A RETROSPECT.

Press, Volume XVIII, Issue 2551, 5 July 1871, Page 3

A RETROSPECT.

[From the Pall Mall Gazette, May I.]

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 ofthe Ist of May, 1851, was confidently supposed at- the time to mark the commencement of an era of universal peace. The Commissioners, in their 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 human race by encouraging the arts of peace; " 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 ascribejthe universal peace .to the direct interposition of the Almighty: " It is or Thee, O Lord, that nations do not lift up the sword against each, mother; nor learn 'war any more,":: If t the Primate could have foreseen the events of the next few years,. we may, assume, that he would certainly haveabstained from indulging in what even then was an inaccurate a|aertipn f and; would have forborne to "" inierpisitfon of,the cessation in" the intrigues and quarrels of the": human familyi . JWitbin two years and a half of the Archbishop's prayer the first; shot was fired in! ; the war; Two yeprs and four [ months .more elapsed before, on ; the; 29th of February, 1856, hostilities were suspended: In a little more than a year afterwards, ia March, 1857, the Bengal army mutinied, and it wasnot till the 3rd of; May, 1809; that the mutiny ,wa& entirely suppressed by Sir Hope Grant's final vjctpry. A month before the Austrians had crossed the Ticino, and the French had' commenced their brilliant campaign in Lombardy. From May, 1860 to March, 1861, Garabaldi was engaged in destroying the Neapolitan kingdom. Only a month afterwards the Civil War commenced in, "JlrnerlbaE, which was only concluded by the sur-

render of Kirby-Smith in May, : 186$. The summer of 1866 was memorable for the Austro-Prussian war; theauth mil of 18G7 for the attack of Garibaldi on Rome. La«t year's events are too fresh on all our memories to need reeapifuJation. Aud it must be remembered that this category of wars does not include such as tho 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 in. Creteto and Poland, some of which we have omitted as' synchronous with those wars which we have instanced, and others because they aro less likely to bo permanently remembered by our readers. Such events aa these ought surely to teach us that even when war seems moat 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 to'enable us to "leara war."