The Express.
London, England, 1861-12-31 00:00:00

THE ROYAL FAMILY OF PORTUGAL.

Quick upon the untimely decease of the young
King of Portugal follows tbe death of another royal victim
of the same house, dying in the same palace and of the
mine malady. To-day. telegram informs us that Prince
Joao, who was the third eon of Dom Maria 11, da Gloria,
and whose death bad been expected, has expired. The
muse of death, like that of his eldest brother, is officially
eseerteined to have been typhoid fever.
There is something especially striking in these strange
esiscideacea Kings and princes in rapid succession are
swept away, by the pestilence which is usually the bane of
the over-worked or the ill-fed, or of the closely immured
denten of some dense city. The destb is not to the old,
the luxurious, the riotous, or to the reveller, but it falls
upon the young, the temperate, and the thoughtful student
conscientiously working out high duties. Dona Maria had
seven children, and of them three are suddenly and rapidly
swept away by this dire visitation. Ferdinand, the fourth
son, accompanied the King, his brother, in the expedition
in which they both contracted their fatal illness, and be
died a few days before the King. The King's fate we have
already recorded. Now occurs that of Prime Joao. Priam
Augusto, the fifth son, has been stricken down by the lame
malady. and is the only one of the brothers who km
recovered. The reigning King, Prince Augusto, and two
sisters are the survivors who yet stand between the throne
and the male branch of the royal house as represented by
Dom Miguel So great a fatality is unexampled in modern
mid pesestel times This family assess to have Imes suited
in affections, and to have offered none of those spectacles
a intrigue and contention which are so habitually looked
far in the history of the ruler* of the earth. Under the
government of the mother and of her son the Portuguese
had enjoyed a prosperity and tranquillity which were the
better appreciated by thorn as they came as a relief from the
vicissitudes of a sanguinsry civil war.
These facts will explain what have to many appeared
the inexplicable tumults which followed these successive
deaths. The population of Lisbon are still a mediaeval
population. They are to the present citizens of London
or Paris what the citizens of London or Paris were five

centuries ago. We can look across the sea to Lisbon as we
can look across the lapse of 500 years to our predecessors
is this great city. In those days ignorance magnified and
distorted every public event, and violence was the only
known remedy for real or fancied evils. The people of
Liebou have been alarmed by three successive blows
falling upon a royal family which had become dear to them
by reason of the blessings they have .enjoyed under it.
Living themselves in a capital where all sanitary precau-
tions are unknown, and which menu to a stranger to have
been specially designed as an asylum for fever and peed.
knee, it never Gould strike that igeorant populace that a
little mom miasma in • neighbouring hunting ground, or
an extra shade of offenaivenees in the Palace of the Neer-
sidades, could have produced the fatal diseases which have
recurred in such rapid succession. The multitude has rushed
to the conclusion that these deaths are the result of poison.
Hence the riots, the demands for the exhumation of the body
of the King, the attacks upon the druggists' shops, and the
ocietradictory addresses, first that the new King shall, and
thee that he shall sot, quit Lisbon. The people of Luken
have been impressed by the idea that the family of Doss
Maria are all dying away under the influence of some fell
conspiracy, and that the country will again fall under the
power of Dom Miguel and his offspring. Just as the mobs
of the middle ages roes sometimes against the Jews and
sometimes against the bakers, animated by some wild sad

erro•eoua impulse, eo the mob of Lish m bee conceived a sus-
picion and blindly asks • victim. There is no reason to
believe that these popular notions have the slightest
foundation, or that this royal family has barn scourged by
any other visitation than that which punishes the infrac-
tion of the utural laws which enjoin cleanliness sad pure
air as the oonditioos at a healthy human existence. That
the people are so excited by these calamities is proof how
popular the ruling family in Portugal has become, and it
bodes well for the security of the throne of the new
Moearch. To hint, with that stivalid capital around him,
there is s moral Is these pestilence' brooding over *sole,
and claiming Alaimo from Om* thronemeomm It is not
enough to mown over what has hammed—wise men win
abo work against that which may rearm—limos.