midst a pleasure garden with great trees, and fresh flowers, and gushing fountains; more like the work of an Eastern magician than of veritable human hands. The Glass Palace, covering 18 acres of ground, consists of a transept and nave. The transept is 408 feet long, surrounded by a semi-cylindrical vault of 72 feet in diameter. The nave is 1,848 feet long, 64 feet high, and 72 feet wide. The total area of the ground floor is 772,784 square feet, and that of the galleries, which extends nearly a mile in length, is 217,100 square feet. The cubic contents of the building are 33 millions of feet. Thirty miles of gutters for carrying off the water, 200 miles of sash bars, upwards of 4,000 tons of iron, 896,000 superficial feet of glass, weighing 400 tons, were used in its erection. But no general description in words and figures can convey a just idea of its external magnificence or of its internal splendor. "Within its precincts," says a late reviewer," are displayed the productions of a planet; its diamonds and its gems; its gold and its metals; its coal and its minerals; the ancient and the recent productions of its soil; the rich spoils of its animal and vegetable life. Around them stand in proud array the noblest efforts of human genius; the lifeless portraiture of forms divine; the brilliant fabrics, and the wondrous mechanisms which science and art have combined their powers to create." Here were the precious things of Heaven; the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and the precious things put forth by the moon, and the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things of the lasting hills. The gigantic edifice and its innumerable and ever-changing pictures which from above and from below met the eye of the hundreds of thousands that wandered in astonishment through its crystal labyrinths--the splendor of its decorations --the magnitude, number, and variety and value of its contents, altogether made it the most wonderful exhibition ever put forth by the human race. I remark: II. The Great Industrial Exhibition will have a favorable influence on mankind in several ways. 1. This exposition of the industry of all nations exerts a most beneficial influence on the taste, knowledge, commerce, and physical welfare of mankind, by encouraging the useful and ornamental arts. An insatiable love of gain characterizes all commercial ages, and the more so as the spirit of trade is successful in materializing itself. A commercial people may not bow down to images of carved wood, of gold and silver; and yet their god may be "the vice, the saw, and the hammer," their homage may be to things that are seen and temporal, which gratify the lust of the North British Review. And here, once for all, the author wishes to say that he has availed himself of whatever suggestions he has found appropriate in the various publications about the World's Fair that have fallen into his hands. and sky; the "power, the beauty and the majesty" which were seen on sea and shore; the songs of the birds, the spring in the heavens and the spring in the heart-everything was in unison with the occasion. Winter would not have been appropriate, for the arts are not withered and dead; Autumn would not have been more so, for they are not declining or falling into the weakness of age; Summer would scarcely be suitable, as they have not yet obtained the full development and ripeness of maturity; but Spring, sweet Spring, was the time to celebrate their beauties, for they, too, are in the era of bud and blossom. In the Spring we see the resurrection and the awakening; the dead things of earth arise and live; and it was the time for the multitudinous peoples of the earth to awake from dreams of selfish gain, and progress into a new and higher existence--the life of Art. Nature in this sweet season is like a musician performing some delightful prelude. "Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, comes dancing from the East, and leads with her the flowery May." It was then a proper season for the nations to go a Maying. In treating this subject, 1 remark, I. The Great Exhibition was the net result of what man has done; it was the complement of his progress in the industrial arts. The Crystal Palace, as it stood in its glory, was a palpable proof of man's progress in winning a world from the wilderness, and himself from ignorance and barbarism. It was not a mere statesman's trick, or a mercantile necessity; but the exponent of what the world, in a time of general peace, by the use of its awakened wits, and the employment of its skilful hands, could accomplish. Time was when man stood in the great workshop of this earth, the Heaven-appointed lord of all, and yet miserably poor; for as yet he had not discovered the character of the materials about him, nor invented instruments by which those materials could be appropriated. The useful arts were born of human capacity. They are the children of human want. And as they are a birth, so are they a growth. They are not like Adam, perfect in their creation, but, like all Adam's children, they have passed through infancy and childhood--varied stages of progress and conditions of life. Man's mission on earth is to subdue it. "The Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken." Such is the human constitution both of body and mind, that among the very first sensibilities of our race there must have arisen occasions and causes for the useful arts. The nature of the world we inhabit, and of our social habits and religious capacities, calls for such supplies as the useful arts only can furnish. As it is possible for whole tribes of men to live on the estuary of a great river, witness the ebb and flow of the tide, employ the current for the transportation of merchandise, and use the water for quenching their thirst, and for the supply of their food, and yet never ask whence it comes, and wither it goes; so it may be that multitudes are engaged in industrial labor, and enjoying the fruits of human skill and toil, who have never inquired whence the varied arts of civilized life have arisen, nor whither they should send their aims and affections. The ineffable Creator who endowed man with genius and talents, and taught him to get wealth, and gives him corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplies his silver and gold, is forgotten. Divine Providence is not more intimately connected with the creatures that work by instinct, as many seem to think, than with those that labor under the guidance of reason. The highest art is seen in the Supreme Architect's great works, the human constitution and the universe. Human arts are but imitations of the Divine, and if there be human arts to which nothing Divine is found to correspond, it is because man's ingenuity has become depraved, or because we do not as yet know all the patterns or models that are in the heavens. There are real sympathies and correspondences that are yet unknown. The links or means of the correspondence are not yet discovered. From the endowment of our creation, and from our circumstances, it is palpable that God intended man to invent, to discover, to apply, to manufacture, to produce, and to exchange products, until he has exhausted the resources of the planet in which the Creator has given him a temporary home. The fruits of the earth by man's toil, and his manufacture, and their exchange, are by the appointment of the Author of nature, and in confornity to his work. The earth, being diversified in soil and climate, produces in one country an abundance, while another is in want of the comforts of life. Rivers and seas, winds, steam, and electricity, are given to facilitate human intercourse, and man's wants, and his love of society, his desire of gain, and love of knowledge, urge him to the diligent use of all the means within his grasp to increase articles of consumption and luxury, and the result is arts and commerce. The arts, then, are not antagonistic to the Bible. On the contrary, religion teaches us to recognize God as present in the mill, in the waiving harvest, in the factory, in the workshop, in the counting-house, and in the Great Exhibition. The principles of Christ's holy Gospel are applicable to the spheres, and to the toils of industry. No narrow limits were prescribed by the Creator to the abilities and exertions of man. The whole universe is but a hand put forth into space, all of whose fingers point to God; or, as the immortal Plato has expressed it: "The world is God's epistle to mankind." The progress of the arts resembles that of a river, whose waters arise and increase from a large confluence of streams. The construction of the human hand is most admirably fitted for mechanic arts-from the wrist, which is its base, to the nails = REN eye and the pride of life, and they that will be rich may fall into diverse temptations, which lead to many hurtful lusts, and drown men's souls in perdition. Still, true piety has "the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." It teaches us to look favorably upon the progress of the arts, useful and ornamental, and to be thankful for talent in invention and cleverness in contrivance, and to remember our Creator in all that improves, elevates, and adorns the condition of man in the present stage of his existence. The sight of so many productions of art must have exercised the judgment, inspired the admiration, and chastened and guided the sensibilities of the mind as to artistic beauty, and enlarged the acquaintance of mankind with modern inventions, and furnished subjects for thought, reflection, and improvement, which will stimulate to new discoveries and combinations which shall yet fill up the history of human achievements. "As Spring's unfolded blooms so the large collections of earth's choicest things exposed to the gaze and study of mankind cannot fail to be improved by them in their studios, and workshops, and mills. Here the sage and the artist of every clime, of every color, and of every faith, were engaged in studying the productions of each other's country, pondering over each other's labors, which they had essayed to do under the sun, and sharing each other's wisdom, and wiser grew on "the mission of the ages and the long result of time." For truly was this Palace of the arts a cosmopolitan gymnasium for the world, and a temple of Concord, in which a thousand hearts beat as one, and a thousand anthems issued from twice ten thousand tongues. Lord Bacon's germinant idea has been realized. He thought it would be conducive to the advancement of human knowledge, if we had "a calendar resembling an inventory of the estate of man, of all inventions which are now extant, and out of which doth naturally result a note what things are yet impossible, or not yet invented." In the Palace of Glass we have the very thing-the huge household-book of the world's furniture, bound in glass. But it fails in one thing which Lord Bacon wanted. It does not show us what is impossible. The advancement of the arts, industrial and luxurious, tends to the prosperity of mankind. The discoveries, which are the property of the wealthy only at first, descend slowly and imperfectly, but certainly, to the poorer classes of society, as the knowledge of the arts and inventions of mankind is more generally diffused, and applied to the comfort and elegancies of domestic life. It can no longer be with Christian nations, as it was with the most civilized nations of antiquity, that their masses should remain comparatively barbarous. The barriers of caste are broken down. The sum of the joys and sorrows of the million, are now the ocean that swells over the globe and gives it its character. Even those arts which seem remote from the poor man's fireside, effectually contribute to the perfec of manufactures, which 'either furnish him with employnt, or adorn his rural habitation. The pursuits of immediate lity, in clearing the forest lands or in toiling at the mill, and of refined pleasure, however far separated from each other, under constitutional law and free trade, alike combine in exalting a nation's welfare. Mechanical skill, to use the words of Prince Albert, is now "wedded to high art." The multitudes of civilized nations have risen in education and social position, so that, what were luxuries some years ago, are now necessaries; and thus the demand upon industrial ingenuity has greatly increased. And the pressure of the utilitarian tendencies of the times makes inventive thought flow rapidly into facts. And the inventor, the manufacturer, the farmer, and the artisan, are consequently rising in social estimation. The men of glory do not now belong exclusively to the army and navy. Watt and Fulton and their successors share largely the thoughts and the praise of the world. In the days of Asaph, a man was famous according as he had "lifted up axes upon the thick trees." Those were good and honest days. To be a gentleman then, it was not necessary never to have touched an implement of labor. The Great Exhibition has done much to correct an erroneous and morbid standard, and restore us to the proper idea of the nobility of labor. Its works of art and utility, valued at two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, were not the product of white kid opera-goers, club-loungers, indolent, aristocratic, pleasure-loving consumers of earth's good things. They were the noble incarnation of the power of the stalwart, healthy hands of the WORKERS of our race, who are as superior to the mere purse-proud drones, as the finest Sevre's porcelain is to the unbaked clay. In the Crystal Palace was seen the connection between science and art. It was the practical application of philosophy that gave birth to the manifold kinds of machines, which have at once abridged the toils and improved the products of human skill. Science has given beauty and adaptation to almost all the works of art. Phidias, it is true, succeeded Aristotle, and Michael Angelo came before Lord Bacon; yet Science has ever proved herself the friend of those arts which minister immediately to the enjoyments of mankind. Nor can any sagacity anticipate, or fancy conceive, the yet future enlargement of human science, especially in its minute details, to be derived from the reflections of scholars, artistes, and philosophers, and especially of farmers and mechanics, who have been to the |