The Express.
London, England, 1858-02-03 00:00:00

TO 0171 t WADERS.

• DOUDIX NUMBER of the EXPRESS will
be ribbed on SATURDAY NEXT, and con-
dna on inch Saturdays aa the length of the
Parliamentary Debates shall reader desirable.

PRINCE FREDERICI WILLIAM of Prussia has
carried ofr his bride somewhat after the fashion of
the hero of " the Ere of St. Agnes:" " These
lovers fir d away into t►e storm." There is a
superstition in Scotland that in life a rough
beginning augurs a serene close. In behalf of
bride and bridegroom we would fain accept the
omen. There were tears yesterday in the Bride'.
eyes as the carriage bore her from Buckingham
Palace gate; but the bride who can sever from the
homed her youth and all its inmates without tears
must want that heart which alone can enable her to
find happiness for herself or dispense it to others in
a new home. The storms of winter beat around her
as she wended on her way ; but the shortest and
darkest day of winter is past, and each succeeding day
will carry her nearrr to the spring and to the sum-
mer of her first year of her married life. It is true
that

Even io Menqui.UM clime
Litht brews will raffle the Bowers sometime;
but if soothsayers may be in aught believed, the
future career of the newly-married pair will be a
bright one. The words of a poet of the Bridegroom's
land will in their Pie be made good :

Men rAt ass N.ehe is Sow ;
Maw ge,t out Ora a is Maw ;

dew ibir isftLiews an.

The Bride is indeed very young. She is called
upon to undertake the earnest, responsible duties of
matronbood, at an age when the unprescient im-
pulaiveness of girlhood can scarcely have began to
abate. She is exposed to this trial in a court
and country the social tone of wh;ch differs
much from that of the court and country
in which she has been brought up. She
is exposed to this trial removed from daily
littera:num with those loved and loving monitors of
her own sex to whose counsels habit had given a
more powerful iDthienae. But she has been trained
in a good school. It is not merely that her excellent
parents beer cvinccd singular soundness of judgment
in the manner in which they have educated their
family—her mother was herself in youth the object
of equally sedulous and equally judicious maternal
care. The exemplary pupil of the Duchess of
KENT. we may well believe, has inherited her
mother's skill in developing and forming the
youthful mind ; and none of those who were pre-
sent in St. James's Chapel on the day of the mar-
riage ceremony can doubt that in the mother of
the Bridegroom they beheld one whose natural
disposition, at once strengthened and harmonised
by the trials of life, is admirably qualified to fIU the
place which by hitherto been occupied by her royal
and illustrious relatives, the mother and grand-
mother of the Bride, and to be to the future Queen of
Pitteett such a friend as only a pure, high-minded,
loving woman can be.
It is to comparatively few—even on a throne—
that the instinct of high command is given ; and the
conduct and fortunes of some Queens who have been
amply endowed with it forbid us to be very eager in
our wish that it should be the dowry of the PRINCEFS
ROYAL of England. But even without this gift an
elevated and honourable field of usefulness lies open
to every Queen, if she be but a tree-hearted woman.
The virtues and vices of most peoples and social cir-
cles ere in a great measure conventional. They spring
more from habit than from principle and reflection.
They are caught by the individual from the tons
of the society amid which he develops his facul-
ties, as the chameleon is said to catch its colour
from the herb on which it feeds. Even within the
range of Christendom we find varying virtues che-
rished, varying defects tolerated, in different nations
and different classes of society. Courts have been
favourable to the formation of characters in which
the soldier's jealous sense of honour and the courtier's
graceful self-possession are most prominent : their
besetting vices are improvidence and undue love of
pleasure. Among the more opulent of the
industrial classes the prudential virtues have
flourished most : abstinence from wine, gaming,
expensive personal display, and amorous in-
trigue have ever been the virtues most praised
and cultivated by the mercantile class; while lapses
from frankness and candour, and a tendency to over-
reach in bargains, have been viewed with comparative
tolerance. These distinctive characteristics will be
found on examination to have influenced profoundly
the MUM of the religions dissensions of Europe.
Roman Catholicism has been most affected by those
who prized most the showy and impulsive virtues of the
court and camp—Protestantism, by those upon whom
industrial pursuits had impressed the importance of
self-denial and regular habits. Hence Protestant coun-
tries have come to be more especially characterised
by the bmargeois, Roman Catholic countries by the
courtly virtues and vices. In this fact will be found
the key to Bray et the phssomena of French and
English society. The identification of the interests
of the Crown with these of the Reformed Church,ia
the person of ELIZADXII4 gave an aaoandancy is