The Express.
London, England, 1861-09-14 00:00:00

SPORTING nrruziamicE

A Lite edition of the Express ii publishe.l every
eeenieg during the racing season, containing the
multi of the tlar's recce.

Sows human beings are born to ill-fortune, and
ware some neighbourhoods. "Born under an un-
lucky star" is but an old-fashioned mode of ex-
pressing something like a truth. It is all very
well to any that character is fate, and that arduous
or adverse circumstances are to be controlled. It
is a fact that there am men with whom everything,
from the cradle to the grave, goes awry. We
are not speaking of the outcasts and Arabi of eo-
ciety who have had no ,chance ; hut of a sulecter
sort of well-born, well-bred, well-educated people,
who in spite of advantages and oppor-
tunities, family, name, favourable position
desirable social relations, have lived to little pur-
pose, and died "under a cloud. " What mortal
eye can pierce the infinite mysteries that make up
man's ilortiny Is it some defect of organization,
some vice of temperament, or is it accident, temp-
tation, or association, that has made a failure of
all that early promise, and cankered all that bud-
ding expectation I Who shall say t It may be
something wanting to that due balance and ad-
justment of mind and matter which is indispen-
sable to felicity and adroitness in what is called
the conduct of life, to hid and mastery in
bulimia dealings. Whatsoever it may be,
who has not met such cases of continual
and me:apt:Oiled mishap t Nothing goes well with
him, nothing ho does succeeds, one often hears
said of a person who has suffered no actual dis-
credit or reverse. Not but that a " bad name "
is often an equally unexplained fatality ; but the
worst of a bed name is that it is sure to justify
itself, soon or late. And so, too, there are homes,
and streets, and gardens, and horses, and ships,
and whole neighbourhoods with a "bad name," not
always explained or justified, which clings to them
like a disease. It is often very difficult to dis-
cover the origin of the bad name of certain neigh-
bourhoods. But in MIA cases ill name means ill
fame, and ill fame has a tendency to develop like
a fungoid growth, and to spread itself around in
all manner of excrescences. In large cities, of
course, there must be bad neighbourhoods above
ground corresponding to the sewers below, into
which the necessary filth of a decorous civilization
is cast. In most European cities, however, these moral
sewers are limited to certain quarters, where they
are administered and organised like any other
department, under the supervision of the State.
The particularity of London is, that in the
very heart and centre of the town, close
beside, behind, all round the broadest, the
cleanest, and the richest thoroughfares, the stranger
becomes entangled in a network of low and
narrow lines of houses dedicated to squalor,
mammy, disease, and infamy. It is our national
custom to wink the eye so hard at evils which are
not supposed to exist, that our streets most sacred
to wealth and fashion, and to all the decencies of
"Carriage company," overflow by night and even
by day with the scum and spawn of phosphorescent
foulness from the salt lakes that lie behind these
glittering facades. Occasionally a good Christian
stands at the corners of the courts and alleys with
a tract, and an invitation to tea ; and we should
be the last to deride the geutle courage
that fears uo ridicule in such a cause.
But while these Samaritan enthusiasts are
fishing for stray Magdalena, the swollen and
reckless stream of corruption rushes by, insolent
and exulting. From Piccadilly to Pall-mall, frost
the Haymarket to Long-acre, certainly ;tots:
re mote or secluded district, extends the
Row of rancid and reeking "life," in all its maw
splendour. This is the " feature " of London
which to the lively foreigner is as the candle be
the moth. From his observations and experiences
in this brilliant centre of the capital of England
the lively foreigner is apt to proceed to bold
generalizations of English life, -manner& and
society. Why not t It is not that he finds on
this favoured spot a successful imitation of the
Troy ho has left on the other side of the water ;
for the cookery is greasy, the cigars are dear, the
inhabitants are dull ; he cannot speak the lan-
guage, and he is not addicted to shellfish. But it
is because the Haymarket and Leicester-square
are, in fact, or ought to be, a well-ordered and re-
spectable "quarter," judging by the map of
London.

What Leicester-square and the Haymarket are,
in 'pits, of their situation, in spite of magistrates,
ratepayers, clergy, and police, let the Memorial
we published yesterday bear witness. It was a
Memorial addressed to the Board of Overseers of
the parish of filt. Martin's-in-the-Fields by some
seven-and-twenty householders in Leicester-square,
many of the signatures representing firms of the
highest character—hotel-keepers, booksellers, auc-
tioneers, and various wealthy and fiourishiag
tradesmen. They represent the notorious
nuisances of the neighbourhood as increasing enor-
mously ; such as "betting men, street musicians,
" vagrant mountebanks." If these were the only
grievances of the Memorialists, they would deserve
sympathy, but their ease would be too common
for special notice. Leicester-square, however, is
an instance of one of those very fatalities we were
speaking of just now. It looks, at the first glance,
like a deserted settlement of bankrupt gambling-
houses and sold up stews, with a violated ceme
tery in the midst. At certain hours, and in cer-
tain lights, it looks like a haunt and hiding-place