Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-08-12 00:00:00

THE SUB-ATLANTIC UNION.

Exactly three hundred and sixty-five years ago,
Europe stretched forth her hand into the vague
immensity of her Western Ocean, dimly conscious
of a possible Sister Continent lying in a forgotten
solitude beyond the wilderness of waters. In that
year, God decreed that the terrible punishment
to which the great Western Land had been sen-
tenced was to cease, and that the cord which once
had bound it to the known world—snapped in the
far off distance of an inscrutable antiquity—
should be re-fastened. It was His will that the
intellect of Europe, and the Divine light which
He had poured upon her, fourteen hundred years
before, should now pass over with the Eastern
breezes, with the Westward journeys of the Sun,
to shed a purer illumination upon untrodden wilds,
and over vast forests peopled with a humanity as
wildly magnificent as themselves. On the 3rd
August, 1492, this stupendous design exhibited
its humble beginning. On that day, the Santa
Maria, the Pinta, and the. Nina, light, undecked
barques, not larger than modern fishing smacks,
set forth from the port of Palos on the greatest of
all voyages. Vaguely, as migrating sea-gulls,
they sailed away into the mystery of the unknown
Atlantic; an instinot only guided them, but it was
the instinct of Columbit3. On the 25th of Sep-
tember the captain of the Pinta shrieked out
" Land." Columbus threw himself down in a
paroxysm of emotion, and, while the crews wept
tears of joy, Pirzon raised towards Heaven the
Gloria in Excelsis ; and so over the Atlantic was
chained the first link between Europe and America
—the Old World and the New.
And thence our thoughts recur to the first con-
necting link between Old England and New Eng-
land. We are back with our great uncles—the
Pilgrim Fathers—as they set out to rivet it..
Solemn and grave, there is about them none of
the buoyancy of the Spanish voyager of fortune ;
leaving their old country with stern and sullen
hearts, there are yet deep feelings that bind them
to her, and, as they carry her energy and great will.
over the sea,

They drag at each remove a lengthening chain.

That chain has been broken. We are borne to
the time, when the youth, trained to a lusty
strength, by stout exercise on the prairies, and
fligbting with the forest, has become impatient of
the leading-strings that had held him to his
mother. The old bond of nature is severed, a new
alliance is contracted, young England has formed
his new union in the morning of his manhood.
Such is the vicissitudes of life and time !
And
,so we are carried to this hour, and the
thoughts with which it is teeming, when, three
hundred and sixty-five years, " a year of years,"
after the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina,
stood out from a westernmost port of Europe,
carrying the first chain that was to bind the con-
tinents, we see, outside the harbour of Valentia,
" the rocky frontlet of our lovely isle," the Niagara,
the Susquehanna, and Agamemnon, engaging in
their magnificent enterprise, which is to form a new
chain between the worlds, such as Columbus,
fortes, or Washington could never in their most
transcendental visions of futurity, have dreamed of.
They are carrying out a link between the worlds, as
actual and palpable, and yet as mysterious and
symbolical, as that which holds those, whom on
the earth, Heaven has joined together in the bands
of an open marriage, and in the more spiritual
union of sympathy and love. They set out to bind
Earth to Earth literally and withcut metaphor; the
cable of conjunction is coiled upon their decks ; but
the souls and life which animate the mainland at each
side are to be bound together by the self-same cord,
and the fastening tie which rivets body to body
is the fastening tie of thought and feeling of sym.
pathy and counsel, of the mutual intercommuni-
cation of mind and mind. Hurrah, then for the
renewed alliance of the children of those who vio-
lently separated seventy-six years since ! The
United Kingdom and the United States have
again united with each other. Since the old dis-
union of the Angle-Saxon family, how many pas-
sages have been made between them which should
salve the ancient quarrel, and make them nearer
friends than ever they had been before. Not
merely those of the fleets of

4' Commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, floating down with
costly bales,"

crossing to and fro to form the business friendship
which mutual interest consllidates ; but a holier
and purer covenant has been silently formed by
the great shipS which have carried over thousands
of the distressed children of the Older Country'
the weakness of their parent State, to learn health
and restored vigour, and so become the strength
and sinew of the New. The history of the
world has gone ion developing the Anglo-Saxon
character and genius, while the genius of other
ancient races have appeared to dwindle; and while
tyranny and oppression through Europe and
Asia have been seen forging new chains for the
souls and bodies of their vassals, it has seemed
strange, indeed, that brothers by blood, by voice,
by hope of faith, who alone retained for themselves
and mankind God's birthright of freedom, should
remain estranged by narrowest prejudices, and
petty jealousies. And, since the old disruption,
God has sent to mankind another blessing, to be
employed on earth for purposes more than earthly,
for the nearer combining of the families of men in
the universal Peace, Law, and Love which are to
pervade His Kingdom. We seize this blessing,
and span with it the Atlantic this year; ere long,
it shall be the Pacific also. Signal we, then, the
good ship Niagara, with a Cheer of hope, gratitude,
and joy, Speed her in her course with the favour-
ing bree4e of happy wishes and fervent prayers, as
she lays down the pathway for Heaven's lightning
to carry to and fro the thoughts of kindred human
souls.

It is a contemplation passing wonder, to think of
this projected work; the passions, the feelings,
which agitate the hearts of men in London, throb-
bing through New York at the same point of time.
Men in Hyde Park, men in Broadway, laughing at,
weeping for, the same things a few minutes after
the happening. These speculations are as unli-
mited as the electricity itself. We cannot much
further prosecute them here.
Hereafter, when the Great Atlantic, impatient of
the fierce winds that dare to sweep over his waters,
shall as fiercely raise up his agitated mountains to
do battle with the blast—when ships that had
sailed in glory a day before are sinking in distress,
.and the cry of the shipwrecked is rising to the
heaven beyond—still, all regardless of the wild
commotion, shall the little pulse, countless
fathoms below, throb with its subtle intel-
ligence from hemisphere to hemisphere. So
it is that, while upon the High Seas of
Worldly Life, the storms of contending human
passions make shipwreck of the adventurous hopes
that had embarked upon them, the placid genius
of Truth performs its silent and mysterious
destiny. Partaking of the Infinite and the Eternal,
and so almost unconscious of the transitory con-
flicts that rage around it and above, it owns no
curb in time or space, as it communicates from
soul to soul of the initiated, the whisperings of
changeless knowledge, which are portion of the
Thoughts of God.—Belfast News Letter.