AMUSEMENT O FOR OUR FOREIGN YISITERS.
AMIDST the laudable anxiety of the public instructors to promote the comfort of foreign visiters who may be attracted to London by the great Industrial Exhibition, it will not be amiss to bestow some foresight in contriving means for amusing their leisure hours. Paris, Rome, and the cities of the Rhine, are more accustomed to inundations of strangers in search of amusement ; and it may therefore be advisable, without servilely copying their example, at least to take hints from them. In one respect they certainly de- serve to be imitated, and that is in the good sense they evince in not going out of their ordinary way when foreigners come to gaze at them : judiciously reflecting that their visitors come to see something they cannot see at home, they only seek to be if any- thing more intensely Parisian, or Roman, or Rhenish, when they know strangers are looking at them. Thus, the best way to amuse our -visiters will be to let them see us amusing ourselves in the way we like best. Luckily, the opening of the Exhibition will coincide in point of time with the annual celebrations in Exeter Hall. Our foreign friends will thus have an excellent opportunity of witnessing the serious dissipation of the pretty numerous class which rejoices in grave junkettings at "the May meetings." To the "religious pub- lic" these assemblies are in fact what those of Almack's are to their giddier brethren. The " saints " from the provinces enjoy the temporary interruption of business and household cares, and the excitement of the platform oratory, mingled with decorous visits to picture exhibitions and museums, quite as much as the gay world enjoys its balls and plays. Lady Grace in the Pro- voked Husband, with her plan for enjoying the world "soberly," was the prototype of their tribe. Their mode of dissipating the ennui of the ordinary routine of existence may appear dull to fo- reigners, but they can scarcely fail to derive amusement from wit- nessing it. They will find in it matter of wondering gossip for years ; and will describe to their home circles, as a gay Frenchman did to his, centuries ago, how "lea Anglais s'amusaient tristement la mode de leur pays." Perhaps there is no amusement into which John Bull enters with more entire abandon and enjoyment than a contested election. It will be a pity if our foreign friends be not allowed to witness him in this paroxysm of ecstacy : and it would cost little to give them an opportunity. Of our present Metropolitan Representa- tives there are not above two or three at the utmost whose disap- pearance from the House of Commons would be matter for serious regret. Will none of them be so patriotic as to resign his seat, in order that the representatives of the whole world, assembled at the Exhibition, may witness the humours of an English election ? For, however desirable it is that they should see it, one could scarcely go so far as to recommend the assassination of an M.P. to afford them a chance.
Could not the trial of the Sloanes be deferred till May, and Westminster Hall be selected for the scene of action ? If any- thing can astonish foreigners, it will be the intense interest taken by the English public in parties arraigned at the bar of a court of justice, and the latitude which counsel allow themselves in brow- beating witnesses, and throwing out imputations against the inno- cent to shift suspicion from the shoulders of their clients. The present constitution of either House of the Legislature gives little promise of amusement. There will therefore be no temptation to disinter the Lords from their chamber of silence, in which every voice is stifled, or the Commons from their pint- bottle, into which they are as incapable of squeezing their whole body as the bottle-conjuror into his.
The Aldermen and Corporation will of course have a prize mad ox in readiness to show our guests what execution the brute can do of a market-day in the crowded purlieus of Smithfield ; our cheap steam-boat companies can easily get up an explosion, and our railway companies a collision ; and thus foreigners will be enabled to appretiate the means by which the proverbial dullness of English life is from time to time relieved by an exhilarating excitement.
Verb. sap. The theme is a tempting one, and might be inde- finitely prolonged ; but we will not encroach unduly on the time and patience of our readers.
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