The Express. — 1853-11-26 (London, England)

NICIIOLA. visited London, Lord ABERDEEN and the Duke of WELLINGTON were the two English subjects whom the Russian AUTOCRAT called upon. The visit was a great feather in the bonnet of the Earl of ABERDEEN, but, however flattering the compliment might be, our present Pants MINISTER must not make us pay too dearly for it. He may well be polite to the Cz.►x whilst doing a distasteful duty to his country and to Europe. But the duty must be done—unless he likes to resign and leave others to do it.  THE London weather of this November has a political effect, among its other influences. It makes people hope that Lord PALMERSTON will remain in office, and in his present office, till London fog is definitively abated. The mists of diplomatic council may have been beyond his power to disperse. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that he enjoys raising that kind of fog, and seeing blind wayfarers stumble and knock against each other, after he has put them in the right way, and left them to blunder or stray. Bat he is the man to lessen our homebred literal London fog, if it can be done: and we may fairly hope that the thing will be done, some day or other. From the moment that we choose to pronounce the nuisance intolerable, something will be attempted to reduce, if not to abolish it; and, if even reduction be proved impossible at present, why then resignation will be easier. Lord PALMERSTON is the man to make the attempt, and we must urge it upon him. He is actually doing, with regard to London burial-grounds, what all his predecessors declared to be impossible. There they are, aotually shut up—no small number of them ; and the parishes are setting to work, as it wu certain they must and would do, to find another "GOD'S acre " for the night season of man's existence, among the many which are appropriated to his daily uses. When the practice of burying the dead in our chief city is entirely abolished, and the graveyards are all asphalted down, the nanie of the  - - statesman who administered the necessary compulsion will not be forgotten. Nor, if the nuisance of London fog is ever got rid of, will the process fail to be recorded in the history of the City which is famous abroad for its supposed November suicides, and among provincial persona at home for lighting candles at soon.  During this week, the smallest mischief that has happened from the fog has been the interruption of engagements of business and pleasure, for several days, among upwards of two millions of persons. Dinners have been cooked, and nobody has come to eat them; and lighted drawing•rooms have been left empty. This is the small end of the mischief. Plaoes of public amusement have been unattended; and the losses t 3 the proprietors must have been considerable. Children have been kept from school, or have gone and returned in no little periL Heads of households have been puzzled, once out, to get home, and children and servants have suffered panic " by the fog". Public meetings for important objects have foiled. Traffic in the streets and on the river has been almost entirely suspended during great part of three days. Worst of all, several lives have been lost, in the streets or on the  water—few as were the people abroad. Such • keeping at home as there was on Wednesday night is • strange circumstance even in the City of London. Except in time of siege, or of some " plague that walketh in darkness," nothing like it can happen. It was a remarkable experience to be abroad that night, and observe the muffled City,—its noises hushed, its pavements almost empty, its lights reduced to glow-worm sparks, except where the link-boys' torches and lanterns were making red circles in the yellow air. No carts but those of the baker, or the laundress, or the carrier, " giving up the job," and peering out the way home, with a torch at the horse's head! No carriages but those of medical men, or of some rash pleasure-seekers, who were frightened at their mistake in coming out! In one place, a woman killed,—in others broken limbs or other injuries from falls and collisions. Here, a person fumbling about in the roadway, and unable to get back to the pavement; there a horse on the pavement, taking the area railing for that of the park. Such was the state of things abroad ; and otherwise, every family in London in its own home. A thing which happens at no other time. We shall all agree that this is a domestic institution which we could well spare—this home-compelling fog. Now, what is it ? Do we know anything more about it than that sudden cold condenses the warm atmosphere of the city, when there is no wind to carry off the cloud thus formed? What are the elements concerned in making the cloud? The laundresses are the people to tell us how largely smoke is concerned in it. Let any one hang out a damp towel in such a fog, and see what is deposited upon it If we could get a bucketful of fog analysed, we should be curious to find how much of it came from our chimneys, how much from the Essex marshes, how much from tanpits, graveyards, sewers, the clay of Regent's Park, the mud of the Thames, and other sources which might all be _ _  abolished, and which will in time be all abolished. I Our island is a misty one, it is true; but it is not foggy it the sense of London fog. Leeds is foggy in that sense ; and a few other large towns, as ill-drained, and smoky, and mismanaged as London and Leeds ; but the climate of Great Britain is not to be blamed for anything worse than the blue damp mists which curl round her mountains, and ascend from her lakes, to form the lustrous white clouds that deck our spring and antumnal skies. For all beyond this our own ignorance and apathy alone are answerable. When we have duly drained our marshes, and encouraged our rising woods, our rural districts may be dry and clear; and whee our spirited HOME SECRETARY shall have seen that all our men of business do their duty by their neighbours as well as Messrs. Pilot, at their candle works, consuming all their smoke, and kindly showing all applicants how easily and certainly it may be done, we may expect to be relieved of the murkiest element of our own particular fog. By the time that is done, the drains and