A RETROSPECT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 172, 22 July 1871, Page 4

A RETROSPECT.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette, May .1). Some of our readers have probably remembered that precisely twenty years have elapsed to-day since her Majesty opened the first great exhibition in Hyde Park. But the history of the twenty years which have intervened since then may have caused them, not unnaturally, to forget that the ceremony of Ist of May, J B5l, was confidently supposed nt the time to mark the commencement of an era of universal peace. The Commissioners, in the address to the Queen on the occasion, indulged in some neat remarks on the subject. Her Majesty was advised in similar language to express a hope that "the undertaking may conduce to the common interest of the humau race by encouraging the arts of ppace;" and the Archbishop of Canterbury was so much impressed with the circumstance that he ventured, in the prayer it was his duty to offer, to ascribe the universal peace to the direct interposition of the Almighty :— lt is of Thee, O Lord, that nations do not lift up the sword against each other, nor learn war any more." If the Primate could have foreseen the events of the next few years, we may assume that he would certainly have abstained from indulging in what even then was an inaccurate assertion, and would have forborne to ascribe to the direct interposition of the Deity a momentary cessation in the intrigues aud quarrels of the human family. Within two years and a half of the Archbishop's prayer the first shot was fired in the Russo-Turkish war. Two years and four months more elapsed before, on the 29th of February, 1856, hostilities were suspended. In a little more than a year afterwards, in March, 1857, the Bengal army mutinied, and it was not till the 3rd of May, 1859, that the mutiny was entirely suppressed by Sir Hope Grant's final victory. A month before, the Austriaus had crossed the Ticino, nnd the French had commenced their brilliant campaign in Lombardy. From May, 1860, to March, 1861, Garibaldi was engaged in destroying the Neapolitan kingdom. Only a month afterwards the Civil War commenced iv America, which was only concluded by the surrender of Kirby-Smith in May, 1865. The summer of 1866 was memorable for the Austro-Prussian war ; the autumn of 1867 for the attack of Garibaldi on Rome. Last year's events are too fresh on all our memories to need recapitulation. Aud it must be remembered that this category of wars does not include such a3 the Danish war, the Mexican war, our war with Persia in 1856, and with China in 1857, the Moorish war with Spain in 1860, and the insurrections iv Cretete and Poland, some of which we have omitted as synchronous with those wars which we have instanced, and others because they are less likely to be permanently remembered by our readers. Such events as these ought surely to teach us that even when war seems most improbable, it may be very near us, and that consequently, however desirable it may be to encourage "the arts of peace and industry," true wisdom ought to induce us to spare a little both of time and money t<Kena*ble us to " learn war."