Smyrna times., 1866-09-12
The Grand PanOr,ma.

Under the title of " The Times we Live In,
a writer in the London Spectator gives vivid
picture of the wonderful changes effected and
being wrought in the political world and in the
realms of thought and of ethical and religious
discussion. We will endeavor to reproduce the
prominent features of this picture. Men are
living, and beginning to be conscious that they
are living in one of those seedtimes of the world
which recur only after long cycles, when the
ground, long plOwed and manured is, at last
to be turned to use a seedtime of empires and
creeds and discoveries and systems of thought,
which, as they germinate and flourish, WILL in
their beauty or their ugliness, make the Old
World, which looked so bare, no longer recog-
nizable in its rich variety of crop and color and
hte. If the observer be a politician, he finds
himself living in an age which alike in the dra-
matte character of its events and the grandeur
OF some OF its ideas has scarcely parallel in his
tory. The old world and its aspirations gave
place, finally, to the new and its hopes, when
Lee surrendered his sword, and the defeat was
as dramatic, as much of surprise as near to a
true battle of Armag1ddOn, as any catastrophe
of history has ever been The principle of ma
tiOnalities, first dream, then a thought, then
a hope, has risen, almost within months, into
a power able to shake down States and remodel
maps; has pulled an OLD nation, as it were, by
the hair, from under the sea into the air and
light, iS as We write, driving whole kingdoms
together with a clash which reyerberates
through the world. Young men read of the
rise Of Holland to independence of Spanish
rule, and think that was a grand time. Was
it grander in all true elements of grandeur than
the rise OF Italy out from under the Austrian
waves? RlcasOi seems to US as worth watch
ing as William the Silent Napoleon as Philip
| ho EroDoh n mo
an event which in this hour seems to choke
up the memories of the old, but, save in misery,
how was it greater as an event than the Revo-
luton in Germany? Crowns did not tOpple
faster in l79O-9S, than in 1866. SadOwa was
at least AS striking an event as Waterloo. The
Seven Years war was great episode in his
tory" We have lived through its counter
part compressed into seven days. The rise of
revolutionary and imperial France to dictator
ship was not more marvellous, was not to the
Continent more full of hope or menace in its
day, than the rise of Prussia.
The progress of the world was not more af-
fected by the struggle between Pope and En-
perOr, democracy and feudalism than by the
struggle just ended, when it seemed hardly
begun between Prussia and Austria-hght and
obscurantism. We have men, too, among il
all-big, visible figures. No age has perhaps
ever been richer in prominent individual per
sonages in whom the world could take a pas
siOnate interest, than that which has produced
Napoleon and Bismarck, Lincoln and Glad
stone, Won Moltke and Garibaldi. Men are
never tired of considering the Reformation anC
the reaction which followed it, but was it q
greater time, time in which more ideas were
born, or in which system Of thought struggled
more visibly towards the light, than this VIZ
read in Mr.. FrOude, not without emotion thu
successive acts which struck down the mOnas
teries of England but in what do they diffe
except in rapidity from the bills which paSseC
the Italian Parliament not many weeks since
and the recent decree which breaks up tht
religious life" in Ventia?
| Realism is revived among us, and is modify
ing every branch of progress, sweeping away
remorselessly all the films which stood between
| thought and fact. Nothing in our day cal
compare with the discovery of America; bu
still the scope for adventure and travel, an
even conquest, is nearly as wide as ever-thei
results as dramatic. Cochin China, is turne
into a colony; Pekin entered by European
troops; new civilization revealed in Japan
the source of the Nile discovered Australi
crossed; the few closed places of the cart
thrown open to energy and enterprise. n
mechanical invention corresponds or can quit
correspond in value with the printing pres
but we have just solved the problem Of instar
communication throughout the earth; and no
continents are drawn within speaking distanC
which, three hundred years ago, were still,
they were from the beginning of time, ignOrai
OF each others existence. What shall we ~
OF the exodus from Europe to America goir
on every day before our eyes, and of the ne
: life growing up in the far West? What
, commerce, science, art, which are in a state
l almost morbid activity Ledger.