AMERICA

New Zealander, Volume 1, Issue 29, 20 December 1845, Page 1

AMERICA

The Salem Gazette of the 22"nd July last has the following account of a " Tremendous Fire " in New York :— The mails of S ttnrday and Sunday brought accounts of an awful conflagration, in one of (he richest parts of the cit> of New York, by which 250 lo 300 stores and dwelling houses, with their contents, of an average value, probably, of twenty or thirty thousand dollars, are laid in ashes. The<aguregate loss is estimated at from five to ten millions of dollars. The lire broke out before 3 o'clotf ,in the morning, and aboutan hour afterwards its ravages were suddenly spread, m 'every direction, by 'the explosion of a thousand bags, of saltpetre, and immediately afterwards of .H gasometer which was near by, We take from. 'several of the New York papers of Saturday, 6iich portions of their several descriptions, as will give a, pretty clear view of the extent of the disr aster. It was at first apprehended that- many livet wer.e lost, but we do not find any positive • evidence of more than the two deaths mentioned.

Time.— There are very few words much ofte^er in our mouths than that short .but most important word, Time — In one sense, the thought of it seems to j mingle itself with almost every thing we do \t is the , 16ns; measure of labour, expectation, and pain : it is the scauty measure of our rest and joy. Its shortness ,or its length are continually given as our reasou for doing, or leaving undone, the various woiks which ■concern our station, our calling, our family, our souls. And yet with all this frequent mention of it, thereare perhaps few things about which men really think less:' few things, I mean, upon which they have -less real settled thought;. The more «c do think upon it, the deeper and the more difficult will be the subjects which will open before us — the richer too \yill they prove m matters for most profitable meditation. Indeed even those which I have spoken of aa mure abstruse and difficult are full of the most practical interest. What Time is—which it is most difficult tp conceive, if we try it by more exact thought than 'we commonly bestow on it, for even as we try to catch it, though but t\u idea, it slips by us.—Jlrekdeacon Hftlberforce.