The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-04-26 00:00:00

TITE STAGES OF TIME.

How universal is the effect produced by the departure
of one year, and the beginning of another ! There are
events in the personal history of men whereby their at-
tention is called to the passing of time. Our recurring
birthdays are among the most notable of these. There
is a solemnity about that day in the revolving year which
calls us to add another figure to mark An. upon
earth, which tells na Te bore taken one step more nearer
to The upgrowing and recurring birthdays of
our children have, although in a fainter degree, a similar
effect, or the anniversary of some important change we
have made in life, or the particular day on which our
father, or mother, or some dear friend, died ; or when,
after the lapse of years, unconscious of the chance, which
time has been working on ourselves, we meet some
one, and marvel at the tall stature, and manly face and
bearing of him whom last we saw as a child, or the grey
hairs and furrowed cheek of him whom last we beheld in
the bloom and vigour of manhood. But these, and such
as these, are personal changes ; and although affecting
our minds ever so intensely, they do not produce a
general, far less a universal impression. How different
is it in this respect with the event which has just be-
fallen us ! The voice of Providence bath simultaneously
entered the ears of millions of human beings. The truth
it has proclaimed is equally affecting to all. We are car-
ried away as with a flood ; we are as a sleep ; or like the
growing, withering grass ; we spend our years as a tale
that is told. In the palace and the cottage—by the noble
and the peasant—by the sick man in his bed, and the
strong man in the street—by the prosperous and the un-
fortunate—by the young and the old, bath that voice
been heard. Men of many nations, and lineages, and
languages, and opinions, have listened to it; and while
the voice has been differently interpreted, it has made
itself heard by all. Now, take this one particular lesson
from these reflections : it surely were well if a truth so
universally heard, and of equal interest wherever it is
heard, drew closer the bonds of fraternal fellowship
among mankind. The conventional distinctions of life
are so often obtruded on our notice, and the classifica-
tions of human society operate so frequently as a restraint
on the best sympathies of our nature, that it is good for
us to retreat occasionally quite out of the labyrinth of
conventionalities, and in such a region of universal in-
terest as the present, to survey our mutual relationships ;
and seeing that, classify and separate as man will, Provi-
dence is proclaiming that we are carried by a common
stream to a common destiny, to gather into our hearts,
as largely as we can, a spirit of love and charity to all our
brethren of mankind.

The Dodd Family Abroad. By Charles Lever.
London : Chapman and Hall.
The narrative is intensely exciting in the eighth
part of Harry Lorrequer's new novel, and, as
usual, abounds in that quiet undercurrent of wit
and humour for which the work is conspicuous, and
specimens of which we may select from any page :