The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1869.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 310, 2 January 1869, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1869.

The tale of the expiring year is for ever, under some aspects, the same. We ring out the old, and ring in the new, to the constantly repeated tune, which is, after all, a discord of regret and thankfulness, of pleasant and tragic reminiscences, of public and social sorrow, of public and social gratification. The epoch of twelve months, so minute in the history of the world, so vast/ oftentimes, in that of an individual, is full of much to rejoice over, and of much else to deplore. Among the great mercies of Heaven it is given to us that no season shall bo without its mitigating circumstances. We have popular depression closing sharp and bard and bitter around our Christmas holiday ; we have had both convulsions of nature and internecine troubles amongst us which have assumed very terrific aspects ; we have witnessed almost in our very midst dreadful afflictions of mankind and outrages upon humanity, the mere narration of which has harrowed our inmost souls ; a natural demand has been made upon us to open the sluices of charity and sympathy, and give of that fruit which never turns to ashes, and yet, considering all the circumstances of the colony, and the condition of many of our more pretentious neighbors, we have no just reason, at the commencement of 1869, to be other than ungrudgingly thankful for the blessiugs we enjoy. The year 1868, although so like in many of its characteristics other years which have preceded it and been remembered since time or memory begun, has bad its points of strangeness and varieiy. We may reckon up, if we please, a long account of calamity and crime, of political dissensions, of questions unsettled and perplexities likely to arise; and if history be written, the mind must wander through an immense complication of things to be feared and to be regretted. Still 1868 has been marked by other than disastrous details. For the vista of the vanishing year is necessarily a double one. We look down it, and a long procession is visible of woes, and wrongs, and anxieties; we look down it again, and the picture warms and glows before us of much to be thankful for, of much to compensate for whatever else has been melancholy. It is in this spirit that we would look back upon the little cycle that has just closed. We have it no longer with us; we have its annals and its recollections; there are among them, for all, many dear and many fatal dates; but principally, when any review of this kind is undertaken, we must turn to events and Bigns in which the general community feels an interest. The tale of the year from day to day, for individuals, is too minute, and even to sacred, to be considered. As it affects states, governments, and populations, however, as it bears upon great destinies and purposes^ as it casts the shadow of one generation before the footsteps of the next, the point.of time, the change from the last to the first hour of an era, atomic though it be in the chronicles of creation, ryet, marking for us ..the 'point of" cohr 'fluents V between ■ -two-- eternities,' has a V^p'^eami^^ltellsVan: i^;jfejpe^;'ia; |aU- : pf ;i^flte^^v- :yyV ; y:!;iy

Time was when the wish that the new year should be a prosperous one amounted almost to a ceremony. We keep up some among the ancient customs without perpetuating their sentiment. We say farewell to the departing, and welcome to the coming year, amidst mingled sounds of devotion and festivity, but the tale to be told is told after ail in the columns of the newspaper. There is the biography of the past twelve months ; there, varied and voluminous as a dictionary, in tragedy, in comedy, in melodrama, in debate and Statistics, in anecdote and illustration, is set forth the chronicle which for the future narrators must vainly pretend to epitomise. There is no * epitome mundf possible.in our age. The great globe is becoming in our knowledge of it, too enormous, and its archives are becoming too complex, as if the romances of the Thousand and One Nights were to be related a thousand and one times over again. Were it possible to write the narrative it would be even more impossible to read. A prodigious proportion of all that we learn, or hear, or see, must be forgotten. It is so in our daily existence, it is so in our newspaper reading, it is so in our constant study of the affairs around us. We have all to say, sometimes, with Sbakespere, 'Let darkness be tbe burier of the dead.' Even in this one year which has just tolled its own knell, what myriads of things have happened of isolated importance, the memory of which the world most willingly lets die! They float away with the time. We preserve our flotsam and jetsam from tbe wreck of forgetfuloess, and all the rest goes to oblivion. And why not? Sufficient for 1869, no doubt, will be its vexations without those of 1868 to make the account monstrous. Let us hope, while we offer our warmest wishes for the prosperity of our readers individually, that the new year's retrospect will give more that is good to look forward to, and less that is gloomy to brood over.