The Express.
London, England, 1857-12-31 00:00:00

Burial Acta have been largely amended; Dulwich
College has hemmed@ more useful, under the advice
tithe Charity Commissioners; the womb of the most
immoral portions of society hare been cared for
(whether with any success time may show) by Lord
Campbell's Act for suppressing the publication of licen-
tious books and pictures; and there is an end to tho
controversy about the possession of the tide mud of the
Thames, the conservancy of the river being better
provided for. The petrification of its waters remains
to be effected. The Divorce and Matrimonial
Canoes Act is the great achievement of the legisla-
tive year; and this will be better understood here-
after than even now, earnestly as the boon is hailed
by all who know and care most about the domestic
morality of England. It leaves some things to be
peremptorily desired; but it effects much, in reliev-
ing the innoreent end oppressed, in discouraging (or
abstaining from encouraging) the prodigate, and in
abolishing the scandal of snits in which conjugal
dishonour is associated with pecuniary damages. As
the Act comes into operation next month, we may
congratulate the nation on having seen the last of
those crier. ern, whops which bare long been the
diagram of our country throughout the world.
Besides what has been done by direct legislation,
we have witnessed some progress is other social re-
forms. The cause of education is advancing in all
ranks; and Oxford ham come forward nobly to assist
the middle classes to improve the quality of their
attainments and training. The break-up of the
scheme by which the Society of Arts was working
well towards a similar end is, we may hope, only a
temporary, though a great, misfortune. Another
year ought to repair it. The Educational Cooler-
ince in London and the Birmingham Session of the
Friends of Social Science and Improvement are en-
cot:waging signs of the times, and mast have yielded
knowledge which will bear fruit hereafter. The
public hope of a real reform of the army is justified
by recent declarations and acts of the Commander-
in-Chief ; and especially by his plan for the training
and organising of •Staff worthy of the quality atone
soldiers. In all directions we see a tendency th
wards that justice to merit in the place of frees-
titian which the late war instructed us to Masai
We shall obtain what we desire, as the year's expo-
rieuce shows, but only by unremitting vigilance and
that patriotic pertinacity by which Englishmen hate
acquired all that they value in the way of political
justice and liberty.
As for the rest, the Royal Family are growing up
so as to move about the world end take their plate
almost as =emend women. The young Princes bare
left home, partly on their travels, and partly tei
pursue their education in appropriate establishment&
The marriage of the eldest Princess within the next
month will dimly, the popular view of them el
children ; and from being the pets they are rising he
be the hope of the nation.
The condition of Ireland has been a bright epee-
Ode this year in comparison with old times; bet
there is much perverse unhappiness still. Govern-
ment has interfered to protect the magistracy from
the bias and the cannot Orangeism ; and the com-
motion is great about that. There has been more and
worse turmoil in Belfast, where the old feud has
broken out fiercely, on occasion of the headstrong
folly of a protestant street preacher. Some agrarian
murders have net a gloom over the latter part of
the year. The Atlantic cable, laid down from
Valenti*, amidst an enthusiasm of hope, stimulated
by the eloquence of the Lard-Lieutenant, sops
snapped, sad postponed for an indefinite time that
speedy communication with America which would
lave spared both countries some of the wont Inca-
dents of the commercial convulsion of the autumn.
The ether peat mechanical project is in an uncer-
tain state—toe Gnat Eastern steam-ship, now
christened the Leviathan, bat not yet anat. The
great bell of the new Houses of Parliament, too, has
cracked : and thus our monster productions are
giving es a rebuke before fulfilling their promises.
Our looses by death have been great. Time is
sever a year when we my otherwise. Death,
the leveller, has chosen from among the pest. es we
have seen, the last of the children of George liL, in
extreme age, and in the prime of life, a royal geed
of ours, in whom we felt the interest that exile
always inspires, the bathes de Nemoars. The twe
liberal peen, Lords Ellesmere and Fitzwillim
seemed, by their depertare, to hint how the times of
early wbig struggles are receding into history.
Lord Amhent's death reminded us of a different aid
passage in our story of Chinese adventure; and Lard
Morningtor's of some ancient gossip, well moms
as he ones was as Wellesley Pole. The Doke a
Reamed died early, and Lord Fitehardinge kite, is
the year. We have lost Lord Strangford, whose
early promise as a leader of young England having
died oat, we have heard little of him for long,
except the piteous fact that his death averred
within a month after hie marriage. Bishop Blom.
field died soon after the surrender of his function ;
and Baron Alderson was carried off before he had
closed his public life. Of our deceased representa-
tives, Mr. Brotherton and Mr. Augustus Stafford
will be most missed. With sore grief we have
parted with two literary men, cut off untimely—
Douglas Jerrold, and John Mitchell Kemble—the
wit end thescholar, who have hardly left their peers
behind them. Croker, too, is gone who is
scarcely mourned, perhaps, but who has by no
means been grudged his share of prints for
the services he rendered to literature. Dr.
Scoresby bad fulfilled his long and useful ex-
istence, hut we were sorry to part with the brave
old navigator, who had something useful to say at
every British Association meeting on the science
the seas. We were sorry, too, to lose the ancient
actor, Mackay, who made Scott so happy by his pre-
sentment of the Bailie Nicol Jsrvie ; and in another
way still we were sorry to hear of the deaths of the
eldest eon of Barns and of the last of the Boswells
of Auchinleck ; and again, of the last of the children
of Mt s. Thnle—old Lady Keith. Among the deaths
abroad, the most interesting to us were those of
IV-renger and of Cavaignac, in France ; of Kane, the
Antic navigator from America ; and amidst a very
different set of associations, the Princess Lieven, who
had played her part in the politico of Europe for a
long course of years, in a most practical spirit.
Such have been the public looses in 1857. As for
the feelings which are common to as all, while indivi-
dual in character, it may be that, engrossed with the
image of India, we have said at times, almost every
one of us, that those of our friends were happy who
died without witnessing the calamity of this awful
year. We may be justified in rejoicing that the aged
tad tender-hearted did not lire to share nor conster-
nation and anguish. Bat if it is true—as the sage,
and the hero, and the poet believe—that lib I.
better measured by its intensity than its dantion,we
moot consider it so small privilege for any of us to
have lived through this year, and scarcely less he
come to have died amidst its calamities. It
is surely a great thing, as discipline, to see •
champs open amidst the quiet familiarities of modem
life, bringing es into the presence of the old
tragedies of a peasionste age end a pagan raying,
tempered by the heroism of the primitive Chris-
tianity. For as at home the deepest feelings of
ear emetheal youth have been renewed by traits of
woman's anguish, imprecation and revenge, sad oil
ma's /edema and prrterhastas strength eel