The Express.
London, England, 1867-04-01 00:00:00

LITEUW.

Tali Er k Mr. Price and Mim Kate
Rlshop.— •,.1 .1. 111 111 F ir; mi Ern i Mr rerhter,
Ere.ry. prirc, Fitzpatrick, rtr. ; Mia:es
liratton, and Carlotta Leciereq•

STRAND.

TRI9 EVENING,, M A Pall E TER.% AND YOUNG MY&
BAN US.-1, e.a.11. OA: lilt, TIIE SENs.%TION GoA'r. Mews.
nirt..,ll. and Turnvr ; Nleshunes Swaehoronsh,
Hughes, Meat Itenhy, &e.—Aisd lIIE FRENCH ESII I kiITION.

HOLBORN.

TIVIS EVENING, MY TURN NEXT. Mr. Delmore; Muses
Foote and Lali vc —And FLYING SCUD. Messrs. Neville, Bel-
wire, Blake, VOll-dre, ate. , Mesdames V. Josephs, C. dmeaden,
Resale Foote. Md.'s, Leases, Raymond, de.

BRITANNIA.

T 111.4 EVENING. FAUST" UK.cIkRGITERITES MANGLE
31ro. (Alio awl Mewl:mit-a J.W.stri, Mein, ant Iti,ot - rouclud.
tug with •I'llE DFATMAN'S TII.E.VW RE; OR, WEGU AND
THE DOFFINS.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

Tins Dar --‘loroine, lth. Wm Afternoon, Oh. O.
to.lloasow—Monling, Oh. 110 n Afternoon, 00. 37n0

LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL I.

AFTER the experience of sixteen years,
diversified in interest by three International Exhibi-
tions of the arts and industries of peace, and by
three great European wars, it would be hyper-
critical to affect surprise at the opening of the
Universal Exhibition of 1867, in the " capital of
" civilizatii ,ii," unheralded by propheciesof a millen-
nial truce and unaccompanied by auguries of uni-
versal disarmament. Perhaps the comparatively in-
formal and unceremonious manner in which this
new gigantic bazaar of all nations is to be inau-
gurated to-day may be accepted with thankfulness
by a too credulous world as an opportunity and
excuse of saying as little as possible about the moral
efficacy of thew, enormous shows. Let itbecheorfully
and cordially acknowledged that no city could be
better chosen fur such a feast of the eyes as this
harmless tournament of the useful and the beautiful
will furnish in the Champde Mars, than that brilliant
capital of wit and pleasure which by the chief of
its own municipality has been declared to belong
not to Parisians, but to that vast nomad multi-
tude of the rich, the idle, and the curious, who
prefer all countries to their own—except it may be
to live and die in. With all its faults and all its
follies, Paris, if it disappeared to-morrow by an
earthquake, would not have deserved ill of man-
kind. Perhaps were all its faults and all its
follies less, the world could Letter spare
a city by none surpassed, by few, ancient or mo-
dern, equalled in the intellect, the vivacity, the
valour of its people, in public spirit and in social
charm, in all the felicities and amenities that
take from vice half its grossness and lend to
virtue the lustre of romance ; a city of the boldest
thinkers, the most ingenious artists, of handicrafts-.
men of exquisite skill, and heroic instincts—a city
which ever and again proclaims a charter of emar-
cipation to humanity, and in its intervals of lassi-
tude dictates a new philosophy, or a new sauce, a
new religion, or a new skirt. It was not easy for
the most obtuse and patriotic Londoners to per-
suade themselves that their neighbours who dared
the perils of the Channel and the fogs of
the Thames in 1851 and 1862 to
visit the shrines of Hyde Park and South
Kensington, would be tempted to forget their Fau-
bourg' and their Boulevards. London is not an
inhospitable City ; the Mansion-house is open to
many, the London Tavern to all ; but let us make
a clean breast of it, and confess that London may
possibly seem a little dull to visitors of
light and eager temperament, who in their
ignorance of the language call it blares.
Paris may be a trifle wicked and heart-
less, sometimes even rainy and foggy and muddy ;
it never is and never can be dull. There may be
too many barracks in Paris, too many streets
demolished to make sites for building, too mono-
tonous a glare of interminable white facades all
fresh from the masons' powdery hands ; but we
defy the most indigenous of Britons, who has eyes
to see, and ears to hear, and a palate to taste,
and nerves to tingle, unless he be a Philistine of
the most incurable suburban or provincial type,
whose mind knows no other meridian than
" Clapham Junction," to come away from Paris
with his native stupidity aggravated by
the change. We only hope our pleasant
neighbours will deal mercifully with the too un-
accustomed stranger from these isles, and not cor-
rupt the obdurate simplicity of his liver with blue
wine and cheoal gnu at fabulous prices. Most
Englishmen are fond of hone-flesh, it is true, but
it is, if our Parisian friends will pardon the sug-
gestion, of horseflesh in motion, not in " still life,"
in the shape of fillets and °area:ilea. To
imagine an Engliahman,with all his healthy natural
instincts unimpaired, voluntarily and deliberately
partaking of a " fatted" four-wheeler or a truf •
Bed hack, is to imagine a Brahmin sitting down to
a banquet of cow-beef. We don't expect our
lively neighbours to respect the religious
prejudices of Exeter Hall or the moral prejudices
of our playgoers, who cannot endure to see the
Seventh Commandment trifled with except in an
" original adaptation from the French ; " but there
are certain prejudices about which Euglialunen are
more intractable than about their religion or their
morality, and without insisting on the sacramental
formula of " steaks and chops," the most cosmo-
politan appetite on this side of the Channel very
decidedly draws the line at hone. With this
proviso we are ready to believe that all classes
of Englishmen will profit by their visit
to the French capital this summer. It will be
no concern of British visitors to inquire too deeply