The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-25 00:00:00

by all the sinews of war, and crowned with the
glory and the glamour of many recent victories.
Simultaneously with the success achieved by our
diplomacy and by our armed forces, b)th military,
and maritime, in the uttermost extremities
of the Eastern hemisphere—comes to us in
1858 the promise, and not only the promise, but as
we may reasonably term it the substantial gua-
rantee of a grand and remarkable achievement in
an exactly opposite direction, namely, at the
extremity of the western hemisphere. The esta-
blishment, that is to say upon the opposite shores
of North America, along the sea-board of that great
continent upon the Pacific Ocean, of a new and
splendid colony—notable, henceforth, as the colony
of British Columbia—the energies of which
working in-land towards the opposite colony
upon the Atlantic coast of North America, the
twin colony. of the Canadas, will lead at last
by inevitable necessity to the opening up of the
fruitful, but yet wholly uncultivated, regions
known hitherto only as the haunt of the wild
beast and the furtnyper, under the same style
and title of the Hudson's Bay Company's Terri-
tories. So that the year marked by the extinc-
tion of the East India Company's monopoly
in Asia has been further illustrated is the deve-
lopment of our imperial resources, by the promise
of the eventual extinction (probably in 1859),
of the companion monopoly, that by which
the Hudson's Bay Company has
.for two hundred
years, closed against the Anglo-Saxon race a vast
portion of the great northern American continent.
Memorable, in this way, by the triumphs won by
us both in the Eastern and Western hemisphere-
-1858 will for ever be regarded as a year peculiarly
deserving of remembrance in the history of science
and civilisation, by the glorious incident demon-
strative of the fact that, by an electric thread (4
metal, trailing under the depths of the Atlantic
ocean, these two hemispheres can be brought together
—lreland and Newfoundland, Europe and Ame-
rica talking to each other in the twinkling of an
eye by means of the subtle thrills of electricity
along those 2,000 miles of submerged cable. The
temporary interruption of this mystical and all but
miraculous intercourse has only delayed for a time
the enjoyment of the advantages that must accrue
to the world at large from the establishment of the
practicability of this sublime achievement. That
one grand feat—the successful submergence of
the Atlantic cable—would be sufficient to render
this wonderful year of 1858 distinguishable among
its predecessors.
Together with all the foregoing achievements of
1858, however, are there not within the scope of
comparatively recent recollection a variety of events
and incidents specially deserving, at this moment,
of satisfactory remembrance ? Miscellaneous oc-
currences of the most diversified character, each of
which it is impossible to recal to mind without
some degree, more or less vivid, of really unaffected
gratification. From the happy marriage, in the
spring, of England's Eldest Daughter—to the
gathering in at last,' in this recent autumn, of a
vintage unknown for years and years past, unpre-
cedented, in fact, by a curious coincidence, for abun-
ance and general excellence since 1811—a year
memorable, like that of 1858, as one in which a
great comet was for many successive weeks flaming
resplendently in the heavens. The catalogue of
the happy events of all kinds marking 1858 will
add largely indeed, and very notably, to the world's
chronology. Glancing down that catalogue, how-
ever cursorily, we cannot, as a nation, but recall
to mind upon this Christmas-day the events of this
year of grace last past, with a sense of profound
gratitude to the beneficence and wisdom of Divine
Providence.