The Express.
London, England, 1867-12-26 00:00:00

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LONDON, TIIURSDAY, DECEMBER 26.

We are not so merry a people es wo were even
at Christmas time ; but perhaps we are a better
people. Our amusements have become more re-
fined, more hunvin, prettier. We no longer take
pleasure in axing pain inflicted on any living
thing. I:ear-baiting, bull-baiting, cockfighting,
have all happily disappeared from our manners.
Prizefighting is very nearly gone. Even fox-
hunting is a less popular sport than it was only
twenty ycars ago, and wo are beginning to see
some truth in the odd French criticism on our
national sport in the shires—" Vingt ituurdis
" qui courent stprs tine bate."

Our amusements generally are not only of a
higher order, but even of a gayer kind than they
were. Onr fathers used to shut themselves
up in rooms lighted with " mole " candles,
and tipple steadily for hours at a time.
If they wont to each other's houses, they
sat stolidly looking at each other, and talked
company talk or confidences. It did not much
matter; it was equally dull and unnatural. Bright,
kindly men like SHERIDAN escaped from it, and
took refuge in taverns. Crest scholars like JoHN- 1
son were to be seen with a steaming mng before
them. Fine intellects like that of SAVAGE sank
hopelessly degraded, merely because there really
was in his day no place of amusement where
healthy imagination could disport itself amidst
fresh and pure images. The English public was
dull enough to let tercets, the author of
" Hudibras," live in an alley, and OTWAY and
Cusrreurent die as they did. Stolid as we
were, we were not so bad as other nations.
There is no chapter of written history so
sad as the manner in which even scholarly Ger-
many treated SCHILLER : while GOETHE was more
or less patronised by men whom, under a proper
state of things, ho should have taught. The life
and death of CERVANTES have pointed many a
stupid gibe at mankind, when mankind was not
much in fault, for nations, like individuals, can
only act and think up to the standard of their
teaching or their genius.
But our whole social atmosphere has cleared of
late years, partly because we have had a QUEEN of
a life notably very pure and beautiful, a great
light, so to speak, in modern Europe. Those who
remember the state of society thirty years ago
and those who will consider it seriously now will
have no difficulty in appreciating the difference.
Another cause of the improvement in our manners
has also been at work. We have had for the last
generation the most surprisingly beautiful comic
literature and picture craft ever known in the
world. Before the time of DICELNS and LEECH,
the grand art of exciting laughter without blushes
was undiscovered. The caricatures of GILLRAT
and even of SEYMOUR were very coarse. Wit was
prone to identify itself with garbage, and was
apt to get tipsy and to be inexact in its accounts.
It borrowed money which it did not pay, it flirted,
it neglected its wife, sometimes it did worse.

The theatres of a generation ago wero mere
haunts of flaunting infamy. There was a place
called the " green room " which was worse than
any place which would now be tolerated for a
week by modern opinion. No one could walk
down Piccadilly, or any other great thoroughfare,
after dusk without being molested and shocked.
Vice was fearfully repulsive in its aspect. It was
painted, it warn obtrusive, it was aggressive. The
old Adelphi Theatre, the old Coburg, the old
Sadler's Wells were dangerous haunts of mis-
chievous and quarrelsome thieves upon Boxing-
nights. Bill Sykes was there, so was Mr. Fagin.
Crockford's was open, and fifty other gambling-
houses within hail of it. One peer passed his
time wrenching off door-knockers, another in
bribing a cabman to poison himself by drinking a
pint of gin at a draught, and a third in beating his
maid servants.

Even a Christmas piece had but little wit in it.
Our pantomimes had the traditional hot poker and
policeman. There was something about a sausage
and a rough and tumble fight in them of course ;
but there the merriment ended. Anything more
hopelessly stupid than the dialogue of an old pan-
tomime it would be impossible fur the dreams of
indigestion to fancy. The charming and graceful
extravaganza is of modern growth. There has
been nothing like it since the time of Anurro-
Plums. The play of fancy, the sparkling beauty
of the images, which come at command to
at least half a dozen of our Christmas and Easter
burlesque writers, are altogether wonderful and
praiseworthy. Examined by the light of all former
theatrical history, they are quite delightful in their
perfect innocence, purity, and merriment. There
is a life and a joy about them quite unknown to
the amusements of the past.

Then come our Christmas books: They, too,
are in a great measure the creation of Mr.
DICKENS. Before the "Christmas Carol" we had
nothing so simple and beautiful in that way of
writing as we have had since. And this is not
all. A kindlier and more catholic spirit is abroad
generally. Mr. Dicer-vs and his disciples, not
forgetting the Illustrated Louden News, have made
us quite in love with Christmas. We have revived
good traditions and charitable usages forgotten for
centuries. Employers give a longer holiday in a
more generous spirit than they used to do. Folk
take a more sensible and practical way of ex-
pressing their kindness to poor relations than they
did. The mere list of charities published in
newspapers at this season is something which
does honour to our common nature ; and
they probably do not represent a hundredth
part of the open-hearted bounty which Bows about
wherever want or misery is really believed to exist.
Under these circumstances, let us congratulate our-
selves, not presumptuously, but very heartily, and
wish each other a happy Christmas all round.