The Express.
London, England, 1861-06-24 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 24.

TO OUR READERS.

SPORTING DITIELLIG ENC E.

A late nlitiuu ti the Express is published every
eveuing during the racing season, contaiaing the
results of the day's races.

Bremen of history complain of the lameness
of great battles. There is a terrible sameness in
the lists of Idled and wounded, and it seems
materially impossible to give relief or variety to
the report of actions in which men fall
in masses, and a victory is as often the result of
chance as the reward of skill. Courage on battle-
fields is as common as bold riding, or the passion
fur ;perilous adventure which draws young blood
from drawing-rooms to the Desert, the forest,
or the ocean : and yet the traits of per-
bonal heroism which the Victoria Cross
commemorates, live in a nation's heart from
generation to generation not so much as brilliant
exploits as deathless and divine examples of
self•sacritico. Indeed, it is only by such examples
that the " glory "of %Vsss is justified. But for the
devotion and contempt for life which it calls forth,
War, deckeil out with whatever finery and adorned
with whatever poingous titles and decorations, is
nothing better than wholesale manslaughter and
systematic savagery; and the truth is, that nations
the most advanced in civilization show their affinity
to savage races in nothing more than the exclu-
sive homage they delight to pay to the military
virtues. Mankind may truly be said to be civi-
lized at heart, only when it has learnt to recognise
valour and devotion without the scenic accessories

of drums and trumpets, and the intoxicating fumes
of blood and gunpowder. Thu time has not yet
come when simple heroism is distinguished by the
privileged dispensers of honour, or even by the
sounder instincts of the populace, from the dazzling
foppery of camps and barracks. We lavish stars
and crones ou blundering generals who have splen-
didly sacrificed thounands of the unknown brave
to their own combined ignorance of strategy and lust
for fame ; but the moo who win the *wades in
spits of the ignorerice or obstinacy of their leaders
are cut off by a grateful country " with a shil-
" hag ;" and without the trade mark of mili-
tary service, where is the official or public recog-
nition of true "valour"? And yet, in this vast
seething world of London, daily and almost hourly,
scenes are enacted of courage and devotion not
surpassed—we had almost written, not equalled—
on any battlefield. It u not only that to thousands
of human creatures on their passage across the
burning wilderness of life in an immense city, when
the struggle for life is fierce, every day's existence
is a battle. it is not only that many • silent and
inglorious resistance against fate or fortune is
fought out in garrets by the friendless and the
starved. It in not only that charity untrumpeted
confronts crime, misery, and disease in their direst
shapes in the slinky.' hiding-places of the outcast
and forlorn. But it is in the common and familiar
services—so familiar that we pass them by as the
vulgarest and most necessary incidents—by
which the lives and properties congregated
and amused in such • metropolis as
ours are guarded against damage and
often rescued from destruction—that heroism
to which pompous battles show nothings comps.
rable tights its obscure actions, and wins its un-
recorded victories. tt'ho out of the thou ands of
idle sightseers wholourige away the small hours of a
siimmer's night staring at a Fire bimetal:en thought
of the uncommon worth of such a manse Mr. Beam-
woou--the beloved and honoured leader of the
bravest--that modest and retiring chief to whom
duty was religion, and religion was character and
life itself f Hero was • man whom not only
the brigade who knew his face as a father's, and
would have gladly followed his calm and cheery
voice into the pit of death—not London only, but
all England, and all societies of men who speak the
English tongue, will mourn as London mounts him
today. "Terrific conflagrations" are so frequent
in • city of nigh three millions of inhabitants, that
they are easily regarded as nothing mom than a
passing spectacle—a paragraph in to-morrow's paper.
Even a fire that rages without interruption from
Saturday till Monday, consumes lines of ware-
houses, wraps in ruler a quarter of a mile of
wharves, and lights up three counties with a lurid
glare, might be forgotten before the Insurance
offices had reckoned up their losses. But we
should be sorry for our fellow countrymen if we
could believe that the vain and mischievous
idolatry which erects statues to the destroyers and
scourges of niankind, to the dashing swordsmen,
or the lucky strategists, had so blinded their
eyes and dulled their hearts, as to obscure. from
them the grandeur of a devotion as superior to
bravery in battle, as bravery in battle is superior
to bravery iu a Prize-ring ; as to permit the
memory of a Bemire/owl—crushed in • moment
under the burning wall—to pass away with the
smoke and flame of his funeral pile !

Tits issue of the monthly Board of Trade re-
turns is so di4gracishilly dilatory, that one is glad
to fall hack upon other sources for information
respecting the course of trade. The figures last
received from New York illustrate the extent of
the grain movement, and, in conjunction with the
comparative cessation of the American consump-
tion of our manufactures, furnish an ample expla-
nation of the continuo' low exchange, and of the
contui.ied shipments of gold to America. From