The Express.
London, England, 1867-10-26 00:00:00

LYCEUM.

Tete EVENING, THE MIST& OF TIME MILL—THE
LADY OF LYONS. Mr. Feebler, Mews Jordan, &wry,
Callmem, Mello, IMlton. Stuart, and Frances; Massa Ala-
worthy and Carlotta Lmlercq, Mn Marston.

HOLBORN.

Tllr EYININO, FOR Lail iessrs..• H. J. Montagne, Price,
Garden, Westland, and H. Widdloosne: Mesdames Stephens,
Henrade, C. Saunders, Re.—And MARY TURNER: OR, THE
WICIOUS WILLIY. Mho Josephs.—With A.S.B. his. Ray.

BRITILNWIA.

TRH; Errant°, BRISAIrtiFFROT BEND. Wm S. Lane.—
The American Minstrels ; Japanese Tommy ; and Stump-
Orator West and Miss E. West, Nigger Dellnestora With
BELINDA SEAORAVE. Miss M. Henderson.

RION WATEZ AT LONDON BRIDGE.
TWO DAT —Monikr, Ott. bass Afternoon, 111.18ra.
lbYOYow—Morning, 13 Ow-- Ariarnoos, 112. !m.

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20.

THE month of November, gloomy as it is, and
favourable, as our French neighbours well know, to
the development of "spleen" and the perpetration
of suicide in this fog-bound island—though the
newspapers do their beat to conceal the fact—has
yet its red-letter days. The sth and the 9th are
festive occasions of spectacle and solemn proces-
sion. The earlier date is devoted to Go FAWKES;
the later to the Loan MAYOR. The boys of Lon-
don are growing tired, we fear, of commemorating
the traitor and conspirator. We regret to have
noticed of late years a decline in the enthusiasm
which formerly prevailed among them, a poverty
in the decorations, and a niggardliness in the
general apparatus of the exhibition, which betray
the growth of a prosaic and utilitarian
spirit among the youth of England. The
Papal Aggression a few years ago gave
an impulse to this venerable celebration.
For a few seasons the guys were bigger
and better dressed, their match-boxes and lant-
horns possessed more dramatic verisimilitude, and
their masks more clearly revealed the depraving
effects of Romanist superstition than had been the
case on many previous celebrations. But this
spirit soon died away, and the guys were once
more the miserable shadow of their former state.

The decay which has fallen upon the celebra-
tion of the sth of November threatens that of the
9th. We do not wish to inatitutetoo close a parallel
between the heroes of these two occasions. The
LORD MAYOR in his robes is neither a guy nor a
dummy. The distance is immense between his
state coach and FAWKES'S kitchen chair. But
some revolutionary spirits in the Corporation
desire to diminish it ; and, if the first step is con-
ceded to them, a future generation may see the LORD
MAYOR carried from Guildhall to Westminster,
to be exhibited and submitted, like any other
article of City manufacture, to the approval of her
Manurre's Judges, with as little ceremony as is
now shown in the transport of his rival of the sth.
Happily there is a Conservative and Constitutional
party in the Corporation, which was bold enough
to resist and strong enough (so far as it was con-
corned) tooutvote the advocates of this insidious and
dangerous project in its inception. The hindrance
to traffic, the dead-lock in the streets, the field-day
afforded to the thieves and rowdies of London, by
the ordinary practice, were appealed to by some
utilitarian spirits as reasons for allowing the Loan
MAYOR to regulate the manner of his journey
from the Guildhall to Westminster according tol
his sense of the public convenience. But a
majority of 57 to 25 negatived the motion in which
these heretic opinions were embodied : and a resolu-
tion was carried that the Loan MAYOR should be
carried to Westminster on the 9th of November in
his State Coach. Notwithstanding this vote, the
Committee to whom the point was referred has
decided against the state coach, and in favour of
the private state carriage. The next step, as some
timid councillors apprehend, may be a descent to a
hired brougham, to a hackney coach, to a Hansom
cab. The revolutionists may then proceed to
strip the LORD MAYOR himself of his gown, his
chain, and his ring, and to reduce him from
the symbol and representative of a substantial
corporation nearly to the level of that abstract
idea of a LORD MAYOR which MARTINI7S SCRIB-
LrAus discusses. From this fate the Councillors
and Aldermen of London have done their best to
save London, England, and the world.
The moral lesson of the LORD MAYOR'S Show
was impressively dwelt on by one or two Coun-
cillors. Mr. LAWLEY believed that many a boy
had dated his determination to succeed in life
from the time when he saw the great civic festi-
val pass before his eyes; and under its inspiring
influence had achieved success. Hooarern has
been beforehand with Mr. La WLZY in drawing this
lesson from the pageant, and has embodied it in
his illustration of the career of the industrious
and the indolent apprentices. Virtue triumphs,
and is rewarded when FRANCIS GOODCWILD be-
comes Loan Maros. But the spectacle may
tempt the successors of THOMAS IDLE to present
dissipation, as it did TROWAN IDLE'S predecessor
in the ways of profligacy, Csanera's idle appren-
tice, PERILYN REVELOVS. Of that dissipated

young man, the father of English poetry tells us
that--

When there any riding was In Obspe
Out of the shoppe thider wold he lepe,
And till that he had all the sight yseen,
And danced well, he wolde not come agen.

But granting the moral lesson of the Lord
Mayor's Show, can it be conveyed only in the
Lord Mayor's State Coach? Is there no other
vehicle for it ? If the lesson depends upon the
splendour of the pageant, the Conservatives
of the Corporation must not content them-
selves with resisting innovation. They must
restore what has been abandoned. The men in
armour must be brought back again, and nut only
the men in armour, but the savages or green•men
with their clubs and fireworks, the whiffler and
hench-boys, the allegorical virtues, and the sym-
bols of trade. Why not the state barge as well as
the state coach ? and why not, in order explicitly
to improve the occasion, and finely to point the
moral, a City poet, as in former days ? MLRTIN
TUPPER might not disdain the wreath of ELICANAH
Simms.

Domestic morality is not the only consideration
which the Aldermen and Councillors of the City of
London may have had in view. Though, for diplo-
matic reasons, they said nothing about it, the
maintenance of the honour and reputation of
England abroad possibly determined their vote.
The reverence entertained for the Loan MAYOR in
foreign countries is well known ; he is regarded
there with a respect even more awful than is felt
towards him at home. The Prefect of the Seine,
the Doge of Venice, the Burgomaster of Hamburg,
all civic magistrates, past and present, are as no-
thing to him. If he be docked of any of his
splendour, if a spoke be put into a single wheel
of the state coach—and, we fear, it has been—
what may not the effect be on that very sensitive
article, the prestige of England ?
One solution of the problem suggests itself,
which we do not dare to put otherwise than inter-
rogatively. Why should the Loan MAYOR go to
Westminster at all ? The usage is a memorial,
not of the dignity and authority, but of the ser-
vility and dependence of the Corporation. It is a
memorial of the power retained by the Crown,
when first the boon of a Mayor was granted to
London, to sit in judgment upon the choice of
the citizens, and at its pleasure to disallow
it—a power exercised more than once in
the worst periods of English history. Is
this a prerogative worth commemorating ?
Without pressing for an answer to this question,
we will merely observe, in conclusion, that the
debate and resolution of Thursday, futile
though they have been, throw I;ght upon
a question which was not under discussion.
The reform of the Corporation of the City of
London has been much talked of. But surely, in
the face of the practical good sense, the regard
for modern convenience, the contempt for obsolete
mummeries and antique finery, and the preference
of business to display, which were shown in the
great state-coach discussion, all objections will be
hushed. The House of Commons may have
needed reform ; but the Corporation of the City
of London is the perfection of human wisdom, the
masterpiece of self-government.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

The Times assumes that if the new Italian govern-
ment are seriously determined that there shall be peace,
Garibaldi will become utterly powerless for evil to any
but himself. Had matters proceeded one step far-
ther there would beyond question have been war with
France, and this fact destroys all probabilities of any suc-
cessful insurrectionary movement. The Emperor's lan-
guage was firm and explicit beyond all precedent. " I
shall not intervene at Civita Vecchia, but my expedition
will make for Genoa." The Times seems to incline to the
opinion that there will be a renewed invitation of the
great powers to a European congress, and urges that if
such a meeting takes place neither Italy nor France need
scruple to submit the case of Rome to European arbitra-
tion, and there are difficulties in the East which can hardly
be adjusted in any other way.
In another article the Times shows the absurdity of
supposing that the United States is likely to adopt any pro-
posal having the slightest tendency towards repudiation.
The Daily News observes that the ferment in Italy in-
creases as it is perceived that Victor Emmanuel can
make no movement without previous communication with
Paris. The French government is every day reinforcing
the fanatical bands of the Papalini, and offices are open
throughout France for the enlistment of Frenchmen will-
ing to kill Italians in the cause of the Pope. In the
treatment of their prisoners, the Pope's soldiers follow, it
appears, the precedence of Mexican warfare. Meanwhile
the Italian government fear to present Garibaldi in the
light of a victim to the Emperor of the French. The state
of things upon which the week is about to close is tho-
roughly unsound. As, however, we live under a dispen-
sation of surprises, perhaps the improvement may come as
suddenly as the events which have caused the depression.
The Daily News continues to question the wisdom of
sending working men to parliament as the special repre-
sentatives of a special class. The new house will not be
complete without them, but they must go as other men
go, on the rme footing with their constituencies, and with
the same claims on the attention of the house.
In the opinion of the Post the failure of the movement
in the Papal States is mainly attributable to the fact that
it was distinctly a republican movement,

The Standard says things must have come to • pretty
pass with the reform leaguers, when they hold Baxter
Langley to be too timid and Beale' • reactionist. The
murderers of Brett, the Manchester policeman, are the type
of men with whom the reform leaguers have thrown in
their lot. It concerns the honour and the fair fame of
the English work;ng man that they should henceforth
stand alone in such infamous associations. Why should
not Mr. Beale, take the initiative in this matter ?

The proposal of a oonferenoe is condemned by the Star,
which strongly advises Italy to have nothing to do with it.
Let her, on the contrary, wait and grow strong.

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

The Examiner suggests that the politics of Louis
Napoleon may end in the same way as those of Louis
Philippe, by an Austre-French alliance. and by the aban-
donment of every other power. Louis Philippe bad the
character of being the wisest prince of his age. Louis
Napoleon had precisely the same. Is it to be • fact that
rulers on the throne of Frames, however different their ori-
ginal characters, and however different the views with
which they take their seats upon the throne, nevertheless
all end by adopting the same policy? Such • notion as
this is more vexatious and more to be feared by the Empe-
ror than the anathemas of any of the parties who now
openly attack him in the press. To be declared an Empe-
ror of no opinion, with • policy of no result, inscrutable
through weakness, an Emperor stuck in the mud of his
own policy ; this most be disagreeable to an ambitious
men who played a high stake for his crown, and cannot
like to find himself already widely named for entry on the
list of monarchs who have failed in business.

The Examiner thinks the peril that for weeks hung
over the man Groves ought to serve for a warning to
magistrates and jurors against tbo danger of reckless
swearing or of deliberate perjury, where it is known and
felt that a strong current of prejudice has set in that may
involve in one common fate the innocent and the guilty.
The Examiner trusts that at the Manchester special com-
mission, every man who can be convicted on unbought
evidence of complicity in the murder of Sergeant Brett
may be brought to punishment ; but is any case, espe-
cially one of life and death, and above all, in one where
the passions of race and creed are involved, it protests
against weighting the scales with gold.
Tile Sareinlap Beriew thinks Napoleon the Third can
now afford, if he chooses, to be geoarous. He has had his

little triumph. If lie has never been able to frighten Count
Bismarck, he has almost terrified Victor Emmanuel. This
is a success so great, so unexpected, and, under present
eiretnstsnese, so useful to the Second Empire, that Napo-
leon 111. ought to take advantage of it to settle the Romax
question for the future. If, after all, be prefers to con-
tinue the present situation, with all its dangers and possi-
bilities, bigamy will have to record the fact that the
Emperor's use of his position at the close of his career was
worthy of the arts by which he won it. He will, as far as
in him lies, be condemning France to fresh complications,
Europe to fresh anxiety, Italy to fresh disorder, and Rome
to a fresh experience of ecclesiastical misrule. To other
men we should say that conduct of this sort was a crime;
to the French Emperor one can only say that it would be
a mistake.

The appointment of Mr. Thornton to the post of
Minister at Washington is highly approved of by the
Saturday Recier. In hint the American people, our con.
temporary says, will learn to respect a gentleman who has
won promotion and inspired confidence by the same arts—
namely, by industry, fidelity, courtesy, and good sense.
Those who know European society will discover that the
want of an hereditary title argues the ►bsence neither of
dignity nor of refinement ; and Englishmen who hate •
job will rejoice that no hypothetical state necessity has
been allowed to postpone the claims of a tried and meri-
torious public servant to those of a more powerful but less
experienced competitor.
The Epedator trusts that the advice of the jury in the
case of Mrs. Janman will be followed. It does not under-
stand why perjury, aimed at the life of • fellow-creature,
as this, if perjury, was, should not be punished as severely
as the worst form of murder. It is intent to murder,
aggravated by the worst and meanest form of theft.
The Spectator prints a letter from the Bishop of Argyll
and the Ides, explaining why he objected to sign, and why
ultimately he consented to sign the Lambeth encyclical,
though it contained language which he thought likely to
Bugged what he believes to be a false view of tho atone-
ment. The bishop assented finally because the words
in question were torn from a context in the second
article, which shows that they were not intended
to have the construc.ion he deprecates put upon
them, and because he regarded the quotation as
• meta reference to the article from which it was taken,
not as a doctrinal exposition, and supposed the encyclical
itself to be a mere salutation addressed to the church by
its heads, containing various references to her formularies,
not as intended to teach either her own members or those '
external to her communion. The Spectator observes : I
The letter is explicit enough as to the Bishop of Argyll's
own faith, and as to the substitutive scheme of atonement
which he rejects. No one after this letter can accuse him
of insincere compPanoe. But what • theolegical farce is
this boasted unanimity of subscription to the encyclical,
when the document subscribed chooses its words so art-
fully as to convey an assertion of the substitutive view of
the atonement to the Bishop of Capetown, who, in his
judgment on Dr. Coleus°, explicitly affirmed this as his
reading of the article, and to seem consistent with an
earnest denial of it by the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles?
The Chnraide, in the course of an article upon the col-
lision of free-trade and unionism observes that of all the
advantages which may attend the recent investigations in-
tUtuted by government into the working and constitution
of trades unions, there is none to be compared.] with the
p Ability which it affords of familiarising the employing
classes with the views, the ideals, and the aspirations of
those whom they employ, of making either party more
tolerant of the theories of the other, and of teaching them
that a true political science must find room for both.

Cite Court.

BALMORAL. Ocr. 24.

The Queen went out in the morning with
Princess Beatrice, and her Majesty drove out in the after-
noon with Princess Christian.

The Princess of Waleedrove out attended by Viscountess
Walden.

Despatches were received yesterday at the Colonial.
office from the Governors of Gibraltar, Malta, Hong
Kong, and the Straits settlements.

THE CROWN PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF
PRUSSIA.-( THIS DAY.)