It is only during the present century and within the memory of man that in France and Russia the welfare of the people has become the steady object of diplomacy, and this because any other object would now be ruinous. But it is chiefly in America that the most wonderful advance has been made, and it is here, and at the present moment, that the most tremendous struggle has arisen between the adherents of the old faith and the new. In the South, the old feudal baron under a new name, in the North the man of labor and of science, fight again the battle of might and right--the one strong in ignorance, the other stronger in knowledge. Who can doubt what the end thereof shall be? Amid storms and darkness, through death and hell-carnivals, the great truth has ever held its way onwards, slowly, for its heritage is eternal Time, but oh! how surely. And yet there be those who doubt the end and the issue! Doubt--oh, never doubt! For this faith all martyrs have died, in this battle all men have, knowingly or unknowingly, lived--they who fought against it fought for it--for of a verity there was never yet on earth one active deed done which tended not towards the great advance, and to bring on the great jubilee of Freedom. THE EDWARDS FAMILY. Among the surviving octogenarians of New York and its vicinity, there are few of such interesting reminiscence as one who is passing an honored old age at his residence on Staten Island. Those who live in Port Richmond will have anticipated his name, and will perceive at once that we refer to the Hon. Ogden Edwards. Judge Edwards is of an ancient and noble stock, being grandson of the author of the treatise on the _Freedom of the Will_. The family emigrated from England with the first colony of the Puritans, having previously to this suffered persecution in one of its members. This man--a minister--had an only son, who became the founder of a line illustrious for genius and piety. The latter of these traits was illustrated in the lives of both Daniel Edwards, of Hartford, and his son Timothy, who was for sixty years pastor of the church at Windsor, but in the person of Jonathan Edwards we see the outcropping of genius. He was the son of Timothy, and followed his father's profession in an obscure New England village, whose meadows were washed by the waters of the Connecticut.