The Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1860-05-26 00:00:00

',he new, mainly passes through its portals. In

one of the latest of the public journals that has
come to hand, we see it remarked, how strong a
flood of emigration from Europe had again set in
—as many as two thousand passengers having
arrived at the port of New York in one day.
And this great metropolis of the new world, we
learn, was not only resuming, as has been stated,
all its extraordinary vernal gaiety and animation,
but wasbeginning to anticipate a series of "sensa-
tions," such as the fashionable season has never,
we dare say, presented them with on any previous
"We shall have three great local ex-
citements," it is remarked, "in the city during
the summer—the arrival of the Japanese
Ambassadors, the visit of the Prince of
Wales, and the appearance of the giant
of maritime architecture in our harbour."
And these unusual attractions are not unrea•
sonably expected to cause "an inpouring of
the curious and lovers of great sights from all quar-
ters of the country," such as has never, perhaps,
taken place before. Even the watering places,
which are usually thronged in summer far beyond
anything that is ever witnessed in this country,
are expected to be drained to swell the flood of
sight-seers that will inundate New York. "We
should not wonder," says one of its journals, "if
the transitory population of the city were increased
by nearly half a million of people during the com-
ing season—stimulating, it is hoped, all kinds of
trade immensely. The hotels will be crammed ;
Broadway will present a denser stream of crino-
line and unbecoming bonnets than ever ; the
theatres and opera-houses will reap a golden
harvest ; and as for the milliners, they may almost
expect to become millionaires before the season is
over. Every branch of retail business must be
materially benefitted by these three great excite-
ments, the like of which never occurred in the
metropolis before at the same time. It only
required the coming of the Great Eastern to make
his essentially a sensation season." So that Eng-

occasion.

land, after all, will contribute mainly to enable
the metropolis of the new world to rival that of
the old. Here, on this side of the Atlantic,
we see and know that the present is indeed
an age of progress. But with all our sense of it
at home, we must extend our view " beyond
the western main," and enlarge our experience
by an acquaintance with what is passing there,
ere we can fully comprehend, or adequately
appreciate, the nature and extent of the progress
of which this is so remarkably the age. Moral
and political lessons both are thus to be learned.
This world experiences a system of perpetual
progress,—it is one of the principles which natu-
rally govern it ; but unless a principle of limita-
tion or restraint govern it also,—only govern
without impeding,—it would soon, it is to be
feared, precipitate its own downfall. And the
best ages of the world, therefore, have been said
to be those in which these two principles were
the most equally balanced. Still, one cannot but
fear, amid all this progress, that there is only
too much truth in the postulate of the poet, when
I he says :

"There is the moral of all human tales :
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past—
First freedom, and then glory—when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last ;
And history, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page."