The Express.
London, England, 1867-08-15 00:00:00

using LANE

THIS EvaNINO, THAT Erli&L DACE. Messrs. Rouse and
Mesdames Alleyne and Thompson. —To conclude with
TBE GREAT CITY. !desert Cowper, M•lotyre, Villiers, Irving,
Boo" U. Itignold, it Warner Mesdames Robertson &Le 'Mere.

lIAYMA&K gr.

Tlll3 Evasino, THE SCUOOL FO bCANDAL. Deems. Chip-
pend.de. Ilene, &igen. Kendal, Clark, Weatbersby de. Her ledger', Chippendale ritzwWlain, .4c —TO 'PAK& AND
BACK Mt B.6.—And TEE ITALIC, AND HOW TO USE IT.

PRSICIIIff&

Till EVENING, THE BAY Arra THE WEDDING.—THE
MAN O' AIRLIE. James Harebell, Mr. Herman Verbs Messrs.
E. Price. Forrester, Omits., Maclean, and Merton Misses S.
Stuart, Nay Moore, ic.—And AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE.

.11T.WL

Tim llama. REvEttikrilearra. Emery, Parsons, Rob-
son, and Swanborougb ; Mesdames Ada Swanboromdt and John-
4031e.—Attar which KENILWORTM.—And THE LIITLE
SAVAGE

BRITANNIA.

Trig Iristrito, MY POLL-Aii; YY PARTNER JOE.—The
Brother Hanlon: Mr. C. Woodman: Mr. J. Plimpton : Little
Levine; Jessie Nina; the Champion Skaters.—And JACK 0'
LANTERN. Mr. Reynolds and Min S. Miles.

NIGH WATKI AT LONDON BRIDGE
TEI DAY —llansing. 2h. ba......_Atternoon, ?h. !Zm.
11:011011110W—Iloralesg. EX 435......A.D0n500a, 21s. 57sa.

LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15.

Tea Festival of Sr. NAPOLEON is annually ushered
in by a variety of the most peaceful rumours
and assurances. However violent may have
been the disturbance of the atmosphere throughout
July, about a week before the Fifteenth of August
there is a great calm, and " the Bourse is very
" firm." Once or twice, it is true, within the last
fifteen years this annual tranquillity has been
rather dearly purchased by a previous war ; at
other times the sedative powers of the Moniteur
have been employed with more than usual per-
sistency and effect. But it must be confessed
that the middle of August is a period of the
year of all others most favourable to the hopes
of peace. It is harvest time ; it is
holiday time. Monarchs and ministers alike are
severally occupied in doing nothing—to the great
advantage of their fellow-creatures. For one
blessed month they are released, by the injunc-
tions of their doctors, from the labour of devising
diplomatic difficulties and inventing causes of war.
Away in the fashionable solitudes of Swiss valleys,
or amidst the busy idleness of German baths, they
are permitted for a little while to unburden their
minds from cares of State, and to improve their
morning and their evening hours in the study of
the via inviieatrix seater,,, or in cultivating the
simplest pleasures and pastimes.
This year is, happily, no exception to the
general rule in these respects. This last
burst of tropical sunshine has melted away all
the irritating and restless fears of a fortnight ago.
That untoward incident of the instructions which
the Secretary of the French Embassy at Berlin
ought not to have read to the Under-Secretary of
the Prussian Foreign-office has been solved by
smiling mutual explanations. General DUMONT,
having delivered his " allocution " to the French'.
Legion at Rome, and received his disavowal in
Paris, has come home and had an audience of the
EMPEROR. M. NIGRA, who went to Venice to let
the storm " blow over," returns, it is under-
stood, to Paris ; and Signor RATTAZZI is ap-
peased by the departure of Baran MALARET
on leave of absence, and the probability of
his not returning to Florence as the representative
of the Empire. The North Schleswig question is
abandoned to the tender mercies of Count Bra-
maacx, while a band of French sympathizing
tourists are receiving the hospitality and the
homage of patriotic Danes at Copenhagen. It is
even hinted—by way, perhaps, of contributing to
thelull that prevails—that the EmperorAmmaeoza
has recommended King WILLIAM to take a gene-
rous view of the claims of the Danish population
of North Schleswig, and to conform at his own
good time and convenience to the stipulations of
the Treaty of Prague. While the Roman Junta,
into which the two National Committees are
absorbed, hiui apparently taken counsel of the
heat, or of the cholera, or of that
better part of valour which is one of the charac-
teristics of the native Romans in the nineteenth
century, to bide their time and wait for a more
propitious opportunity of deliverance ; while the
Garibaldian leaders have fallen back from the
frontiers, and an Italian squadron of frigates are
guarding the Papal coast, the Prussian press has
ceased to declaim against the domineering preten-
sions of France, and the semi-official journals of
the Second Empire—not excepting even that new
journal which was " authorised" to appear for the
express purpose of stirring up a warlike senti-
ment against Prussia and rekindling the hostilities
of 1815—have laid aside the trumpets and begun
to intone hymns to human brotherhood on pas-
toral pipes.

All this is very satisfactory while it lasts, and
will be welcomed with grmitude by that consider-
able portion of the public in all civilised countries
who are thrown into a rage of panic or a trance of
rapturous repose by a paragraph in the Himiteer,
or a sonorous platitude from Imperial lips on the
fertile topic of the progress of the species.
Our only desire at this holiday season is to
furnish whatever aliment we can find to the
moat comfortable auguries. Yet—shall we
confess it I—it is not without a degree of
hesitation that we venture to indicate certain rea-
sons, rather of a practical than a sentimental order
for the faith we profess in the continuance of
peace for some months to come. There has been
much talk of late about the armaments of the
French Government ; of such evident preparations
for a prolonged contest as the purchase of large
quantities of foreign cattle, of forage, provisions,
and stores, and the strain of job and task work in the
arsenals ; not to speak of the projected reorgani-
zation of the army,which is to double the effective
force, and much more than double the reserve,
and, in abort, to put every adult Frenchman under
arms. These disagreeable signs and symptoms of
a state, if not of actual war, at least of a peace so
heavily armed, so onerous and vexatious to citizens
and taxpayers, would have justified alarm, even
had they not been denied by the Moniteur and its
semi-official satellites. But they have been
repeatedly denied, and these repeated denials
have served to stimulate the vague alarm, the
sense of insecurity, the uneasiness and uncertainty
which paralyse industry and commerce, and lock up
in the Bank cellars thirty-six millions sterling of
unemployed capital.
It occurs to us that we may be able to do more
than the Moniteur has done to make peace seem
probable for the present, if we take leave to draw
notice to the simple fact that a month ago