The New York herald., 1871-01-01
The Dawn Of the New Year.

TO the great book OF human destiny. One
more faint ripple has completed its shining
circuit over the ocean Of space and disap-
peared upon the shore that mortal eyes have
never seen. This is solemn aud imposing
thought for although months and weeks, days
and hours, have very notable duration and
may be more crowded with events to some one
individual or in some one part of the world
than Is ON ordinary lifetime to others or else
where, they do not convey to our minds the
decided and comprehensive impression of
an epoch that is so strongly marked on
our perception by the close Of the astronomi-
cal and civil year. This, too, seems to have
been the instructive feeling of men from the
remotest ages of which authentic annals are
preserved. The science Of Egypt, deriving
its formulas from still earlier research,
achieved in periods that were hoar
antiquity to even the sages of Chaldea,
transmitted its thoughts to the European
world, and when Christianity arose it found
Pagan civilization making the close of the
old twelvemonth and tho opening of the new
one religious as well as popular occasion
for unusual festivity and pomp. For GEN.
turies. while the followers of the true Messiah
had to struggle against heather prejudice and
persecution, they avoided aud even authorita-
lively denounced the observance of the New
Years birth as holiday; but, as resistance
faded away and the doctrines of the Saviour
were accepted by all the Western nations, the
pleasant spirit of the old festival, regarded
simply as social commemoration, returned,
| until, Ia our time, it has again become almost
universal where civilization of eur own type pre-
walls; and, since its joviality is not restrained
by the sacred awe that invests the Christmas
festival, it is made a day Of greater general
| frolic than that hallowed anniversary.
We may then, safely estimate that at least
four hundred millions of the human race are,
this very morning (with allowance for the
difference OF exact time in different longi-
tudes), making merry or feeling sad over the
advent of the newborn year. At the same
moment we may justly reflect that of all
this vast congregation, and Of all the lands
that they inhabit no people and no
country have so high, so favorable or so
enviable point of observation as we who
dwell in America possess, and among the
years that have elapsed since our Declaration
of Independence, 1870 has yielded the most
practical and convincing proofs of this grand
fact. But it is not alone that we have been SO
wonderfully restored to national health and
strength, after one of the most gigantic and
destructive civil conflicts that the world has
ever witnessed, nor yet that our agriculture,
trade, manufactures, internal improvements,
spread of reclaimed domain and intelligent and
active population have SO grandly ad-
vanced during the bygone twelvemonth. The
most glorious triumph Of all is the progress
eminent all-embracing, incontestible-that we
have made in peace and liberty, when con-
trasted with the rest of the human race, in the
wonderful year whose last hours passed be-
yond while these lines were hard sniny into
type.
The year 1870 will undoubtedly be entered
upon the record of the nineteenth century as
the most prolific of international change
and of imposing events that has rolled
by since the period of the first
French Revolution, and in many of
its relations and effects it has surpassed that
wonderful period. The spaces, numbers in
telligence and results that its political convul-
sons have directly influenced, are incompara-
bly, greater than they were one hundred years
ago. Tie States and empires then called
great were pigmies compared to their extent
and forces of to-day. If Great Britain has,
since then, lost her American colonies, she has
gained others Of far vaster immediate wealth
in India and Australia. France has stretched
forth her powerful arms iEto Algeria, Cochin
China, Madagascar and the South Seas; Rus
sia has added whole Kingdoms to her realm in
the East Italy has become first class
Power instead Of "a geographical expression; )"
Greece is independent; Egypt is, in all bat
diplomatic form, strong and enlightened
State; China and Japan have both been
opened to outside traffic and treaty South
and Central America and the adjacent islands
are series OF empires and republics, and even
on the far north of this Continent a growing
viceregal Dominion has sprung up where then
bat a few sparse settlements were struggling
into existence. The channels of intercourse
and the count of human beings are, compared
with their aggregate in 1892, as five to one;
and these again are multiplied indefinitely by
iron nerves and highways and the miracles of
the electric force and steam. The kissing
engine and the thrilling wire are the true
democratic wizards which have shattered the
images Of monarcbical superstition and have
propagated their kind with bewildering
rapidity wherever, like Cadmus in modern
garb, they have cast not idle pebbles, but iron
bars, the crystallized representatives of the
peoples sweat and toll, and planted their
standards to attract aud subjugate the in
visible spirit of the storm. Revolution and