as the
roe on her native mountains, till she felt the power
of the one great sorrow which left a dark shadow on
her future life. She bad formed a strong attachment to a
young officer, a relation of her own: soon after their
engagement, his regiment was ordered abroad, and he was
one of the first who fell. On hearing of his death, she
gave way to an agony of grief too violent to last ; this
great trial, instead of softening, made her more worldly
and ambitious than before. She was bent on success, and
fortune favoured her ambition ; at an evening assembly in
Edinburgh she met Alexander, the fourth Duke of Gordon,
the head of his clan, the posseuar of princely estates, the
Cock of the North, as he was proudly called by his ad-
mirers. He was then a young bachelor of pleasing man-
ner* and refined Metes; he composed one or two strath-
spey*, which doubtless received their finishiog touch from
Marshall, his butler, who was second only to /:ow in the
composition of Scottish music; and wrote a song to the
tune of "Could Sail in Aberdeen," one verse of which
may be given :
.

" In cotillons the French excel :
John hull loves country dances;
The oponlards dance fandango°, well
Slynheer en allemande prances.
In foursome reels the -.cots delight :
At threesomrs they dance wondrous light ;
But twosomes ding a out o' sight.
Danced to the reel calogie.
Such a man was sure to be appreciated in Edinburgh or
elsewhere ; what chance could the daughter of a poor
Scottish baronet have in the marriage lists? The odds
were fearfully against her ; but Jane Maxwell knew her
power, and bided her time, till she found herself his
ris-a-ris in • country dance, when, during a lull in the
music, she soil, as if to herself, but loud enough to be
heard by him. " 06, how I should like to be
a duchess." Such a remark from one less beautiful might
have repelled rather than attracted ; the duke looked at
her in surprise; surprise soon changed into admiration;
within a few months the ambitious desire so naively ex-
pressed was gratified. She became the mother of one son,
the fifth and lsat Duke of Gordon,and of three daughters,
:ill of whom were married to English dukes. She displayed
the mine energy in securing husbands for her daughters as
she had done for herself ; pursued h r victims from place
to place, and gave them no peace till they surrendered un-
oonditionally.—Fruser's Magazine for July.
AMMO mg MOUNTAINg. —lf some hours of
thoughtfulnese and seclusion are necessary to the develop-
ment of a true love for the Alps, it is no less essential to a
right understanding of their beauty that we should pass
some wet and gloomy days among the mountains. The
unclouded sunsets and sunrises which often follow one
another in September in the Alps have something terrible,
They produce a satiety of splendour, and oppress the mind
with the sense of perpetuity. I remember spending such a
season in one of the Oberland yeller, high up above the
pine-trees, in a little chilet. Morning after morning I
awoke to see the sunbeams glittering on the Eiger and the
Jungfrau : noon after noon the snowfiebla blazed beneath
a steady fire ; riveting after evening they shone like beacons
iu the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak
they lost the glow ; the soul passed from them, and they
stool pale and garish against the darkened sky. The atom
came out, the moon shone, but not a cloud sailed over the
untroubled heavens. Thus day after day for several weeks
there was no change, till I was seized with an overpowering
horror of unbroken calm. I left the valley for • time; and
when I returned to it in wind and rain I found that the
partial veiling of the mountain heights restored the charm
which I had lost and made me feel once more at home.
The landscape takes a graver tone beneath the mist that
hides the higher peaks, and comes drifting, creeping, feel-
ing, through the pines upon their slopes—white, silent,
blinding vapour wreaths around the sable spires. Some-
times the cloud descends and blots out everything. Again
it lifts a little, showing cottages and distant Alps beneath
its skirts. Then it sweeps over the whole valley like a veil,
just broken here and there, above a lonely chalet, or a
thread of distant dangling torrent foam. Sounds, too,
beneath the mist are more strange. The torrent seems to
have • hoarser voice and grinds the stones more passion-
ately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds through
the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills.
The bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of
the cow-bells, are mysteriously distant in the dull dead
air. Then sgnin, how imineasurn.ly high above our heads
appear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through
chasms in the drifting cloud • how desolate the glaciers
and the avalanches in gleamsof light that struggle through
the mist. There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds, which
makes the snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the
house where I am writing, the avalanche that swept away
the bridge last winter is lying now,dripping away, dank and
dirty, like a rotting whale. I can see it from my window,
green beech-boughs nodding over
it, forlorn larches bend-
ing their tattered branches its side, splinters of broken
pine protruding from its muddy eaves, the boulders on its
dank, and the hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues
to lick the ragged edge of snow. Close by the meadows,
spangled with yellow flowers, and red and blue, look even
more brilliant than if the sun were ribining on them. Every
cup and blade of grass is drinking. But the scene changes ;
the mist has turned into rain-clouds, and the steady rain
drips down, incessant, blotting out •the view.—Cornhill
Moon:ine for July.
_

A CONVERSATION. —I spoilt my own dinner the
other day by viciously relating n horrible accident that
had befallen a friend on the IVengeni Alps. " How
shocking ! Did anything else happen to him ?" said Bliss
Lucy, taking her asparagus with unabated relish. " Did
you hear the thunder last night ?" I answered, with the
inconsequence of one who is afraid he shall bit somebody.
" Oh, no, I was asleep." It really does require a certain
amount of magnanimity to confess that one has slept
through a thunderstorm. I suppose I looked more bene-
volent, for Miss Lucy continued—" Mamma says I always
sleep like a baby." This was a branch of the subject
which a man not a brother could scarcely be expected to
pursue. I inq.uired if she hail seen her friends the Por-
sons lately. ' Haven't you heard? They lost all they
had in that bank failure." " That must he very sail for
you." "For me!" Bliss Lucy'. blue eyes opened in
amazement. " I never see auything of them ; they are
gone down altogether." " Where to r " oh, to Lambeth,
or New Zealand, or somewhere. They have absolutely
nothing, not even a boy to open the door. Mamma says
one must draw the line somewhere, and she draws it at
people who open their own doors." " But I thought you
and Miss Person were such friends ?" " Only acquain.
tines'," replied Bliss Lucy, decisively, dissecting an orange
with surgical coolness. Now I certainly knew from un-
pleasant experience that these two young people bad been
so fond of one another that they could out refrain from
kissing in public, which would seem to indicate a rather
f 'liar acquaintance ; but of course I could only judge
the matter from a masculine point of view. " Mamma
says nothing injures a girl's prospects ao much as a crowd
of undesirable connections." I bad had enough of Miss
Lucy. Frankness is :ill very well in Be way, like low
dresses, but it should be a wholesome body that is revealed.
Still one cannot rush off with a war-whoop every time one
is disgusted with one's dinner companion. I could only
feel grateful when her little lame brother. Charley, sidled
up, saying. " Lucy." " Well r she answered, of course
in shard whisper. If women could but know how we feel
their voices while we only look at their faces Charley
replied, " What do you think nurse did to baby this MOM-
log !" " How should I know ?" said his sister, impa-
tiently. "He was naughty, and she took his fingers and
doubled them into his band, and squeezed hers over it
like she does when she cracks a walnut, and I heard them
go—just so. He went white and blue, and be did look at
her so." I felt an unmanageable desire to stride upstairs
with a horsewhip, only it is not a thing I generally carry
about with me. To my utter dumfounderment Miss Lucy
dismissed the matter with—" I daresay nurse knows how
to mansge hitn."—Aryosy for July.