CHAPTER IX.

_The Crystal Palace—Opening, etc._

Having frankly confessed my prejudices against the Great Exhibition, I must now as frankly own that I am ashamed of them. The whole thing was indeed strongly marked by the spirit of the age, and was, therefore, such as no one who sees and understands the faults of our own times can enthusiastically admire. Yet, little by little, I saw so much in it which illustrates the better elements of that spirit, and which is capable of being directed to noble results in behalf of the whole family of man, that, to some degree, I rejoice in the complete success of that splendid experiment. I was nicely punished for my folly at the outset, in losing the pageant of the opening, of which I took no pains to be a spectator, until it was quite too late to obtain admittance. If I lost any thing, however, I suffered in good company. I am astonished, at this time, to remember the indifference of many Englishmen, in different ranks of society, to the entire project, until its success was demonstrated. From _The Times_, which was a great grumbler at first, and from old _Blackwood_, which railed at the _Temple of Folly_, down to the shopkeepers in Regent-street, there was a wide-spread feeling of contempt for Prince Albert’s hobby, as likely to cost more than it would come to: while sincere apprehensions were entertained that something revolutionary and bloody might be the result of the collection of vast bodies of men, with a large proportion of foreign republicans among them, into the bosom of the Metropolis. How idle all this seems now! At the time, I am sure, very few were satisfied that it was altogether idle; and I fancy the Queen and Prince Albert themselves wished the thing well over, for some time before it was fairly inaugurated.

I went into Oxfordshire without making any plans to see the show, and remained over the morning of the first of May, to hear the hymn on the Tower of Magdalen. This was the day of the opening of the Palace, and accordingly I immediately hastened to London, to see how it would end. Riot and murder were the very least of evil results predicted by some, and our American press had anticipated nothing less than general pillage and insurrection. On arriving in London, I found that if I had only secured my ticket beforehand, I might have been at the show, as well as at the Oxford solemnity; for it was yet early in the day. Immense masses of men were pouring into Hyde Park, as I drove down the Edgeware road, and the crowd and crush of vehicles was not less surprising. It was with difficulty that I made my way through Piccadilly, especially as my cab emerged into the vicinity of Hyde-Park-corner. The police were everywhere on duty, but there was no mob, properly speaking, to require their interference. Thousands of the humbler classes, men, women and children, in their best clothes, were endeavouring to enjoy the holiday, and get a sight of the Queen. That was all, at this hour—and so it continued through the day. Towards noon, the crowd in the Park grew oppressive, and the slightest accident might have bred a confusion, in which life would have been sacrificed; but there was absolutely nothing but good-natured pushing and thrusting, and the occasional squall of an infant, whose mother was more engaged to save her tawdry finery, than to secure the safety of her child.

Finding myself one of the people, I resolved to enjoy a nobody’s share of the sight-seeing. Some English friends whom I found in the same predicament, and who assured me I had lost nothing worth a guinea to see, volunteered to accompany me into the Park, where they thought it not unlikely the most exciting scenes of the day would come off. So then, we elbowed and pushed our progress into the Park, and were elbowed and pushed in return quite as much as we cared to be. At last, it became impossible to fight it out three abreast, and we agreed to “divide and conquer.” The last I saw of my friends, one was here and the other there, amid a crowd of hats and faces swaying about, with exclamations and entreaties in behalf of coats and shins, and toes, and umbrellas. We looked laughing adieus, and saw each other no more. At length I found myself in the line of the Queen’s procession, and hired a convenient standing-place to see her progress to the Palace. On she came at last, preceded by those superb horse-guards, who dashed magnificently through the crowd, and were themselves the finest military spectacle I had ever beheld. Several of the Court carriages followed, one containing the Crown-Prince of Prussia; and then came the Queen’s, distinguished by many horses, coachmen, and footmen; the coach itself glittering with gold; the horses splendidly caparisoned; and the servants in showy liveries, with powdered hair, cocked-hats, and immense nosegays thrust into their bosoms. The cockneys, however, had expected to see the coronation coach, and were accordingly much disappointed with this modicum of show. Then followed more horse-guards, kicking up the gravel into the faces of the plebeians, and sinking, with their haunches to the earth, as their riders spurred them into proud prancings and curvettings, as if to intimate that the very beasts knew they were attending the Sovereign of many Empires to a festival of all nations. Whew! how they dashed along! and soon a discharge of artillery announced her arrival at the Palace; nor was it long before another discharge of the guns proclaimed the ceremony concluded, and the Great Exhibition opened. Everybody looked happy and contented; and everybody, with wife and children in the bargain, appeared to be on the spot.

As the royal carriage passed, I observed the Queen to be apparently uneasy, and apprehensive. The glass was up, and she was giving herself that constant motion which was Louis Philippe’s art of safety on like occasions. Without any distrust of her people, she may have remembered the attempt of the madman, Oxford, and she knew that any similar desperado must have a better chance of success on a day like this. I saw the little princes, and the royal head, therefore, to great disadvantage; but fortune favored me with a fuller satisfaction on their return. While everybody was pressing towards the Crystal Palace, I now turned against the tide, and gradually extricating myself from the Park, passed down Constitution Hill, and finally arrived at Buckingham Palace just in time to get a full view. The crowd here was very light, and I saw everything to great advantage. The Queen was evidently in high spirits, the glass down, and she bowing most maternally. I was within a few feet of her, and lifted my hat in homage to the broad, good-humoured smile with which she seemed to regard her enthusiastic subjects. The grand-daughter of George the Third looks exceedingly like her venerable ancestor, and a glance suggested to me what must have been his appearance in his younger days. Her features are by no means unfeminine, though far from delicate; she was a little flushed, and hence less fair than she is painted; but her exhilaration at the happy conclusion of her morning, gave an attractiveness to her expression which she lacked when I afterwards saw her, on more splendid occasions, languid with the routine of a drawing-room at St. James’s, and sick enough, I dare say, of its heartlessness and formality. After the Queen passed into her residence, I supposed the pageant ended, but shortly after there arose a shout, which convinced me I was mistaken. I turned, and saw her exhibiting herself to the people in the balcony of the palace, in the centre of a very splendid group, and with the little Prince of Wales, and the Princess Royal, at her side. The Princess Alice, the Crown Prince of Prussia, and the Duchess of Sutherland, were in the splendid circle, but the Prince Consort I did not discover. The shouts of the people were not so vociferous as I should have anticipated; and the royal party soon withdrew. I afterwards learned that this was a novel proceeding, and was meant by her Majesty as an act of most gracious and particular condescension. I trust my republican interest in the spectacle was none the worse, however, for being wholly unsuspicious of the gratitude with which it should have been mingled. I looked not without reverence, at the Sovereign Lady, and not without solemn thoughts of futurity at her lovely little family of children. But the influence of my country was so far upon me, that I never conceived at the time, that her Majesty was doing more than might have been expected of her, in honour of her loyal and most decorous people.

To Americans in London the Crystal Palace soon became a sore subject. We were the laughing-stock of nations; and I confess, when I first visited the vast desert at the American end of the show, in which many of the articles exhibited were even worse than the lack of others which ought to have been there, I felt myself disposed, for a minute, to blush for my country. It would have been the very poverty of patriotism to plead that a few items of our contribution were of very great merit; and self-respect would not permit me to multiply apologies, or even explanations. What was really good spoke for itself. What was bad, or indifferent, was simply inexcusable. The fact is, our progress in the arts of civilization was not at all represented; and after observing the things which attracted attention, from other countries, I felt sorry that nobody had thought of making similar exhibitions for us. It really pained me to reflect, that I had seen much more attractive exhibitions in our provincial towns; and I was quite sure that one day’s work, in each of our great cities, might have sufficed to collect a far better show of industrial produce out of the ordinary market. Fortunately, the yacht “America” came in at the last moment to “pluck up our drowning honour by the locks;” and if we could but stop bragging about it, that would be enough, until some future occasion may afford us an opportunity of showing what American mechanics and manufacturers are able to achieve in their various departments of skill and ingenuity.

I was pained to observe the feeling engendered by the Exhibition between England and America, and by the highly-irritated recriminations of ill-bred representatives of both countries, on the spot. On the other hand, I was sometimes amused by the ludicrous attempts of some well-meaning Englishman to be complimentary. He would choke out something about the “Greek Slave,” and then pass rapidly to speak of his delight in meeting with a model of Niagara Falls: an execrable thing, which only served still further to confuse the unusually mudded ideas of that prodigy of Nature, entertained by the English generally. As it was simply an immense map of the Niagara, it of course represented the Falls on such a scale as entirely deprived them of sublimity and beauty: and so, when the speaker would enlarge upon the magnificence of this feature of our country, I usually took some satisfaction in confessing that the better half of the Falls is, after all, on the British side, and that I was sorry he could find nothing to praise that was entirely ours. The only instance in which I encountered rudeness upon this subject, was an absurd one, in a railway carriage, when a Paisley manufacturer, a little the worse for whiskey, and very rich in his brogue, after some impudent remarks, which led me to decline conversation, stuck his face into mine, with the startling announcement—“_ye can’t mak’ shawls in your country!_”

On my first visit to the Exhibition, I must own that my prejudices were utterly dispelled. The meagre effect of the exterior was forgotten in the enchantment of the view within. It was a high-priced day, when rank and fashion had the scene to itself. The place where the interest of the whole was concentrated was that beneath the transept, commanding, as it did, the entire view; and where the great trees, preserved within the building, furnished a comparative measure of the whole. The crystal roof showered a soft day-light over the immense interior; the trees and curious plants gave it a cheerful and varied beauty; the eye bewildered itself in a maze of striking objects of luxury and taste; musical instruments, constantly playing, bewitched the ear, their tones blending, from various distances and directions, in a kind of harmonious discord; fountains were gurgling and scattering their spray, like diamonds and pearls; and, amid all, moved the high-born beauty, and the rank and pride of England, mixed with auxiliar representatives of foreign states, but not unconscious of their own superiority, even while they seemed to forget that they were insular, in their easy transition through the pavilion, from England to France, and from France to Austria, and from Austria to India and China. I thought of “the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them:” did the vision which the Tempter disclosed to the Man of Sorrows glitter more ravishingly than this?

But others have written so well on this magnificent spectacle, that I must not enlarge upon my own impressions. It grew upon me, to the last. It was an encyclopædia, which I am glad to have consulted. It was, in fact, a great piece of luck to a traveller. How much of Europe it showed him in a day: how many leagues of travel it would have cost to have gained the information, with respect to divers countries, which here unfolded itself beneath one mighty roof! I am convinced, moreover, that its influence, on the whole, was good. It was opened and dedicated by prayer, and the blessing of the Primate; it was presided over by the religious spirit of the British Empire; it illustrated the pacific and domestic influences of a female reign; it furnished a striking proof of the stability and self-reliance of the Government, as well as of the tranquil prosperity of the state; it united many nations in a common and friendly work; it furnished a touching but sublime commentary upon the lot of man, to eat bread in the sweat of his brow, and it redeemed itself from the spirit of that other Babel, upon the plains of Shinar, by bearing, inscribed upon its catalogue, the text—“The earth is the Lord’s, and all that therein is: the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein.”

On one of the days which admitted “the people,” I took my stand in a corner of the quiet gallery, over the transept, and looked down on the swarming hive with a meditative pleasure. England was there, city and country, the boor and the shopkeeper, and all sorts and conditions of men. The unspeakable wealth of nations stood secure, and glittered, untouched, among them all. All men are brothers, indeed; and tears came to my eyes as I surveyed those sons of toil gazing for a moment upon luxury, and trying to extract a day’s satisfaction in beholding the pomps and vanities which Providence helps them, so sternly, to renounce. Each soul—worth infinitely more than all; and the purchase of the blood that is beyond all price! Oh God, how solemn the theatre, in which such a scene was presented to my eye; and what thoughts it gave me of glory and of vanity, of human joys and sorrows; of the speedy day when all that multitude shall have passed from a world as transient as the show which then amused them; and of the day not very distant, when they, with all nations, shall stand before the Son of Man!

It is a good thing that the better counsel prevailed, and that the Crystal Palace, when it had served its purpose, was taken utterly away. It is now a thing of history, so far as Hyde-Park is concerned; and the Transept Tree will long be its best memorial to surviving generations. In this way its memory will have a moral value, till the end of time. A bubble, like the world, it has glittered and vanished. An epitome of nations and kingdoms, and manners and men, it has served its purpose, and been removed by its imperial architects. Who can doubt that, in like manner, when their noble ends are accomplished, the heavens shall be folded up as a vesture; and “the great globe itself, with all which it inherits,” shall forever pass away, according to His promise, who is King of kings and Lord of lords?

It would have been pity not to have seen poor _Jack-in-the-Green_, on a May-day, in London; and yet I had quite forgotten the sweep, and his right to a share in the festival, until I saw the sight itself, as I chanced to be passing through one of the streets of the West-end. A chimney of green things, it seemed to be; walking along, and nearly or quite concealing the occupant, who gave it motion, while a crowd of boys did honour to the show. The game seemed to consist, in pausing before certain doors, and soliciting a gratuity. Certain it is, that no one can grudge a penny to such an applicant, or behold the one day’s sport of the poor climbing-boy, without wishing he may succeed in trying to make the most of it. Lady M. W. Montague is said to have invented this beneficial anniversary of sweepdom, and the moving obelisk of green seemed to me no unmeet memorial of her benevolence. Better this, than the column of the Place Vendôme, unless it be better to be remembered for levying a world-wide tribute of blood and tears, than for giving one new object of hope and joy to the children of sorrow!

During the residue of the week I was engaged in the ordinary lionizing, but met several agreeable persons in company, dining one day at the Rectory of St. George’s East, and another day at Clapham. My first impressions of the enormous extent of London were gained in passing between these limits, and yet as vast a suburb lay unexplored beyond the former, as I had travelled through to reach the latter. Clapham is called four miles from the metropolis, but one reaches it, by omnibus, with no very clear idea of having left London at all. And so, in every direction, London seems interminable, and villages known to us from books as highly rural, and as affording delightful retreats from the city, are found, to our surprise, to be incorporated with the great Babel itself, and that by no means as its extremities.