The cosmopolitan effects of such an undertaking, if prosecuted to a successful close, it is impossible even approximately to estimate. The acceleration it will communicate to the already rapid progress of civilization in the Pacific is obvious. And no less obvious are the beneficial effects it will have upon the mutual relations of civilized states, seeing that the recognition of the independence and neutrality in times of general war of the canal and the region through which it passes, is indispensable to its establishment. We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of universal peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House respecting the forthcoming great exhibition of arts and industry, "Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end--to which, indeed, all history points--the realization of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirements placed within the reach of every body; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning." Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace.