The Palace of Glass and the Gathering of the People: A Book for the Exhibition
Date: 2021-02-08T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Crystal Palace (Great Exhibition; 1851; London; England); Great Exhibition (1851 : London; Progress -- Religious aspects -- Christianity

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Title: The Palace of Glass and the Gathering of the People: A Book for the Exhibition

Author: John Stoughton

Release date: February 8, 2021 [eBook #64495]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64495

Credits: Transcribed from the 1851 Religious Tract Society edition by David Price. Many thanks to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Local Studies, for allowing their copy to be used for this transcription

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PALACE OF GLASS AND THE GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE: A BOOK FOR THE EXHIBITION ***

Transcribed from the 1851 Religious Tract Society edition by David Price.  Many thanks to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Local Studies, for allowing their copy to be used for this transcription.

THE
PALACE OF GLASS
AND THE
GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE.

A BOOK FOR THE EXHIBITION.

BY THE
REV. JOHN STOUGHTON.

Humani generis progressus,
Ex communi omnium labore ortus,
Uniuscujusque industriæ debet esse finis:
Hoc adjuvando,
Dei optimi maximi voluntatem exsequimur.

The progress of the human race,
Resulting from the common labour of all men,
Ought to be the final object of the exertion of each individual.
In promoting this end,
We are carrying out the will of the great and blessed God.

LONDON:
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,
DEPOSITORY, 56, PATERNOSTER-ROW, AND 65, ST. PAUL’S
CHURCHYARD.

1851.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Writer of the following pages has, from the first announcement of the project, taken a sunny view of the nature and tendency of the Great Exhibition.  Originating in the disinterested suggestions of the Illustrious Prince Consort—designed and adapted to promote the interests of art and commerce, and the fellowship of nations—supported by persons, who, in addition to the distinctions of rank or wealth, are remarkable for knowledge, benevolence, and piety—promoted generally from a desire to advance the welfare of our country and mankind—responded to very extensively abroad as well as at home with manifest cordiality and good will—and calling forth and securing the prayers of Christians in reference to the undertaking—it appeared to the Author to warrant cheering and hopeful anticipations.  The wonderful scene on the day of opening—as must have been felt by those who have read the graphic descriptions of it in the public prints, and especially by those who were privileged to behold that unprecedented spectacle—was of a character to strengthen favourable expectations of the result of the enterprise.  The order, harmony, and mutual kindness manifested by the vast multitude on that occasion—the moral impression which it certainly made on many—and the religious element introduced into the august ceremonial, evidently awakening sympathy in thousands of hearts which then beat with strange emotion—surely may be regarded as tokens for good!

The Author is far from intending to assume a tone of confident prediction—remembering that only the Infinite and All-wise One can embrace the entire bearings and tendencies of human events—but he may be allowed to confess, that while he does not overlook the incidental evils to which such a vast gathering of the people may give rise, his hopes decidedly predominate over his fears.  The following pages, expressive of thoughts and feelings which are pervaded by the spirit thus indicated, are now commended to the candid attention of the reader, with an earnest prayer for the Divine blessing on their perusal.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

PAGE

THE POET’S DREAM

1

PART II.

CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT

29

PART III.

VOICES OF HOPE AND WARNING

51

PART IV.

ASSOCIATIONS, SECULAR AND SACRED

79

PART V.

BENEFICIAL RESULTS, PROBABLE AND POSSIBLE

115

PART VI.

LESSONS, PERTINENT AND PRACTICAL

145

PART I.
THE POET’S DREAM.

“The bard beholds the work achieved,
And, as he sees the shadow rise
Sublime before his wondering eyes,
Starts at the image his own mini conceived.”

Kirke White.

Five centuries ago there might have been seen in the streets of old London, one of those gifted mortals who are now and then sent into the world by the Father of spirits, to stamp their name upon the age in which they live, and to enshrine its memory amidst the splendours of their own genius.  With a deep and luminous insight into the scenes of nature, the works of art and the ways of men, did there look forth from those large bright eyes of his a poetic soul of an order high and rare.  As he passed along the highways of his native city, to which he tells us he had “more kindly love, and fuller appetite than to any other place on earth,” he was gathering materials for a living picture of his times; or rather forming a photograph representation of men around, catching in the magic mirror of his verse the evanescent forms and colours, lights and shades, of our Proteus-like humanity, and there retaining them in stedfast imagery for ever.

Chaucer, though unhappily as a writer not free from moral blemishes, was, like Hogarth, the great historic painter of his age, sketching not armies in battle, or parliaments in conclave, but a people in their costume and intercourse, their business and pastime, their private habits and daily life.  In turning over the black-letter volume of his works, we see and hear our ancestors, and talk with them.  It is as if the very glance of the eye, the quivering of the lip, and the tones of the voice, had by some strange process been preserved by this wonder-working artist.

But Chaucer often passed beyond the sphere of contemporary realities.  The lore of chivalry he was accustomed to weave into a rich tapestry of verse; and ideal realms, and groups of visionary beings, he was wont to sketch with the power and beauty of a Fuseli.  It was in one of the playful flights of his untiring fancy, that he touched on scenes and objects strangely associated with the occasion of this little book;—it occurs in a poem, well known as “Chaucer’s Dream.”  Throughout the wild revellings of his genius, which he has recorded in that production, it would be beside our present purpose to follow him.  The general plot and machinery of the tale are in the extravagantly symbolic spirit of the age,—utterly unlike what could happen at any period, and not at all entering within the range of our conceptions now.  In the nineteenth century a poet’s strangest vision would not be like his.  But amidst associations out of all congruity with modern times did the bard we have described fashion out a picture, almost the counterpart of what we have lived to witness embodied in the actual work of men.  He “had a dream which was not all a dream.”  He imagined, standing on an island, a structure, whose wall and gate were “all of glass:”

“And so was closed round about,
That leaveless none came in or out—
And of a suit were all the towers,
Subtilly carven, after flowers
Of uncouth colours, during aye—
That never been, or seen, in May.”

This island of the Crystal Palace he represents under the sovereignty of a beautiful lady, who becomes wedded to a royal knight, and he describes a festival celebrated in tents on a large plain, by

“The Prince, the Queen, and all the rest,”

amidst a wood between “a river and a well,” continuing for three months,—

“From early rising of the sun
Until the day was spent and done.”

The coincidence between these parts of the poet’s dream and the reality of 1851, with respect to the place, the Palace, the regal personages, and the period of the year, is singular enough: it is one of those remarkable exploits of thought, which appear sometimes in the form of reproductions of the past, and sometimes in the form of anticipations of the future,—exhibiting the counterpart of far distant things, now on the page of history, then in poetic strains, and again in the records of science—likenesses between what has been and what is, apparently without any connexion whatever: likenesses which baffle the effort to explain the law of their occurrence, and which seem to indicate the existence of unfathomable sympathies between minds in ages present and remote, and suggest to us yet once more the oft-told truth that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.  What was the precise form and fashion of the structure Chaucer pictured in his charmed isle we cannot tell; but we question whether, even in his boldest dreams, he ever saw aught so marvellous as that which the people of all lands are flocking, or will flock, to see in our Hyde Park the present summer.  Chaucer was not ignorant of the ways of building in the age in which he lived, for he was appointed clerk of the works at Windsor Castle, in the year 1390; but assuredly, among all the plans which were ever suggested by his genius, or adopted by his judgment, as capable of being reduced to realities, such a thing as the grand transparent Hall of Industry never entered his mind.

It may indeed be said, that every beautiful work of art was once a dream,—it floated in the imagination before it was fixed and made visible by the hand.  A picture by Corregio or Rubens is a painter’s dream transferred to canvass.  The Apollo Belvidere is a sculptor’s dream carved in marble.  Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is a poet’s dream committed to paper.  Strasburg Cathedral is an architect’s dream built up in stone.  Thousands of strange images arise in artistic minds which of necessity never find expression in any actual work; some, also, worthy of being set in ripe and lasting fruit, perish in the blossom: but all the great productions of ancient and modern times assuredly constitute a harvest, of which the seeds were only dreams.  To whatever order of genius the origin of the Crystal Palace belongs, it certainly embodies a beautiful dream, which in a happy hour lighted on the fancy of Mr. Paxton.  It was shaping itself into form during the few days he thus describes:

“It was not until one morning when I was present with my friend Mr. Ellis, at an early sitting in the House of Commons, that the idea of sending in a design occurred to me.  A conversation took place between us, with reference to the construction of the New House of Commons, in the course of which I observed that I was afraid they would also commit a blunder in the building for the Industrial Exhibition.  I told him that I had a notion in my head, and that if he would accompany me to the Board of Trade, I would ascertain whether it was too late to send in a design.  Well, this was on Friday, the 11th of June.  From London I went to the Menai Straits, to see the third tube of the Britannia Bridge placed, and on my return to Derby, I had to attend some business at the Board-room, during which time, however, my whole mind was devoted to this project; and, whilst the business proceeded, I sketched the outline of my design on a large sheet of blotting-paper.  Having sketched this design on blotting-paper, I sat up all night until I had worked it out to my own satisfaction.”

Thus was created in the inventor’s mind an image of his work, with a rapidity precursive of the speed with which the work itself has since been realized.  The dream grew up and bore its ripened fruits in a few hours: the Industrial Palace, in a few months, has attained its full perfection; so that, as if by miracle, it now looks like the old fig-tree,—

“Such as at this day to Indians known—
In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms,
Branching so broad and long, that on the ground
The bending twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother tree; a pillar’d shade,
High overarch’d, and echoing walks between.”

We do not know whether Mr. Paxton possesses what is generally understood by a poetic mind; but, certainly, no one who has gazed on the stupendous structure erected in Hyde Park, according to his plan, but must feel that a poetical idea there stands expressed.  So gigantic in its dimensions, simple in its form, and graceful in its details, it awakens a sense of vague wonder, which, on a careful survey of the object exciting it, subsides into calm, intelligent admiration.  It inspires a curiosity to examine into the parts and proportions of so strange an edifice—into the minute and delicate filling up of so bold an outline; and commends itself to the taste and judgment of the spectator, as it spreads out before his eye, like the pages of a volume, and reveals, on close inspection—

—“The subtle shining secrecies
Writ in the glassy margin of such books.”

Seen a little while ago, as the morning vapours rolled round its base,—its far stretching roofs, rising one above another, and its great transept, majestically arched, soaring out of the envelope of clouds, its pillars, window-bars, and pinnacles enamelled with rich hoar-frost, the trees around it all sparkling with the same bright ornament,—the structure looked literally a castle in the air, like some palace, such as one reads of in idle tales of Arabian enchantment, having about it all the ethereal softness of a dream,—being itself “the fabric of a vision,” rather than a structure of solid and enduring material.  Looked at from a distance at noon, when the sunbeams come pouring upon the terraced and vaulted top, it resembles a regal palace of silver, built for some eastern prince; when the sun at eventide sheds on its sides his parting rays, the edifice is transformed into a temple of gold and rubies; and in the calm hours of night, when “the moon walketh in her brightness,” the immense surface of glass which the building presents, looks like a sea or lake throwing back in flickering smiles the radiant glances of the queen of heaven.  Ever does it repose in its strong, though not stone-built, foundations—the very image of beauty and strength.

The antecedent of this great work—the parent construction, of which it is the offspring, nobler than its sire—had more than a dash of poetry about it.  The building we refer to is the glass conservatory at Chatsworth, contrived for the preservation of the gigantic water-lily, found on new-year’s day, 1837, on the river Berbice, in Demerara, and sent to England by sir Robert Schomburgh.  The arrival of the extraordinary plant, with its six-foot leaf, shaped like an elegant salver, and adorned with broad rims of green and crimson, was warmly welcomed by that patron of botanical science, the duke of Devonshire, and forthwith committed to the charge of Mr. Paxton, then and still the scientific and tasteful horticulturist-in-chief at the far-famed paradise of the Peak.  Improving upon all his former improvements in the arrangement of glass-houses, he contrived a fitting receptacle for this new specimen of the western flora, surnamed the “Victoria Regia,”—and “so well had everything been prepared for its reception, that it flourished as vigorously as if it had been restored to its native soil and climate.  Its growth and development were astonishingly rapid, for on the 9th of November a flower was produced a yard in circumference.  In little more than a month after the first seeds ripened, some of them were tilled; and on the 16th of February succeeding, young plants made their appearance.  The extraordinary lily obeyed nature’s law of development with such unexpected rapidity, that it outgrew the dimensions of its home in little more than a month.”  This circumstance gave rise to a new conservatory of much greater extent, out of which has grown the idea of the present, and much vaster one, for receiving the world’s industry—one which throws its predecessor into the shade, and which, in addition to its other wonders, included within its vitreous walls some fine old trees, above a hundred feet in height.

To return again to Chaucer; we cannot help thinking how much there is in this glass palace, and in what is connected with it, which would have seemed even to his credulous fancy, more strange and startling than any dream.  Whence all the glass could come, needful for a building composed chiefly of such material, and of length more than quadruple that of St. Peter’s Abbey at Westminster, would have sorely puzzled our architect and poet to divine, in days when glass windows were so little used, that his great contemporary, William of Wykeham, who built Windsor Castle, was hard put to it to find twelve glaziers to do the work there, and actually had to press men into the service from different counties!  The unity of principle, too, pervading the whole construction—everything in the great building being a dividend or multiple of twenty-four [14]—so different from the bold, yet not inharmonious, irregularity of the cathedrals, churches, and castles which Chaucer had seen; and the variety of uses sub-served by one and the same member of the edifice; columns serving the purpose of water-drains, and the floor being at once a ventilator and a dust-trap, securing conveniences of which he never thought, and strangely different from the cumbrous contrivances employed for such simple and necessary ends as were then contemplated,—would have startled and discomposed him with a long-enduring surprise.  And, then, the haste with which the beautiful dream has been wrought out into well-compacted wood and glass and iron, the few months taken for its completion—rapid as the growth of the Victoria Regia; and the thousands of men engaged in its erection,—the preparation of the parts before they were brought together,—the strange machinery employed in the preparation,—the fact of the structure serving as a scaffold for itself—and the small expense of the whole, not amounting to more than one halfpenny per cubic foot,—these items in the history of the building would surely have made him open his eyes and lift up his hands in wild astonishment.

But the strangeness of the dream ends not here.  We must think of what is included within this vast area, what is exhibited in its long aisles and galleries where are gathered and arranged the productions of every art in every clime—arts which five hundred years ago had no existence, and climes then undiscovered.  Articles, a list of which will fill a portly volume; the handiwork of man and woman in every sort of usable material.  Works of strength and skill for necessity and convenience—for comfort and luxury—for ornament and display—things carved, and moulded, and woven—vast and minute, bold and elegant, simple and elaborate, running through all the conceivable departments and grades of inventive industry!  Groups, heaps, masses of all manner of cunning work!

And the whole of the contents in this hive of the world classified according to the clime from which they come!  At the extreme east of the edifice one sees the productions of America, our young and ardent rival in ingenious toil.  Next are the fruits of rising art in Russia, with specimens of skilful labour sent by Norwegians and Swedes.  There are found rich stores from the shops of German craftsmen.  The Zollverein exhibits its treasures in close vicinity to these; and beyond are seen contributions from the provinces of Austria.  The Dutch, the Belgic, and the French vie with each other further on; and close to them, Portugal, Spain, and Italy also appear in friendly contest for the palm of pre-eminence.  Switzerland, in the contiguous space, spreads out her various wares, beside which Brazil and Mexico deposit their rich freights; and then Egypt, Turkey, China, Greece, Persia, and Arabia, in close neighbourhood, exhibit a harvest of oriental taste.  Crossing the transept, at once a garden and a refectory—where, beneath over-arching trees, and beside sparkling fountains, the spectator of this the world’s great horn of plenty may refresh himself with various delicacies—he is forthwith introduced to the products of the distant “Ind,” and the numerous ramifications of our colonial dependencies, to terminate at length this tour around the globe, performed under a case of glass, with a sight of the immense assemblage of our home manufactures, gathered from almost every town and village in the British Isles.  Nine miles of table-room are thus passed in review; and it would require days and weeks to circumnavigate this epitome of the manufacturing world, and only to glance with anything like intelligence at the various divisions of its affluent stores.  A traveller who has visited in detail the chief manufactories of European countries must feel himself to be in a kind of dream, when looking on these achievements of human industry brought together, not merely from the English provinces, and the European continent, but from the remotest regions of this and the other hemisphere.  A dream, then, indeed, would it have seemed to the father of English poetry, with his limited knowledge of geography and art, could he have paced along these spacious alleys, lined with the peaceful spoils of all the earth.

The sight of these interesting objects is suggestive of important reflections.  Imagining oneself left alone in the vast building—permitted to tread in silence the deserted halls—what musings might arise relative to themes awfully beautiful, which the giddy portion of the daily crowd within the walls have never entertained!

This repository of art, with all its varied contents, is the production of the human mind.  Its constructive skill is singularly exhibited in the edifice itself; not such constructive skill as can be confounded with the instinct of the bird or bee, not a blind impulsive power; but a clear-eyed intelligence, which can survey, and consider, and contrive, and adapt, and fashion, according to the exigency of the case, in ways more various than art can classify.  Of the power of human discovery, the detection of latent qualities in nature, a remarkable example is afforded in the history of the material out of which the building itself is chiefly wrought.—That the vitrification of sand and nitrium, noticed accidentally by the Phœnician mariners, according to the once generally received account by Pliny; or that some other occurrence at a much earlier period, as is now commonly believed, should have led men to perceive, in materials perfectly opaque, capabilities of transformation into a substance perfectly transparent; that out of dingy masses of mineral could be spread forth sheets of liquid diamonds, broad as the awning over the Coliseum at Rome; that it was possible to mould this brittle material, as if it were so much wax or clay; that, hard as rock, it might be blown into a bubble soft and light as a drop of water; that, white as the sunbeam, it could receive and retain all the dyes of the rainbow; constitute a series of marvels, forming but one out of a thousand chapters included in the annals of human discovery.  The plastic power of the human mind is also here displayed in the almost infinitely diversified forms which, under its touch, the rude materials of nature have received.  Timber and stone, cut into elegant shapes for useful purposes, or with astonishing truthfulness made to resemble the most delicate expressions of animated nature, even to the feather of a bird and the petal of a flower!  Earth moulded by hand or machinery, and metals wrought or cast in a thousand mimic fashions!

Nor should we omit to notice, in these objects of art, a deep desire to embody in material things the beau idéal, to rise above the dull purpose of mere utility and convenience, to give a touch of beauty to the commonest aids and implements of life, to lift art to a lofty sphere, and to surround it with a brilliant halo.  Man is seen as the lover of artistic perfection, tasking his powers to conceive and execute what shall at least approach a standard too lofty for him yet to measure, but of the existence of which he has the consciousness, deep though dim.  He may be said to fight a battle with the obstinate resistance of material nature, and though oft defeated, still struggles for the victory!  The spiritual takes possession of the physical, as a foreign realm, which it seeks to subdue to its own purposes.  The distinct essence of the soul is also asserted.  Its attempt to rule over all around, and to enrich itself with the spoils of the conquered region, is not a contest with a co-ordinate and equal power, but it is the effort of a kingly nature so formed by God, created in his image, and inaugurated into regal office, at the beginning when the charge was given, “Replenish the earth and subdue it.”  The superiority of the mind over all material nature is thus unequivocally proclaimed.

And amidst all this, does he not catch glimpses of things purer, nobler, and more enduring than the things of earth?  Does he not feel at times that there are objects existing somewhere, incomparably more beautiful than any work of art?  Has he not raised within him a conception of invisible and spiritual realms more wonderful than the material?  And is there not also to be recognised, in the ambition of the artist who strives to produce a work which his admirers vainly call immortal, a strong craving for some after-existence—a flinching from the thought, that death is to put an end to all—a wish, at least, to impress some characteristic idea of his own on some portion or particle of the great whole of things, so that he may live by representation if not in consciousness.

Yet, while such musings on the works of men open up to us deeps of power and beauty in the soul, they only reveal a small division of the vast world of human nature.  We visit but a single province of the intellectual realm: we leave unexplored the vast domains enriched by the growths of literature and science; while the emotions, social affections, moral feelings, and religious capacities of the soul remain untouched.  No account is here taken of conscience, and of the capability of knowing, loving, and serving his Maker, which form the highest distinction of man’s nature.  Yet even from our partial and limited view of the subject, we derive no slight conviction of the immortality of that nature to which such attributes as we have described belong.  Great as may be the mystery of a future existence, most certainly the mysteries connected with the denial of this truth are greater still.  It involves the supposition that what in nature, power, and capability is perfectly distinct from the material form in which it dwells, and by which it works, is to perish with it:—that the inmate is to die with the decay of his dwelling, the artist expire with the breaking of his implement;—that a being possessed of unbounded capacities of improvement is destined to advance only a few steps in his proper career, and then be arrested in his course for ever;—that a life of thought and feeling, which contains the germs of higher thoughts and feelings, awaiting, as essential to their full development, other influences than those which are shed on earth, is to be succeeded by eternal unconsciousness and oblivion;—and that a soul which finds in the present life a range too narrow for the full and vigorous scope of its nascent powers and feelings, is to be disappointed in its earnest longings and deep-seated hopes.  It involves the supposition of a Divine design intimated, and then thrown aside—a Divine promise pledged and broken.  The Great Architect would appear constructing a portico as if introductory to a magnificent temple, and then, suddenly stopping short in the work, breaking it down, and scattering its beauty in the dust.

The construction of the Crystal Palace, with its contents, is a monument to the superiority of mind over matter; and that superiority indicates some great destiny hereafter.  Immortality rises upon the eye of reason in the hazy distance: but confidence in relation to the future state must come from another quarter, through the exercise of faith.  “Life and immortality” are brought “to light through the gospel.”

Nor can we properly terminate reflections of this order without going back to the source and origin of mind.  If the material universe bears witness to the existence and character of a Great First Cause; if “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;” if “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork;” if the earth be full of his goodness; how much more does the soul of man, with all its capacities and powers, its intellect and genius, and, above all, its moral and religious susceptibilities, bear testimony to the being and attributes of the Creator.  The marks of design in the mind of man, himself a designer, are more astonishing than those which we have in visible things.  The power and beneficence of God, in giving us faculties of thought and susceptibilities of affection, appear with a plainness of expression even beyond what we discover in any of the material provisions for our comfort.  While the whole universe is a volume in which God has, as it were, written down his thoughts, what page in it is so wonderful as the human mind?  Whatever is great or beautiful in the imagination of man—whatever there is to admire in the works of his hands, fashioned according to the intellectual type within, must be traced up to the infinite source of intelligence, as its origin.  Man has nothing which he has not received.  What then must that unrevealed fount of beauty be, of which all the choice thoughts and beautiful imaginings of men from the beginning, however they have been expressed, are but as drops and spray!

PART II.
CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT.

“Fair land, by time’s parental love made free,
By social order’s watchful arms embraced:—
With unexampled union meet in thee,
For eye and mind the present and the past;
With golden prospects for futurity,
If that be reverenced which ought to last.”

Wordsworth.

The allusions we have made to Chaucer and his dream, in connexion with the Crystal Palace, suggest some very obvious but interesting reflections on the difference between the order of civilization which existed in his day, and that which obtains in our own.  There are works of art and facts of history associated with his times, and not entirely unassociated with himself, which, by being brought under our review and placed beside the Great Exhibition, with its treasures and purposes, will exhibit the difference between the two epochs of our country’s progress in a peculiarly striking light.  It should be observed however, in the first place, that the fourteenth century, like the nineteenth, was an era of progress.  The blooming of poetic genius after the long winter of the middle ages, was in itself an indication that some new impulse had been given to the mind.  The perfection which Gothic architecture attained at the same period, in the bold proportions, the noble forms, the chaste and elegant adornments, and all the grand and beautiful effects of the decorated style—the revival too of mercantile pursuits which then took place, owing very much to the influence of our third Edward, who to the title of Hero of Cressy appended the better title of the Father of English Commerce—were also signs and tokens of advancing civilization.  To these we should add the remembrance of the mental activity and dialectic skill of the schoolmen then rife in our universities, fostering a spirit of inquisitiveness, and promoting an independence of thought and individuality of character, which could hardly fail at length to break through the trammels in which for a long period they patiently toiled: nor should we forget the bearing upon society and the spirit of the age, of the early efforts at ecclesiastical and religious reformation commenced by Wickliff and his compeers.

But between that past age of excitement and the present there are contrasts bolder than any resemblance which can be traced.

Windsor Castle may be said to have been built in the middle of the fourteenth century, when Chaucer was a youth; and with the completion of some parts of the palatial edifice and the contiguous chapel he, as we have seen, was associated.  That building was a sign not only of the artistic, but of the social state of civilization at that period.  The stern-looking old fortress of former times, the very symbol of feudalism, the type of individual, firm, unconquerable resistance, was succeeded by less forbidding piles of architecture; and—to adopt the idea of a French writer at that period—the kingly and baronial edifices of the fourteenth century relaxed somewhat their rigid features, and seem to “laugh” through their oriel windows, as they looked down on the gay quadrangle glittering with the arms and banners of chivalry.  But the royal building at Windsor, though it was of the new order of architecture, and showed that taste was re-establishing her empire,—though it evinced some advance upon a previous condition of social disorder, when the rough net-work of feudal government kept things together in a very loose and imperfect manner, it also betrayed in its broad moats, machicolated towers, and other grim-looking fortifications, that a period of social tranquillity and quietude had not arrived.  It was still needful to have the drawbridge and the sally-port, the loophole in the wall and the turreted walk on the top for the bow-man.  The whole aspect of the place, with its warden and garrison, indicated liability to baronial attack, or popular outbreak.  It was to be inferred that peer, burgess, and peasant were held still in some distrust, that law had not yet the strength of hand it needed to check the pride of the rich and curb the passions of the poor.  We may look on Windsor Castle, as it stood in Chaucer’s time, as an exponent of an unsettled state of society, when the great tumults and agitations which had swept, wave after wave, over the European world had not spent their force and died away.  The erection of a glass palace, strong indeed and enduring, if untouched by violence, and preserved by care, but, under opposite circumstances, frail and perishable in the extreme; its open and unprotected situation on the skirts of the great metropolis, and beside one of its chief and most frequented highways; its full exposure to general observation, and its openness to the approach of all, are facts which tell loudly in testimony of the altered state of society in which our lot is cast.  Such a structure thus undefended is out of all harmony with the bygone times to which we have just referred, when tumults and deadly conflicts in the streets were of common occurrence, when property was ever in danger of rapine and plunder, and the approach to a city or town was left unlined by hedges lest they should furnish convenience for ambush to the thief or assassin.  It proclaims the supremacy of law, the exaltation of that invisible and hallowed guardian of our rights, not only to a seat of physical power whence it can make its mandates felt, but upon the throne of the public mind, which has been taught reverently to bow before its majesty.  It indicates the general education of the people—their improved intelligence and taste—their better social habits—their acknowledgment of the rights of property—their regard for order, and their love of peace.  It shows that the last five hundred years have been years of social improvement, and leads us to ponder the causes which have wrought the change.  Then there pass in review, the decline of feudalism, the development of the free principles of our constitution, the invention of printing, the reformation of religion, the progress of arts and science, the improvement of courts of justice, the institution of a well organized police; but, above all, the efforts of the preacher and the schoolmaster, those two most efficient labourers in the cause of moral civilization.  This large array of agencies, with many others here overlooked, have been doing their silent work through hundreds of past years.  Here we have the tillers of the soil, and the sowers of the seed, from which has sprung the harvest of social order and security which crowns the middle of the nineteenth century.

Referring again to the regal edifice reared by Edward III. we are reminded of the method by which labourers were obtained for the execution of the works.  Ashmole tells us, that to the end they might be honestly and duly performed the sovereign issued letters patent to press hewers of stone, carpenters, and other artificers, also to provide stone, timber, and other materials.  They were gathered in London, and out of divers counties in England, by virtue of writs directed to the sheriffs, who were to take security that the workmen should not depart without license, under the penalty of £100; and, because some left Windsor clandestinely, proclamation was made to punish the fugitives with imprisonment in Newgate, and any one who dared to employ them, with a forfeiture of all his goods.  This circumstance, while it illustrates the small pecuniary resources of the sovereign, throws a strong light on the condition of the labouring classes.  The personal liberty of the subject was but half conceded by the unconstitutional assumptions of the royal authority.  The artisan was little better than a villain or serf, in whose labour the monarch was supposed to have a vested and indefeasible interest.  The latter was still, to a considerable degree, the great feudal lord of the land, having a supreme proprietorship in the persons and possessions of a vassal-like people.  Marvellous and happy is the change that has come over England since then, as is shown by the history of the building before us!  Not the product of a monarch, seeking to gratify his pride, and to surround himself with luxury at the expense of his people; but the enterprise of the people themselves by their own voluntary contributions, commenced, indeed, and encouraged by the suggestion and patronage of a prince illustrious and beloved—the erection of the Industrial Palace is connected with no violation of the rights of property or labour.  If the English working man has still some evils in his social condition of which to complain—if his neck be still chafed by a yoke real or fancied—he should remember that his condition is enviable compared with that of his fathers.  His strength and skill are his estate.  He has the liberty to sell them in what market he may think the best.  No regal mandate can interfere with the perfect mastery which he claims over himself.  Not an axe or hammer has been used in the building but by the free will of him who wielded it.  The edifice looks more majestic than ever when contemplated as the work of a nation of freemen.  The money freely given—the labourers freely assembled—the work freely done.  The fact proclaims to the world the wealth and liberty of England, the last the best preserver of the first, and the sure pledge, we trust, under the blessing of the Almighty, of her enduring power and growing prosperity.  “As the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.”

Casting back once more a glance upon the fourteenth century, another point of contrast presents itself between the past and present significant of the condition of the arts, especially in connexion with the religion of the times.  Loud has been the boast of the admirers of the mediæval system in relation to its artistic aspects, with which, however, it must also be remembered, that while a corrupt church cultivated the imagination in subservience to its own superstitions, it blinded the nobler faculty of reason.  That age certainly could boast of beautiful trophies.  To say nothing of the architect whose cathedrals and churches awaken the wonder of posterity, the sculptor chiselled his images for the niche, the shrine, and the tomb;—the limner exercised his infant skill upon the vellum pages of illuminated MSS., or in bolder decorations for altarage and stall;—the stainer of glass dyed the windows of the chapel, the convent, and the castle, so as to present pictures of saints and heroes, or “a tissue of variegated crystals, a transparent mosaic of gems, through which the light, like flame, might pass through the varied pomp of earthly hues;”—the graver of brass preserved the images of the dead in graceful outline, full of the expression of deathlike repose, and therewith paved the choir and aisles trodden by the feet of surviving worshippers;—the carpenter and the cabinet-maker enriched their respective works with quaint but oftentimes picturesque carvings;—the smith plied his art in the manufacture of metals into various imitative forms, rearing iron screens of mimic architecture, curiously adorning a lock, or elaborating the hinges of a door;—and the goldsmith and jeweller fashioned and chased and studded with gems the images and utensils employed in popish worship, and the salt-cellars, bowls, chargers, and other pieces of plate, which sparkled on the festive board of the prince and noble.  Between these works of art, as such, and the productions of our own day, it is not our purpose here to institute any comparison; we notice them now only as signs of civilization, and the fact which they illustrate under this view is the limitation of the employment of art at that time to a very few uses, deemed sacred or noble.  All above the lowest class of artificers were employed exclusively in the service of the church, and the highest classes of the state.  They were dependent upon the Abbey or Castle, or upon the rising wealth and budding taste of some city merchant.  The people, in general, had nothing to do with works of art except to produce them, or to gaze on them from afar in their religious worship, or when they were permitted humbly to participate in the magnificent festivities of their lordly superiors.  The houses, furniture, and vessels of all, except the highest class, were of the meanest and most untasteful kind.  Rough and rude were all the arrangements of their dwellings, and all the appliances of their domestic life; artistic beauty was absorbed and concentrated elsewhere—no traces of it were to be found in the peasant’s cottage, or even the tenement of the common burgess.  This fact, as indicative of the condition of the people in reference to their domestic civilization, is what, in the language of lord Bacon, may be styled “a glaring instance”—one that stands naked and open,—and this in an eminent manner, and in the highest degree of significance.

No one can survey the immense assemblage of articles in the Great Exhibition without being struck with the signs they afford of a state of civilization, the opposite of that just noticed.  Here Art is seen extending its territory over all the regions of life.  If in the service of religion among Protestants, she is not tasked as was once the case, we do not deplore the circumstance.  Without a calm judgment and a pure heart, she is apt to become in the so-called house of God, the maid-servant of superstition.  Only up to a certain point was she allowed to go under the Old Testament dispensation, when her services were largely in demand for constructing and beautifying the tabernacle and temple.  “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image,” was a check put upon the ingenious devices of a Bezaleel and an Aholiab, and upon all “who had wisdom to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them; and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work.”  Under the present dispensation, when the worship of the Father is to be in spirit and in truth, in contrast with the worship instituted by Moses, and therefore not merely unformal and unhypocritical, (which pure worship always was and must be,) but unsymbolic, a still stronger restraint must be put on the activity of artistic skill within the houses of prayer called after the name of him who talked with the woman of Samaria.  The busiest and most elaborate efforts of art are, therefore, as we conceive, properly removed from the house of God, by his own solemn interdict upon their employment there, lest man should make God’s most precious gift subject to vanity,—while the faculty of ingenious invention seeks and finds full scope for its exercise in increasing, multiplying, and adorning the conveniences and comforts of life among all classes.  Art is mainly intended to refine and ennoble what specially belongs to this mortal life.  In this respect she has the power of elevating man’s social condition by evoking and gratifying a taste for the beautiful; art is seen thus fulfilling her mission in the myriad-achievements of human skill which this Great Exhibition spreads with such lavish wealth before spectators from all climes.  Passing beyond purposes of mere utility and convenience, in the accomplishment of which, however, they abound, the fabricators of all this various furniture for the homes of men, have sought to breathe into it the spirit of the beautiful.  Not only does elegance of design, and accuracy of execution, mark those costlier productions which are intended for the drawing-rooms of the rich and great, but they appear in the cheap and simple provisions for the parlours and kitchens of the poor and humble.  Modern European society is thus coming back to that pitch of artistic civilization which distinguished old Greece in her palmy days, when “the plastic and presiding spirit of symmetry shed its influence over the minutest details of ordinary occupation, and the shapes of the commonest utensils.”  The influence of fine art is thus rendered universal.  Civilization in that form is seen generally diffused.  The sharp barriers of rank are broken down, the grades of society under the touch of wide-spread taste assimilate to each other; their boundary lines soften, become more and more indistinct, and gradually melt away.

To return again to the age of Edward.  In the beginning of the year 1358, says old Knighton in his “Chronica,” the king issued his royal proclamation throughout all England, that all knights strangers from any part of the world, who had a mind to come to the feast of St. Georges, to be held on the 23rd of April, at Windsor, should have his letters of safe conduct to pass and repass the realm at their pleasure, for the space of three weeks without the least impediment or danger, there to partake every one according to his degree and merit of those honours and prizes which attended the princely exercises of jousts and tournaments.  And accordingly this great feast was held, and thither went in their suits of armour, and with devices emblazoned on their shields, with all the pomp and circumstance of chivalry, John of France and the duke of Brabant, and many noble lords and knights from “Almain, Gascogne, Scotland, and other countries.”  Philippa, the heroic wife of Edward, and the queen of the king of Scots, were present with a whole bevy of high-born dames to gaze on the tilt and tournay.

Punctiliously, according to chivalrous custom, did the gorgeously coated heralds and pursuivants proclaim and enforce the laws of the encounter.  Proudly did the combatants take lance in hand and rush to the combat,—with eager eyes and beating hearts did matron and maiden look on husband and lover,—and with boisterous shouts of joy did the crowding populace hail the prowess of the conqueror.  The scene was typical of the age.  It was an exposition of the spirit predominant in our own land, and throughout Europe.  It indicated the martial genius of the nation.  It was a spectacle to which the Englishman would point with patriotic vanity,—just as the Roman would point, in the days of his great heroes, to the Campus Martius, and the streets that led to the capitol, crowded with the symbols and attendants of a triumph decreed by the republic as a reward for the valour of her warlike sons.  Another prince not indeed occupying the throne, but the loving and honoured consort of the illustrious lady who fills it, has proposed a great English festival for the year 1851, and in union, not merely with popular members of the aristocracy but with distinguished representatives of commercial enterprise, and industrial activity, has sent forth the challenge to all lands, and invited people of all ranks to an earnest rivalry for crowns of pre-eminence.  Thither have already arrived the weapons with which the contest is to be decided, while multitudes are wending from the far east and west to witness the array, to decide on who are the winners in this strange conflict, and to award to each the prize he merits.  This exhibition of art is beautifully significant of the times in which we live.  It shows that the taste for arms is no longer predominant; that it has yielded to predilections more worthy of human nature.  Bales of merchandise and piles of manufacture are now beginning to be deemed more worthy of regard and admiration, than blood-stained banners, bruised shields, and splintered spears, with other trophies torn from the vanquished.  The gauntlet of war is not flung down before the world, but the gage of peace.  To the assemblage in Hyde Park—a fraternal intermingling of the children of all lands, with their interchange of ideas and sentiments, conveyed both to the eye and the ear, and the healthful stimulus thus afforded to the further improvements of the arts of human life—many of us are now pointing, not with pride but with thankfulness to Providence, as interpretations of the new spirit that has come over civilized society.  Nor can we omit to add that much as the superiority of the military profession was vaunted in the olden time, and strongly as may linger still in many breasts the remnants of that prejudice, we believe that mankind are coming more and more to see that the palm of preference belongs of right rather to him who deepens the channels of industry, and circulates the streams of commerce.  To build up and adorn must be better than to desolate—to nourish, comfort, and gladden, than to fight and destroy; and if armies be still needful to protect and defend, if we want them as a police to sustain and execute the law of nations, let it be remembered that such a view can give martial occupations no precedence in the estimation of the wise and good—as he whose business it is to take captive or to punish the violators of public order can never rank above those who minister directly to the happiness and improvement of their fellow citizens.

Nor should we here forget the enduring character of those peaceful victories won in modern times by discovery and invention, of which multiplied mementoes are afforded in the treasures of the Hyde Park Palace.  Most favourably do they stand out in contrast with the evanescent nature of military power and valour.  “To whatever part of the vision of modern times,” says sir Humphry Davy, “you cast your eyes, you will find marks of superiority and improvement, and I wish to impress upon you the conviction that the results of intellectual labour or scientific genius are permanent, and incapable of being lost.  Monarchs change their plans, governments their objects, a fleet or an army effect their object, and then pass away: but a piece of steel touched by the magnet preserves its character for ever, and secures to man the dominions of the trackless ocean.”  All the discoveries of knowledge and their application to practical uses are of this description, and we joyfully compare them with the mouldering trophies of the warrior.  The spoils of Cressy and Poictiers have long since perished—even the power which Edward and his soldiers established in France soon declined and disappeared, and long since left behind it only a name in history—but the results of scientific study and artistic toil, which have produced the Great Exhibition of 1851, are destined, we doubt not, to last to a remote period, and to improve the condition and adorn the dwellings of unborn millions of the human family.

In closing this chapter, we may remark that unlike the martial gathering at the tournament of Windsor, the concourse of British subjects at the present festival no longer exhibits the distinctions of feudal society.  Lordship and vassalage have happily become numbered among the things that are past.  Whatever purposes they might subserve at a certain period, they were badges of imperfect civilization, and have given place to a condition of social order in which, though a graduated scale of rank very properly obtains, the equal rights of men as intellectual and moral beings are beginning to be acknowledged.  In this “passage” of arts, “not arms,” the humblest are permitted to display their skill;—not as aforetime, when the contest was confined to the men of high descent, the poorest workman may place his productions beside those of the richest sons of fortune.  The man who can make no boast of gentle blood, who can appeal to no roll of ancestry, whose name is but of yesterday, who simply, by dint of using his brains and his muscles, his thoughts and ten fingers, has raised himself into notice is permitted and encouraged to contend with the highest born for the prize of honour in these pacific and generous rivalries.  This is not among the least pleasing of the contrasts between past and present.

PART III.
VOICES OF HOPE AND WARNING.

“The barrier flood
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,
A span of waters: yet what power was there,
What mightiness for evil and for good!
Even so doth God protect us, if we be
Virtuous and wise.”

Wordsworth.

The invitation we have given to the world, to send its treasures to enrich and bedeck our Crystal Palace, and its tribes to visit us, for the sake not only of inspecting that great emporium but of witnessing our national conditions under its various aspects, implies a conscious greatness, on the part of our country, sufficient to warrant such a bold and unprecedented step.  It would be presumptuous and idle for an inferior state to ask her potent neighbours thus to honour her, and no such state would venture on the experiment.  Indeed, the resources necessary for carrying out so formidable an enterprise could not be at its command.  Great Britain, while she assumes by her present conduct a high standing in the rank of nations, can with perfect ease justify herself in this respect.

Though the mother isle be a tiny speck on the map of the globe, her colonial dependencies extend over the most remote latitudes.  Her entire territory embraces an area of eight millions of square miles, exceeding that of Russia by at least one million.  It is double the size of the continent of Europe, and out of every six acres of dry land upon the planet it claims one.  Two hundred and forty millions of subjects bow to the sceptre of Queen Victoria, the largest united population in existence, next to China.  Including the whole empire, a fifth of the human family are subject to her sway.  Of this multitude, two hundred millions dwell in India; so that, if that country only remained under British rule, her Majesty could say to the potentates of Europe, “I am equal to you all; for, taking all the men on the surface of the globe, one at least out of every six owns me as supreme.” [54]  In the amount of its revenue, the wealth of its commerce, the activity and productiveness of its manufactures, the intersection of its country by roads, canals, and railways, the cheapness and rapid communication of its postal system, and the number of ships which crowd its ports, England knows no equal.  Other elements of greatness which cannot be reduced to statistic calculation are to be added to these, such as our government, institutions, laws, liberties and literature.

Dwelling upon the fact of our national greatness, so obviously suggested to us by what is now taking place, we very naturally pause for a moment to inquire into the causes of this distinction.  It is to be expected that a combination of many influences and agencies will be found to have contributed to the result.  That it is really so the facts of our history abundantly prove.  The present state of Great Britain is, in the first place, to be ascribed in no small degree to the peculiar character of the races of whose offspring our population is in the main composed.  The thriving myriads who people the cities, till the fields, man the vessels, and constitute or rule the colonies of our country, are descendants of robust and vigorous Teutonic tribes.  Saxon, Danish, and Norman were all allied, and possessed a general resemblance in point of physical and intellectual qualities, connected with specific differences, the blending of which, by the intermingling of these families, could not fail to produce very decided effects upon the character of their posterity.  The influence of the peculiarities inherent in the natural constitution of different races, once almost entirely overlooked by historians, and now liable to be exaggerated by writers of a certain school, has stamped the impress of its reality and power with conspicuous breadth and vividness upon modern civilization in the contrast which exists between the people of Teutonic and Celtic origin.  Our condition, in the next place, is to be attributed to the physical peculiarities of our native land—to our climate, which cannot have failed to affect not only our natural temperament and health, but to some degree our mental phenomena, and to a greater degree our social habits,—to the configuration, soil, and geological strata of our beautiful island: its scenery giving a certain cast and hue to the colouring of our imagination: its rich lands making us an agricultural community: its metallic and coal mines inviting us to task our manufacturing skill: and its vast range of coast-line, with its facilities for the erection of ports and the construction of harbours, impelling us to engage in maritime enterprise.  Our condition is further to be ascribed to our insular position, which has led us to seek the empire of the seas, and often preserved us from being ravaged by invaders; while it has given a stimulus to our commerce, with its peaceful and humanizing tendencies.  It is also to be traced to forms of government and modes of society which prevailed during the mediæval age, themselves springing from earlier political and social influences that flowed from Roman and German springs.  It is as true of nations as of individuals, that the child is father to the man; and old England—the England which is—must have had its destiny in no small measure shaped by young England—the England which has been.  From Roman law and usage, Saxon witenagemotes and courts of justice, Norman baronial assemblies and tribunals, and the welding or fusion of them together, so as to produce in some cases a mutual interpenetration,—from these has arisen our peculiar kind of government, political and legal; which, with all its faults, whether in principle or administration, is an agency to which under Divine providence we owe no small degree of our stability and power.  The feudal training of a partly Saxon population, through so long a portion of the middle ages, is a fact of great importance in our history, and of potent bearing on us even at the present hour; and it may be worth while to notice that the modern European empires which were bred in the feudal school—England, France, and Germany—take decided precedence of the states to the north and south, which grew up undisciplined by that rude but effective process of education.  Our condition has been further influenced most powerfully by the history of the last four hundred years.  By the wars of the Roses, which weakened the aristocracy and strengthened the throne, by the political bearing of the Reformation, the rise and progress of the puritan party in the state, the Civil War, and the Commonwealth under Cromwell, all of which developed popular power, and for a while trampled in the dust both crown and coronet.  To all this must be added the Revolution of 1688, which adjusted the relation of the three estates of the realm, so as to secure ever since a tolerable degree of harmony in the mutual working of principles and interests, commonly deemed antagonistic.  Past changes are the secret of our present stability; the intestine wars of bygone centuries, which shock us as we read their story, were really the harbingers of the national peace, order, and security on which we recently congratulated ourselves when wild revolutionary hurricanes swept over the thrones and institutions of Europe.  Continental states, later in their hour of trial than ourselves, have probably to go through somewhat similar eras of struggle yet, before they can win the order and repose which we have received from the veteran champions of English freedom, during the long fight of the seventeenth century.  And, to sum up many other influences in one sentence—our national position and character are to be connected with the study and experience of our venerated forefathers—with their knowledge and wisdom, acquired from what they read in the history of older nations, and what they saw of modern ones—with their genius and practical sagacity, the books they wrote, and the deeds they did—with the inventions of art, and the discoveries of science, and the collision of sentiments, opinions, and principles which have from time to time been freely expressed and canvassed.  But the most powerful agency remains to be noticed.  Above all, our national greatness is the result of Christianity, which has long had a strong hold upon the hearts of multitudes, and which has indirectly exercised a most beneficial influence on others who have had little regard for its doctrinal principles.  The sternness of those German tribes from whom we have sprung was not to be subdued; and those better qualities, which mark us as a people, were not to be produced by any power less than the divine power of the Gospel.  Christianity, during the middle ages, even under the disadvantage of working through a corrupt church, was the main stay of social order, and wrought out beautiful results in individual character.  In its reformed developments it has mainly contributed to the best and most valued of our social improvements.  Our noblest heroes have been inspired by its celestial spirit; our most precious institutions have felt the shapening touch of its divine hand; the best portions of our literature reflect the refulgence of its light.  And what there may be of virtue, integrity, honour, benevolence, and piety in our land, is the offspring of the heaven-sent truth written in the Bible.  It is not Christianity alone, we grant, which makes us what we are; but, without Christianity, it is utterly impossible to imagine that our civilization should have attained its present zenith.  In connexion with the working of those marvels of our time—electric telegraphs—it has been found that when a piece of paper has been dipped in a certain chemical solution, a stream of electricity passed over it will imprint the paper with beautiful tints and dyes.  So, we may say, that if the other events and influences we have enumerated have been like the chemical solution to the paper, preparing our country for some high destiny, the introduction of the gospel, and its continuance among us, has been like the electric stream passing over the nation, covering it with the fair and beautiful colours which render it the admiration of the world.  Nor should the early period of the introduction and establishment of Christianity amongst us be overlooked; for, if it had been delayed to a later period, it is obvious that the circumstance must have proved exceedingly detrimental to our infant civilization.  That early introduction and establishment we are apt to regard as a matter of course, though there was no anterior improbability, in the first centuries of the Christian era, of the religious fate of Great Britain being otherwise than that of Eastern empires.  Our Island might have attained a stereotyped condition, as India and China have done, and neither received nor craved the Great Gift of God.  Then must our civilization however have been correspondingly poor, imperfect, and weak.  The arrival of Christianity in this western corner of the world, some seventeen hundred years ago or more, to instruct us in divine truth, and as a loving nurse to foster and cherish our nascent civilization, then exposed in these rough seas like an infant in an “ark of bulrushes,” was the result of a mission from Him, who is sovereign in all his ways, and who chose us for his high purposes; not because we were “more in number than any people, for we were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved us.”

After reviewing the character and causes of our civilization, it is natural to inquire what will be its coming destiny.  However some may idly talk, our civilization is far from being necessarily progressive.  The history of the great powers of the ancient world reads us admonitory lessons.  It is very affecting, after we have mused on Rome in her palmy pride, and fancied we saw one of her great triumphal processions on its way to the Capitol, so expressive of the warlike genius of the republic, sweeping in a tide of living grandeur through the forum, so rich in architectural splendour, to turn to a sentence like this in Eustace’s Tour:—“The glories of the forum are now fled for ever: its temples are fallen: its sanctuaries have crumbled into dust: its colonnades encumber its pavements, now buried under its remains.  A herdsman seated on a pedestal, while his oxen were drinking at the fountain, and a few passengers moving at a distance in different directions, were the only living beings that disturbed the solitude and silence that reigned around.”  Equally affecting is it when pondering the story of Athens, once the fairest city of the earth, with her statues and temples and memorial tombs—her orators, philosophers, and poets—the very home of artistic beauty and intellectual refinement,—to hear a traveller remark, as he describes the present state of the once unrivalled Areopagus: “Let us wade through the crisp and bearded barley to the Bema, whence Demosthenes was wont to thunder,”—and to think that where the murmur of his vast audience was once heard no sound is awakened now but the rustling of the ears of corn under the passing wind.  Nor less affecting is it to read in the old Hebrew prophet, the son of Buzi,—who saw visions of God by the river Chebar,—the tale of the glory and the doom of Tyre; to see her “situate at the entry of the sea,” when the builders have perfected her beauty, and all her “ship boards” are of “fir trees”—with “cedars from Lebanon” for “masts,”—and “the oaks of Bashan” for “oars”—and “ivory brought out of the Isles of Chittim” for “benches,”—and “fine linen with bordered work from Egypt for sails,”—and “the inhabitants of Zidon and Arrad” for “mariners,”—and they of Persia and Lud and Phut and Arrad are in her army men of war, who “hang their shields upon the wall;” and the merchants “trade in her fairs” “in all sorts of things;”—and she is “replenished and made very glorious in the midst of the seas,” and her “wisdom and her understanding have got her riches and gold and silver,” and “every precious stone is her covering,” and “the princes of the sea” sit on their thrones and wear their “broidered garments,”—and then to read her doom fulfilled to the letter: “Behold I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up, and they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock; it shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.”

To minds of imagination and sensibility, more sombre than sanguine, it is not surprising that with these facts in remembrance the future decline of this great empire should seem probable; and perhaps by such minds a picture of its mother city in some coming age is painted so as to resemble her precursors in the path of grandeur and decay:—And here and there stand a broken arch of one of her bridges, the waters idly rolling on, no richly freighted ships upon their bosom any longer; and yonder are her once proud senate halls, a mouldering heap covered with wild flowers, a solitude like the Roman Coliseum; and around the spot where now the miracle of modern art is crowded by the people of all lands, there stretches a solitary wilderness where the traveller rambles amidst tangled grass and brushwood, and sits down and muses in some quiet dell, left by the dried-up lake of the Serpentine, and haunted by memories of the fall of London.  Calm and intelligent reflection however suggests that there is far less of probability than poetry in such anticipations.

England is not like ancient Italy—London is not the antitype of Rome.  On this account, in the first place, that the whole world has changed, and especially the condition of the western nations in reference to each other, since that memorable night when the trumpet of the Goth was heard at the Salarian gate, and armed hosts came rushing along the broad highway, and the soldier flung his brand in the house of Sallust, and the shrieks of maidens and matrons mingled with martial shouts, and the senators saw the old tragedy under the Gauls repeated—Rome surprised and taken.  An empire hemmed all around by fierce warlike tribes might be so broken down; but, in the modern world, where are the Goths and Huns and Vandals to be found?  And, even if they did exist, the insular position of Great Britain, and her maritime defences, would preserve her from the kind of invasion which prostrated in the dust the old mistress of the world.  Only a great civilized power, having large means of transport at its command, could invade our shores.  To succeed, it must be a nation eminent for skill and science, as well as for other resources, considering the ample means of defence which, by aid of electric telegraphs, steam, and railways, the government of our country could at the shortest notice bring to bear on the spot endangered by assailants.

The contrast between Athens and England, as it regards their dangers, is suggested in a remarkable passage of Xenophon.  He remarks that—“Athens rules the sea; but as the country of Attica is joined to the continent, it is ravaged by enemies, while the Athenians are engaged in distant expeditions.  If the Athenians inhabited an island, and besides this enjoyed the empire of the seas, they would, as long as they were possessed of these advantages, be able to annoy others and at the same time be out of all danger of being annoyed.”

The benefit of an insular position, which Athens did not command, is possessed by England; and, as Montesquieu observes, “We might imagine that the Greek historian and philosopher was speaking of our own country.”  Athens was finally crushed by the Turks; but whatever apprehension there once was of the invasion of the West by Mohammedan arms, no such apprehension can ever be felt again; and if any likeness be traced between the old Turkish and the present Russian Empire, the latter threatens the East rather than Europe, and an invasion of England by an army that must march through the German States, or by an armament sailing from the Baltic ports, is among the wildest dreams of fear.  Then, going back to the fall of Tyre, under the desolating hand of a Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander, peril like hers, in reference to ourselves, seems next to impossible; for the days of such conquerors are gone by for ever.  Even the career of Napoleon was not the counterpart of them, nor could be in the modern state of the world, with its large community of civilized, powerful, and independent nations.

The danger of our country, then, is not from the invader; what we have to apprehend in the future is discoverable in another quarter.  There are two obvious possibilities which demand our attention: first, England may be out-rivalled.  The youthful vigour of America, her art and enterprize, her intelligence, her ardent patriotism, her vast and ever-swelling territory and population, already afford some bold and distinct indications of her future rapid advance—the son promising to surpass the sire.  France and Germany, too, are full of latent resources, and of that strong spirit which only needs wisdom to guide it in order to their unprecedented enrichment.  And who can tell what Russia will be, when thoroughly civilized?  Looking to the universal colonial dependencies of England, which alone can give her territorial importance—for her insular position prevents her from incorporating foreign domains as integral parts of her own country—one can see the possibility of great changes in the East: and then looking to our colonies properly so called, who can deny the likelihood of their throwing off the leading-strings some day, not we hope without filial love for their mother state, to march in their own strength erect along the paths of their high destiny?  And in Australasia, especially, there may spring up a new England formed in the providence of God to vie with and outstrip old England.  There is a second possibility, from the thought of which we shrink.  Looking, on the one hand, at the amount of immorality and irreligion which already obtains amongst us, and at sins for which, on account of general concurrence in them, the nation at large may be held guilty, we have ground of alarm.  But, on the other hand, when we take into account the extent of Christian virtue, piety, and benevolence to be found in our land, we recognise grounds of hope.  Now it cannot be denied that the latter instead of overcoming the former may leave it to prevail and triumph, and may itself decline.  A far deeper depravation of public morals than we have mentioned may occur.  So much of national truth and honour as is happily preserved may be sacrificed to a base expediency.  Instances of commercial integrity may become rare.  Domestic life and manners may lose their present purity.  Infidelity and superstition may divide almost all hearts between them.  Then is the doom of the country sealed.  Mortals are short-sighted as to the relative position of the different states of the world in coming times, the forecastings of the political philosopher are in many instances disappointed, and the prudential measures of the wisest statesmen often fail; but this is sure, that sooner or later a nation will fall from the throne of her greatness, when she deserts the paths of virtue and forsakes the counsels of God.  The sins of a people, if not repented of, are certain ultimately to bring down upon them Divine judgments.  Nor should it be forgotten, that such ascendency as ours has its special temptations.  Plato, in his republic, guards against choosing for his ideal commonwealth “such a site as by its proximity to the sea, and other advantages for merchandise, navigation, and naval warfare, would be liable to render the citizens too wealthy and overbearing, and faithless in war and peace.” Commerce will be the mother of national virtues when she is joined in wedlock with religion, otherwise she may be fruitful in an abundant progeny of vice and crime.

Our danger, then, is internal rather than external.  And the same may be said of old Rome, for had she been faithful and virtuous she had never fallen under the barbarians’ sword.  It was also true of Greece.  And as to Tyre, we are told on the highest authority, “By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore will I cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God, and will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.”  We are convinced that only vice and impiety can ruin us, that only virtue and religion will prove our invincible safeguards.  Should such a general state of depravity arise as that described by the prophet, when judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off, and truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter, though no army should land on our shores, and no foreign navy should touch our fleets, and wealth and luxury should flow on, the curse of Heaven would be on us, and our civilization would be corrupted to the core.  But let the righteousness that exalteth a nation be ours, and then, however strong and numerous our enemies, however prosperous and superior our rivals, the arm of God would be our shield—though surpassed we should not be dishonoured: but the destiny of our Empire would still be onwards along the paths of moral civilization.

As Christianity has contributed so greatly to raise us in the scale of nations, so that alone can enable us to preserve our standing.  Our religion is as dear to hope as to memory.  The influence of the gospel will equally prove the preserver of the highest good amongst us, and the sure catholicon for the worst evils.  Whatever plans may be devised to improve the physical and social condition of the people, the only remedy that can touch the moral disease in the individual man, (and that, after all, is the root of every social mischief) must be looked for in the truths of the Bible and the agency of the Holy Spirit.  No dream can be more wild and visionary, more at variance with the ancient and modern story of mankind, than to suppose that any changes in the government or laws of a country will of themselves ensure the happiness and prosperity of a nation.  Political revolutions the most fair and promising have often proved abortive.  It is beyond all doubt a righteous duty to bring the framework and machinery of our social world as near to perfection as it is possible; wise organization is eminently subservient to a nation’s welfare: but our strongest and best hopes for the future security and advancement of the English commonwealth are firmly fixed on the personal regeneration of its members through the Divine power of the gospel of Christ.  Earnest, indefatigable, patient, humble, holy endeavours for the application of that heavenly gift to the hearts of our countrymen are in the first rank of our social duties.

And looking for a moment away from home; taking in at one broad glance the moral and religious condition of the British empire, what awful and startling facts arrest our attention, full of irresistible appeals to Christian consciences.  “Our queen rules over more Roman Catholics than the pope, over more Mohammedans than the Sublime Porte, and over more pagans than the whole continent of Africa.  If we ask, ‘What is the religion of the British Empire?’ judging by numbers, the unhesitating reply must be, paganism.  It contains more Mohammedans than Christians of both names, and more pagans than Mohammedans and Christians together.”  These facts are indeed voices of warning!  What is to be expected, if English Christians do not vastly increase their missionary efforts in our world-wide dependencies, for whose moral and spiritual condition we must, from the circumstance of their dependency, be in a high degree responsible?

In connexion with strenuous efforts at home and in our colonial provinces, near or remote, for the diffusion of Christianity “pure and undefiled,” it is our solemn duty to abound in “supplication and intercessions.”  We are sure that prayer did save Israel, and might have saved Sodom.  Its influence, as revealed in the apocalyptic vision of John, is so great, that it is seen shaping the course of history.  Great changes come—judgments, penal and purifying, among the rest—as the result of prayer:—“And I saw the seven angels who stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.  And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer: and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.  And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.  And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.”  With that “door opened in heaven,” and the light from it falling on the page of our national annals, can we doubt that Christian prayer has had influence upon the destiny of our empire?  Who shall unravel all the threads of influence, knitting up men’s hearts in courage and heroism, which proceeded out of days of prayer and fasting in Puritan times, and all the healing virtue brought down by it upon a wounded and bleeding country?  And who can tell how much England, in her hour of need, when under James the Second the threatening clouds of papal despotism began to gather, was indebted for the scattering of the storm to the voice of prayer?  And, since then, how many critical junctures have occurred, when results have been produced not to be adequately accounted for by any visible cause, and therefore indicating some other agency at work which worldly minds take no note of, but which the devout will recognise in the wrestlings of holy prayer!  The throne of grace, under which our fathers took refuge in times of heavy trial must be our resort if we would preserve the religious privileges they have handed down to us, and defend and enlarge the vast heritage of national good which they bequeathed.

PART IV.
ASSOCIATIONS, SECULAR AND SACRED.

“By these mysterious ties, the busy power
Of Memory her ideal train preserves
Entire; or when they would elude her watch
Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste
Of dark oblivion: thus collecting all
The living forms of being, to present
Before the curious aim of mimic art
Their longest choice: like Spring’s unfolded blooms
Exhaling sweetness, that the skilful bee
May taste at will, from their selected spoils,
To work her dulcet food.”

Akenside.

Endowed as we are with a principle of suggestion—one of the most active principles in the human mind, ministering greatly to the pleasures of existence, and giving to men of enlarged intelligence the means of various and extensive gratification—it is very natural, on looking at the great event of the present year, to cluster round it in thought a number of facts bearing in relation to it some kind of affinity.  Even the structure and its contents are not without suggestive interest, while the great gatherings of the people to behold them excites the memory and imagination, and brings out many a picture of things that have been or that shall be.  Associations are suggested, commercial and classical, romantic and religious.

As a simple exposition of art, the Exhibition reminds us, in the first place, of the Expositions of Art in the French metropolis, which at intervals have taken place during the last fifty years.  We go back to the times of the first republic, when after the tragedies of the revolution, and their dire effect on industry and commerce, it was felt that some stimulus and encouragement were needed to revive them; and the deserted palace of St. Cloud, under the superintendence of the Marquis d’Avèze, was enriched and adorned with the productions of a people whose tasteful ingenuity no social disorders could extinguish.  The walls were hung with costly draperies from the Gobelin manufactory—the floors were covered with rich carpets from the looms of La Savonnerie, and, amassed in profusion and arranged with skill, there was a display of the variegated porcelain of Sevres, that hive of curious industry which borders the spacious park of the palace we have mentioned.  Succeeded by a second Exposition at the Hotel d’Orsay, in the city of Paris, the two were regarded by Napoleon,—who, though flushed with his early victories, failed not to discern that war without commerce would but exhaust his country,—as sufficient to warrant a third and greater attempt, and accordingly the Temple of Industry, as it was called, was reared in the Champ de Mars.  It was of simple construction, adorned with oriflames, and the victorious tricolours of the first Italian campaign, and within the walls there were exhibited for three days, some of the most beautiful works of art the country could supply.  The temper of that great nation at the juncture was candidly expressed by the prime minister: “Our manufactures are the arsenals which will supply us with the weapons most fatal to the British power;” and as we read his words we rejoice in the far different relations of the two empires now, and the pleasant union and amicable rivalry of our Gallic neighbours with ourselves in the present enterprise.  Other Expositions followed, but the ninth, under Louis Philippe, in the magnificent Place de la Concorde, in the year 1839, eclipsed them all; and as the gratified monarch gazed on the trophies of French ingenuity and skill, he exclaimed, “These are the true victories which cause no tears to flow.”  Nor can we, while these imposing scenes in the French capital and its neighbourhood pass before us, forget the humble attempts made in our own country in connexion with our valuable Mechanics’ Institutions, to exhibit in some of our large towns, especially Manchester and Leeds, the products of native industry.  They are worthy of honourable and grateful remembrance, as indications of that indomitable and individual spirit of enterprise, which is one of the secrets of our commercial prosperity.

The Exhibition is a great Bazaar.  It is, to a considerable extent, based on the true principle of such establishments.  That principle is one of classification, and therefore the term Bazaar is incorrectly applied to certain marts in the metropolis which are but heterogeneous clusters of shops under a common roof.  The original principle is a classification of products according to the trades to which they belong; here it is a classification of products according to the countries from which they are received.  The Bazaar, as essentially oriental, carries us away to Cairo and Constantinople, to Persian towns and Indian cities.  We find ourselves in the crowded alley of some vaulted building, with shops of a similar kind presenting goods of the same general description, lining either side the way.  Provisions, wares, and fabrics, both mean and gorgeous, rude and ornamented, simple and ornate, are piled or spread forth to please and entice the passer-by, while, in some cases, the moody Turk, who sits cross-legged amidst his stores, smoking his pipe, is so absorbed in the enjoyment of that soporific luxury, that he seems hardly to care about attending to the wants of his customers.  In Persia, we are told, the buildings are of rich appearance, decorated with paintings, particularly under the domes, with portraits of hunters and heroes, and pictures of animals, real or imaginary.  Generally in the East these markets are places of immense resort, including the characteristics of an exchange, a news room, a debating theatre, a promenade, and a rendezvous for idlers.  The gaiety of oriental costume affords a marked feature in the promiscuous assemblages, while the noise of many voices, in various tongues and dialects, is like the echo of that strange confusion of sounds once heard on the plains of Shinar.  In this respect the mixed scenes and various languages in the Hyde Park Bazaar will be less surprising to the Eastern visitors than to the people of the West.  It will seem to them the augmented and multiplied counterpart of one of their own busy markets—a city-like mart, an immense assemblage of shops beneath one crystal roof—and embosoming in the midst of it a pleasure garden, with great trees, and fresh flowers, and gushing fountains—the whole the work, as they might think, of some of their most famous magicians.

The spirit of industrial activity and commercial competition creates all these scenes, and as we trace them to their source we cannot help noticing the desire of acquisition, one of the original principles of human nature, which often and most generally kindles and keeps that spirit alive.  The desire of gain, regulated by justice and generosity, is to be distinguished from that love of money which is so strongly reprobated in the best of books, as “the root of all evil;” but it cannot be denied that the innate acquisitiveness of man which may be trained up into a virtue is too apt to sink down into a vice.  Influenced by a moral feeling, especially by those considerations which Christianity suggests, and by those precepts which Christianity enjoins, this principle prompts individuals to gather only that they may prudently appropriate a befitting portion, and generously distribute the rest; but apart from these checks and guides, and stimulated by the sordid passions of man’s fallen soul, the natural tendency to acquire, in a multitude of cases, degenerates into the sin of covetousness, which is idolatry, and he who makes haste to be rich becomes a worshipper of Mammon.  Nor can we here omit to notice what a wonderful spring of human energy; what a motive to exertion has the material wealth of this world ever proved; how, perhaps, even beyond the highest prizes of warlike ambition, it has more frequently and continuously agitated the surface of society, and moved it from its lowest depths.  It has been like a strong east wind sweeping over the world from the earliest ages, and keeping the sea of civilized life in constant commotion.  As we read the history of commerce, and think of the mercantile cities of antiquity, Tyre, Corinth, Alexandria, and the rest—as we trace the stream onwards through the middle ages, by the way of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa;—as we descend to latter times, and touch on Amsterdam, Bruges, and Louvain, and then come home and muse on the rise and rivalry, the progress and changes of the great centres of commerce in our own country;—as we pause in each place to look at the busy traffic going on within them, to the crowded quays, the well-stored warehouses, the mart of the trader, the shop of the artisan;—as we see groups of merchants, mechanics, and mariners;—as we listen to the buzz of many lips, and the noise of unfurled sails, and vessels loosened from their moorings, the tramp of men piling up bales of goods, the click of the shuttle and clangour of the anvil, we have an impressive illustration of the high estimate of that material wealth, which it is the object of all this energetic activity to produce and preserve.  Percival’s description of the pearl fishery at Ceylon—itself a branch of most profitable traffic, and exhibiting a scene of bustle akin to that of an oriental bazaar—may be regarded as a parable of the great world-mart we are thinking of, and of the precious prize which the thousands who throng it all covet to obtain.  Several thousands of people of different colours, countries, casts, and occupations, continually passing and re-passing in a busy crowd: the vast numbers of small tents and huts erected on the shore, with the bazaar or market-place; the vast numbers of jewellers, brokers, merchants of all colours and all descriptions, both natives and foreigners, who are occupied in some way or other with the pearls, some separating and assorting them, others weighing and ascertaining their number and value, while others are hawking them about, or drilling and boring them for future use; “all these circumstances tend to impress the mind with the value and importance of that object which can of itself create this scene.”  On reading this description it suggests another parable, a holy one from the holiest of lips.  “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls: who, when he hath found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Wandering far back into the regions of classic antiquity, the finger of association points to Olympia and her games, those Greek celebrations of which such graphic sketches are preserved in the triumphal odes of Pindar.  Though “the immediate object of these meetings was the exhibition of various trials of strength and skill, which from time to time were multiplied so as to include almost every mode of displaying bodily activity, they became subservient to the interests of genius and taste, of art and literature.”  Statues were reared to the memory of successful combatants, “and the most eminent poets willingly lent their aid on such occasions, especially to the rich and great.  And thus it happened that sports, not essentially different from those of our village green, gave birth to master-pieces of sculpture, and called forth the sublimest strains of the lyric muse.”  “The scene of the Olympic Festival was during the season a mart of busy commerce, where productions, not only of manual but of intellectual labour, were exhibited and exchanged.  In this respect it served many of the same purposes which, in modern times, are more effectually indeed answered by the press, in the communication of thoughts, inventions, and discoveries, and the more equable diffusion of knowledge.” [91]  But these memorable institutions are suggested to us in the way of resemblance, chiefly on account of the vast and various concourse of persons which they periodically attracted.  At the time when the games returned, the banks of the Alpheus became a centre of universal interest, and exhibited a pilgrim population typical of a congregated world.  The festival “was very early frequented by spectators, not only from all parts of Greece itself, but from the Greek colonies in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and this assemblage was not brought together by the mere fortuitous impulse of private interest or curiosity, but was in part composed of deputations, which were sent by most cities as to a religious solemnity, and were considered as guests of the Olympian god.”  It is curious to observe—in contrast with the inclusion of so many of the female sex in our gathering of the nations, the circumstance illustrative of the different position of woman in society in the old classic world—that, with the exception of the priestesses of Ceres, and certain virgins, none but men, during the earlier periods of Grecian history, were permitted to appear in Olympia at the time of those national festivities.  The history of this remarkable institution, through the many ages in which Greece was the pattern and mirror of artistic, intellectual, and social civilization, exhibited that civilization in its rise, progress, and decay—its spring-tide freshness, summer pride, and autumnal beauty.  There might the hand of providence be seen, disclosing, expanding, and then folding up forms of thought, modes of association, and habits of life, which while they actually existed gave much of their own impress to the foreigners who were gradually familiarized with them, and will long continue, through the medium of their history and their remains, to refresh the imagination, stimulate the genius, chasten the taste, and arouse the emulation of mankind.

Other associations, which belonging to the mediæval ages may be grouped together under the class of romantic, next occur to our minds, bringing in procession before us a train of images nearer in point of time, but more remote in point of resemblance.  We think of the rich old picturesque cities of Europe, which sprung up, after the fall of the Roman Empire, in Spain, and France, and Germany, and the Netherlands, a hardy and robust offspring, born in troublous times, cradled amidst storms, thrown on the world in infancy to take care of themselves, and gathering, like individuals, strength and nerve and wit and prudence from this rough and irregular sort of training:—and forthwith the quaint-looking narrow streets are seen crowded with flocks of foreign visitors to drive a bargain in the bourse, or to barter their wool at the staple, or to mingle in the amusements of some civic festival.  And amidst the concourse of merchants, and pedlars, and workmen may be seen the knight and the squire, the monk and the minstrel.

“Quaint old towns of toil and traffic, quaint old towns of art and song,
Memories haunt their pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng.
Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the master-singers chancing rude poetic strains.
From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,
Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.”

“I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames like queens attended, knights who bore the fleece of gold;
Lombard and Venetian merchants, with deep laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations, more than royal pomp and ease.” [94]

And, then, Venice is seen, rising out of the sea—a “mazy dream of marble palaces, old names, fair churches, strange costumes, while the canals are like the silver threads, the bright unities of one of sleep’s well-woven visions.”  Within that great city—the modern Tyre, her history full of warnings pointed at pride, cupidity, ambition, and tyranny—are seen her merchant princes, with strangers from other lands, “Greek, Armenian, Persian,” meeting together in busy excited crowds to look on the wares and treasures supplied by her richly freighted ships; nor can we help glancing at the annual festival of that commercial republic, when, to use the words of Rogers,—

“The fisher came
From his green islet, bringing o’er the waves
His wife and little one, the husbandman
From the far land, with many a friar and nun,
And village maiden, her first flight from home,
Crowding the common ferry.  All arrived:
And in his straw the prisoner turned and listened;
So great the stir in Venice.  Old and young
Thronged her three hundred bridges.”

And then these cities disappear, and give place to some curiously carved chapel—a gem of architecture—within whose dim aisles there gather groups of pilgrims from far-off places, to pay their vows and offer their gifts at the shrine of a popular saint.  Walsingham and Canterbury show eager and zealous worshippers, coming from distant towns and other lands, to kneel with ignorant and superstitions reverence on the altar steps, and to help by their genuflexions to deepen the indentations on the wave-like surface of the floor.  And then again our thoughts wander away to Mediterranean ports, and pilgrims are seen gathering there to go forth on a more formidable expedition to the Holy Land, and as the vessel weighs anchor, the old church hymn, the Veni Creator, chanted by the sailors, is heard stealing over the waters, as they spread their canvass to the wind.  Nor can we forget that even these gatherings, with all their superstition, folly, waste of time, and pernicious moral influence, nevertheless enlarged the circle of human knowledge, and the domains of civilization, and corrected errors in geography, and wore away prejudices between race and race, and promoted the interests of commerce and navigation; and, towards the latter part of the mediæval age, contributed, by the knowledge which many of those who visited Rome acquired respecting its corrupt and licentious court, to create and swell that deep tide of anti-papal feeling which preceded the Lutheran reformation and promoted it when it came.  Far greater crowds than ever are seen, in the eleventh century, embarking: in the richly painted galleys of Genoa and Venice, on their way to the East.  Zeal for the Crusades was the very spirit of the times, fanned in some instances and kindled in others by the eloquence of Peter the Hermit.  Europe precipitated itself into Asia, and multitudes who marched on foot, as well as those who crossed the Mediterranean, appeared on the plains of Palestine.  Rarely has our world, which has so often witnessed the gathering of armed men, seen such a host as met the eye of our Richard Cœur de Lion when he reached Acre.  “Around the city spread the camp of the besiegers, a collection of warriors from every country in Europe, with their separate and appropriate standards.  The walls of the place were manned by its resolute defenders, urging their active engines of warlike defence.  Beyond, at a visible distance, the powerful army of Saladin appeared covering the hills and plains: their tents radiating with the gorgeous colours so precious to Turkish taste.”  The Crusades wasted an immense amount of wealth, sacrificed human life to an awful extent, and were productive of intense misery in various forms.  But, as in the case of all great gatherings of the human race for a common purpose, the evils were in the main temporary, the good produced permanent.  They did on a large scale what pilgrimages did on a small one.  They tended to undermine the system of feudalism and to sow seeds of liberty.  Men were waked as by a thunder-clap from the slumber of centuries.  A movement was produced in society, the impulse of which never died away, for from that era European affairs underwent a change; intellectual, moral, political, religious life began afresh to throb through the Western world, and never since have men completely gone to sleep again.

Transported in imagination to Palestine, the eye travels from the processions and crusades of former days to assemblages in modern times, animated by a like spirit of superstition; and among scenes of this kind such a picture as the following occurs on the banks of the Jordan, by the fountain of Elisha, detaining the fancy by its poetical interest, while, as an expression of blind and misguided feeling improperly termed religious, it fills with melancholy reflections the mind which has been enlightened by true piety.  “I estimated the number of persons encamped upon the plain before Jericho at 2,500, including a singular variety of languages and costumes.  There was scarcely a people under heaven among whom Christianity is professed without its representatives here.  There were Copts, Greeks, Armenians, Catholics, Protestants from Abyssinia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Turkey, Greece, Malta, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Poland, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, America, and I believe all or nearly all other Christian lands.  Cossacks were very numerous, and were distinguished for their equipages and personal bearing among a motley assemblage, which could hardly claim to be less than semi-barbarous.  This was no mean opportunity to study customs and costumes, when a walk of two or three minutes brought under your inspection the Egyptian dining upon an onion and a doura cake, the Syrian with his hands full of curds, the Armenian feasting on pickled olives or preserved dates, the Cossack devouring huge pieces of boiled mutton, and the European and American seated around a box, serving the purpose of a table, covered with the usual variety of meats and drinks demanded by the pampered appetite of civilized man.  As it grew dark, a multitude of fires was kindled throughout the camp and in the grove adjoining, which threw their strong glare upon these very characteristic curious groups, and gave the fullest effect to the picturesque scene.  The red caps, the huge turbans, the vast flaunting robes of striped silk or scarlet, the coarse shaggy jacket and bag trousers of the Cossacks, the venerable huge beards and bare feet and legs of the orientals, all seemed part and parcel of the human beings who lay nestled together upon the ground like domestic animals, or moved about the illuminated area, thus varying and multiplying by every possible change of light and shade the phases and hues of all that appears grotesque and fantastic to an eye accustomed to the graver modes of the western world.”

And now that a chain of rather wild but not uninteresting suggestions has brought us to the Holy Land, other thoughts, sacred and divine, bind us there for a while, strengthened by the sight of many a foreign and home-born visitor among the actual crowd, within and about the great Crystal Palace, unmistakably of Israelitish origin, the descendants of the men who possessed the country in her better days.  And there, on the summit of Moriah, stands an edifice devoted neither to war nor wealth, to the advancement of art or to the gratification of pleasure, but to the service of the God of the whole earth.  “A mountain of snow,” it seemed to the Roman Titus, “fretted with golden pinnacles.”  But, with an attractiveness surpassing that of material beauty, it revealed itself to the lingering eyes of large companies at their holy feasts two thousand years ago, as they at length touched the summit of some one of “the mountains which stood round about Jerusalem.”  They came over hill and dale, through mountain pass and by river stream, singing the songs of Zion, and rehearsing glorious things spoken of the city of God.  At many a cottage door, and village border, and city gate, groups of Israelites young and old, with smiling faces and beating hearts, fell into the augmenting crowd; which, as it rolled on, resembled the “swelling of their own Jordan.”  They came “upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to the holy mountain.”  Thither “the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.”  There was “little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah and their council, the princes of Zebulun, and the princes of Naphtali.”  They entered “through the gates into the city.”  The Jew from “Dan” met the Jew from “Beersheba,” and he who dwelt “by the haven of ships,” saluted his brother from “the other side of the river.”  Lover and friend, acquaintance and “kindred according to the flesh,” fell upon one another’s necks and kissed each other.  The old man with his “staff in his hand for very age” saw “his children’s children and peace upon Israel.”  The “streets of the city were full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.”  “There was a voice of noise from the city—a voice from the temple.”  “They went up to the house of the Lord.”  The priests were “clothed with salvation, the saints shouted for joy.”  “The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after, among them the damsels playing with timbrels.”  “They praised his name in the dance, and sang praise unto him with the timbrel and the harp.”  They “brought an offering and came into his courts.”  “They came to the altar of God.”  “They compassed it round about.”  They beheld “the beauty of the Lord, and inquired in his temple.”

One year stands out in the history of those gatherings before which every other fades.  Then our passover was slain.  Then the day of the world’s pentecost was fully come, and great was the gathering.  The multitude without the gates who were assembled to gaze on that spectacle before which, at its close, “the sun was darkened,” saw an inscription, in the threefold language, of which there was a pregnant meaning that Pilate little thought of—“It was written in Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew,” the three great languages then spoken on the earth.  Men who had used these languages from infancy were there.  Representatives of the world were there—the Roman centurion was there—Simon the Cyrenian was there [103]—multitudes of the Jews were there.  And as they deciphered that strange writing, the various tongues in which the title of the Divine Sufferer was expressed was a sign that in Him, the Roman, Greek, and Israelite would find a Saviour and a Lord.  The three languages “which like gold threads bind up the history of the ancient world,” were here beautifully entwined to tell the teeming crowd of one for whose coming all the changes in the story of their respective nations had, in the comprehensive working of Divine providence, prepared.  The cross of ignominy, at the sight of which they shuddered, was the threshold he must needs pass to enter his kingdom and ascend his throne, there to sway over them a sceptre at whose touch their hearts would bow and be rid of the burden of sin and guilt,—while their mutual antipathies would melt away, and He who had brought them peace would make them one for ever.  “The Roman, powerful but not happy—the Greek distracted with the inquiries of an unsatisfying philosophy—the Jew bound hand and foot with the chain of a ceremonial law,” would find in Christ crucified the power of God and the wisdom of God; and, in the superscription of his accusation, read wondrous words of “peace, pardon, and love,” to all the dwellers upon earth. [104]

Seven weeks afterwards and again there was a gathering.  “They were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.  And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.  Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.  And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Are not all these which speak Galilæans?  And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?  Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judæa, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

“And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.  And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people.”  Then was the beginning of that ingathering of souls which the Redeemer of the world predicted when he uttered those amazing words: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me.”  Then he began, and still he continues that infinitely gracious work, in the accomplishment of which he unites a fallen and divided race together by uniting them to himself.  The moral world has been, as it were, riven by an earthquake—consumed by an internal fire—and he undertakes to reunite and restore it.  He employs his cross as the point around which the whole mass of regenerated humanity is to collect: indeed, by the simple virtue of that cross, he accomplishes the change, and constitutes it the axis on which the “new earth” shall rest and revolve.  The attraction is invisibly going on, and the successful issue shall be at length developed.  To him shall the gathering of the people be.  They shall come not as captives, but as those who choose his service “to worship before him in his holy mountain.”  “The abundance of the sea shall be converted; the forces of the Gentiles shall come.”  They shall “fly as a cloud and as doves to their windows.”  “The isles shall wait” on him.  “The ships of Tarshish first, to bring his sons from afar.”  “He will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see his glory.”  “He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel.  The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off.  Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.”  Thus the divided world shall be made one in a way infinitely transcending the ambitious dreams of an Alexander or Napoleon.  The moral dispersion, of which that at Babel was the type, shall be reversed; men shall be united in religion and love: and the lines of human interest, like the radii of a circle, concentrating in spiritual obedience and the glory of Christ, shall no longer confusedly and in strife cross each other as they do now, and ever must, while a base selfishness makes each man his own centre.

Lifted into this mood of feeling, so much loftier than that with which we began the chapter, we cannot close without turning a reverential gaze on other gatherings, in that state of being on whose precincts we and all the multitudes around us every moment tread.  There is the gathering in the grave, “the silent waiting-hall where Adam meeteth with his children.”  “The chief ones of the earth, the kings of the nations,” are “brought down there and the worm is spread over them, and the worms cover them.”  And “there the rich and the poor meet together.”  “The small and the great are there.”  Who can count the sands on the sea shore—and who can cast up the number of the dead?  Vast as it is already, the concourse in the great city of the grave shall in a few short years receive accessions of myriads more.  The multitudes who crowd the streets of the Great Metropolis, in their way to the Palace of Industry, and all whom they represent in distant lands, will ere long descend to the “place of their fathers’ sepulchres.”  This globe, as it sails round the sun, carries in its deep hold many a costly thing; but the dust of its buried generations is a freightage more precious than gold or silver!

Along with this there is the gathering of souls into invisible realms.  It is consonant with reason and revelation, that we should believe in the conscious existence of minds after their separation from the body.  While the mortal remains are preserved by Divine Providence for a mysterious restoration to life at the last day, the immaterial and immortal spirit enters into a separate condition of blessedness or woe, according to its character in the present state of being.  “Lazarus died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.”  “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.”  The emancipated souls of all the holy dead, through the mediation of the blessed Redeemer, are gathered together in his immediate presence where there is fulness of joy, and at his right hand where there are pleasures for evermore.  “To that state all the pious on earth are tending; and if there is a law from whose operation none are exempt, which irresistibly conveys their bodies to darkness and dust, there is another not less certain and powerful which conducts their spirits to the abodes of bliss, to the bosom of their Father and their God.  The wheels of nature are not made to roll backward, everything presses on to eternity: from the birth of time an impetuous current has set in, which bears all the sons of men towards that interminable ocean.  Meanwhile heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature: is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine; leaving nothing for the last fire to consume but the objects and the slaves of concupiscence: while everything which grace has prepared and beautified shall be gathered and selected from the ruins of the world, to adorn that Eternal City which hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” [110]  And terrific is it to think that as the multitude of the spirits of the just made perfect is thus ever augmenting, so also is there an increase of the crowds of fallen and lost beings in the abodes of despair.  How many, it is to be feared, are hastening on, by their course in this world, not to paradise, but to prison—not to be with Christ, but to go with Judas to their own place!

And beyond these scenes of awful interest there lies another of like character, to be witnessed at the end of time by everyone who may look at these pages, because it will be the gathering of the whole human race.  “The dead which are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth.”  The sea shall give up the dead which is in it.  Death and Hades shall deliver up the dead which are in them.  The dead, small and great, shall stand before God.  The Son of man shall come in his glory, with all the holy angels with him.  Then shall he sit on the throne of his glory.  And before Him shall be gathered all nations.  “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.”  To think of all the multitudes who have ever lived upon the earth—all who are now in heaven or hell—all who are existing like ourselves—all who are yet to be born, assembled before the judgment-seat of Christ!  No such an aggregate of human beings can have ever met before.  Compared with that final one, even regarded simply in reference to numbers, every other assemblage fades into insignificance.  The solemn incidents of that day, relating merely to the material globe and the works of men, as predicted in the New Testament; the melting of the elements and the burning of the earth really appear, upon reflection, less startling and impressive than the vast concourse of mortals which shall then be seen.  And, to add to the wonder, all, with the exception of those who will be alive at the coming of the Son of man, shall have passed through mysterious stages of existence, through the hour of dissolution and the disembodied state, and shall bring with them to the great tribunal some knowledge of the secrets of eternity.  Something anticipative of their future and everlasting state they shall have experienced; so that, not in suspense, but with certain hope or fixed despair, shall they meet their God.  They will have learned long before, that their moral history in this world had determined their eternal history in the next: that if not twice born here below—born of the Spirit as well as of nature—they must then die “the second death.”  Thoughts and emotions, remembrances and expectations, such as in none of the world’s great gatherings have been or ever shall be known, will then be felt.  And, to complete this, the most affecting of all the associations which our subject has suggested, the mind passes on to contemplate the purpose and issue of the whole.  Placed before the great white throne, every man’s work shall be made manifest, the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, that the rectitude of the judge may be seen in his final sentence of life or death.  No human adjudication can be comparable to that.  “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true art thou in all thy ways, thou King of saints.”

The brightest of all visions next unfolds.  A structure of peerless beauty rises above the ruins of the world, and within its gates there gather men from all lands, select but innumerable.  “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.  And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, . . . and be their God.  And he showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels . . .  And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.  And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.  And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.  And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.  And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.  And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Here let the reader lay down the book, and in devout silence muse on these “four last things.”

PART V.
BENEFICIAL RESULTS, PROBABLE AND POSSIBLE.

“Albion! on every human soul
By thee be knowledge shed
Far as the ocean waters roll,
Wide as the shores are spread:—
Truth makes thy children free at home,
Oh, that thy flag unfurl’d
Might shine, where’er thy children roam,
Truth’s banner round the world.”

Montgomery.

Possessed as we are of an aptitude and an inclination to speculate on the issues of any enterprise in which we take a lively interest, we naturally turn, when revolving in our thoughts the subject of our Glass Palace and our great gathering, to look at the consequences which seem likely to emanate from such a remarkable exhibition, or which may be elicited by wisdom and benevolence from the fact of such an assemblage of the human family.  There are temporal results of an advantageous kind certain, or almost certain, to arise.  While we deprecate the all-absorbing interest felt by too many in pursuits terminating upon our condition in the present life; while we condemn an extravagant and idolatrous admiration of talent in invention and cleverness in contrivance; while we deplore that in the present day there is, in some quarters, an unmingled enthusiasm about such matters, which almost looks like the worship “of the vice, the saw, and the hammer;” while we look with pain upon the instances around us, in which our fellow-creatures are under the supreme and disastrous guidance of what an inspired teacher calls the “lust of the eye and the pride of life;” while we bear in mind that the insatiable love of gain, which is obvious enough in this commercial age, and is plainly the besetting sin of multitudes, must lead its subjects into temptation and a snare, and many hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition:—yet, consistently with all this, in strict accordance with the spirit of our holy religion, which has “the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come;” we look with interest and thankfulness upon all that may improve, elevate, and adorn the condition of mankind in the present stage of existence.  It seems impossible that this exposition of the works of all countries should not have a most favourable influence upon the taste, knowledge, convenience, and physical welfare of mankind.  Whilst the sight of so many productions of art will exercise the judgment, inspire the admiration, and chasten and guide the sensibilities of the mind in reference to artistic beauty, we shall obtain an enlarged acquaintance with modern inventions, and thus derive information relative to what forms an interesting chapter in the history of human achievements.  Among the suggestions of philosophical and philanthropic minds, that of Douglas, for the establishment of a Great Society, which should survey the compass and collect and arrange the treasures of human knowledge, a suggestion founded on Lord Bacon’s germinant idea of a philosophia prima, is one of the most remarkable.  The Great Exhibition will accomplish to a considerable extent one of the ends contemplated in the project.  It will convey more intelligence, in reference to art, than any written description could do.  The operations of our “Regent Society” will furnish a gigantic catalogue of the inventions of men, illustrated by the inventions themselves.  “Few works,” says the writer we have named, “would be more conducive to further advancement than ‘a calendar;’”—here he uses Bacon’s words;—“than a calendar resembling an inventory of the estate of man, of all inventions which are now extant, out of which doth naturally result a note what things are yet impossible, or not invented.”  Here we shall have the very thing—the huge household book of the world’s furniture, bound in covers of crystal.  By its influence on the knowledge and cultivation of art the Exhibition will promote at once our individual enjoyment, the comforts of our home, and all the conveniences and elegancies of domestic life, and also tend to strengthen and elevate our national importance.  What will benefit the rich may bless the poor.  “The discoveries which are the property of the higher class in one age descend indeed to the lower, but slowly and imperfectly; and there is ample opportunity and scope for accelerating the general diffusion of knowledge and inventions among all classes of society.  Even, in the most civilized countries, the mass of the nation have been suffered to remain comparatively barbarous; and it will be the dawn of a new and happier era, when the condition of the multitude is considered with that interest which is due to those, the sum of whose joys and sorrows are to all that is felt by the rest of the community what the ocean is to the drops of rain that fall into it.”

“It would be difficult to point out any branch of art which does not tend to the prosperity of our country; those which in appearance are most remote in their influence, however indirectly, yet effectually contribute to the perfection of its manufactures.  The pursuits of immediate utility and of refined pleasure, however far separated from each other, alike combine in exalting our national welfare.  It is not necessary, in recommending the fine arts to public patronage, to point out how far they improve and recommend to other nations the productions of manufactures, since they have higher and more direct claims upon the national encouragement.  Still their advancement, and above all their diffusion, become of high importance in a country like Britain, to be and ever to continue the centre and heart of trade and manufactures.” [122]

We may also advert for a moment to the connexion of the present enterprise with the pursuits of science.  In the history of human progress it may indeed be remarked that art has preceded science; that Phidias came before Aristotle, and Michael Angelo before Lord Bacon; but still science has ever proved the friend of art in those branches which minister immediately to the enjoyments of mankind.

Scarcely any specimens of modern ingenuity could be found in the Exhibition which are not indebted for something of their beauty and adaptation, if not their very existence, to scientific knowledge.  The practical application of philosophy has given birth to the manifold kinds of machinery which at once abridge the toils and improve the products of human skill.  Now art, if it cannot pay back the debt it owes to science, may be subservient to the interests of its patron.  So it has proved in many instances already, and will continue to do, no doubt, as the necessities of artistic invention give an impulse to philosophical inquiry.  The manufacture of watches long since led to careful observations upon the effect of temperature on metals.  Glass-making, at an early period, occasioned examinations into the colouring properties of metallic oxides; and the dying of woollens and silks has naturally induced persons employed in that department to investigate the qualities of mineral substances as they bore upon the operations of their own trade.  No sagacity can anticipate, no fancy conceive, the yet future enlargement of the sum of human science, especially in its minute details, to be derived from the busy activities of useful art.  All this the present collection of the industry of the nations will be likely to promote; and, even with this limited view, one may regard it, in its relation to the Illustrious Personage who may be deemed the founder of the Great Institute, as worthy of a place among the “Opera Basilica” which Bacon desired to witness.  Some princes have sought to immortalize themselves by war; some by purchasing the praise of contemporary poets; some by erecting palaces, temples, and statues: but at length a prince has arisen, who, to his lasting honour, seeks, by encouraging a noble enterprise, to foster the arts and manufactures, not only of his adopted country but of the wide world.

But the social effects of the great gathering are most important.  Vast multitudes of the human race cannot be brought together for one common peaceful purpose without its tending to some desirable end.  There is a bond of consanguinity which encompasses all the descendants of Adam.  “God has made of one blood the families of men.”  There are sympathies in all human hearts like the strings of a concert of harps attuned in harmony: “as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.”

When men are marshalled under opposite banners in the battle-field, and taught to look on each other as natural enemies, deadly passions are evoked from the depths of the heart:

“Like warring winds, like flames from various points
That mate each other’s fury, there is nought
Of elemental strife, were fiends to guide it,
Can mate the wrath of man.”

But when they meet amidst scenes of peace, to contemplate the glories of nature, or the beauties of art; where they are freed, for a while at least, from the sophistry which would persuade them that the depression of one class or country is necessary to the prosperity of another; the kindly instincts of the human breast are likely to unfold and operate, and mutual amity and good-will to brighten and bless the interview.  We know how the selfishness, pride, and irritability of men, after having for a season been lulled to rest, may easily be aroused again: we are not unmindful of the possibility that, even through the Exhibition itself, jealousies may be excited in some minds; yet still we cannot but hope, and we fervently pray, that after this peaceful congress of states, and the amicable interchange of kind thoughts and good offices which generally, we trust, it will produce, there will be far more even than at present an indisposition for war among the nations of the earth.  May we not expect that, after this, America, the continental powers, and ourselves will feel an increased reluctance to unsheath the sword?  Will not fighting look more than ever like fratricide?  It was a custom among the Romans to split in two, and divide between themselves and foreign visitors who shared their hospitality, a small token called the tessera hospitalis, which was preserved from generation to generation in the two families who formed the friendly alliance.  It became an heir-loom, to be enjoyed and used by remote descendants.  Fervently do we desire that the result of the great gathering in the industrial mansion, the minor gatherings in other, and especially sacred, places of resort, and the private gatherings of foreign friends around English-hearths, will be like the division of the tessera hospitalis in old times, and that its memory will be cherished and honoured through years to come.

It cannot be supposed that men should meet together from such different quarters without enlarging their knowledge of each other, of human nature, and the world.  Narrow and contracted modes of thought on certain subjects incident to very circumscribed travelling will, we may expect, expand into generous dimensions, in consequence of a visit from afar to the British Metropolis; while the opportunities afforded us for intercourse with foreigners cannot but bring the knowledge of their methods of life and social habits to our very doors.  By those who are skilled in the languages of other countries the means of improvement afforded this year are great beyond expression.

May we not add, that the intelligent observation of our country, its large freedom, its general order, its civil institutions, its commercial activity, and, above all, its numerous benevolent associations, will be adapted to suggest valuable hints and reflections to strangers; by creating comparison between what they witness here and what they have been familiar with in their own land, and by leading them to inquire into the causes of difference between themselves and us?

These are probable beneficial results of the Exhibition; there are still more important advantages to be contemplated among the things that are possible, the actual realization of which must depend upon combined and individual effort.  Whether, in a moral and religious point of view, it will terminate in blessing the world and ourselves must be determined by the use we resolve to make of it.  England has created an unprecedented opportunity for doing spiritual good on a large scale to the other countries of the earth.  A field of usefulness at home is now opened, which may, by careful tillage, yield a harvest to be reaped by multitudes who shall return rejoicing, “taking their sheaves with them.”  No one can tell where the undulations of the influence will terminate which the Christians in Britain may now put in action.  Evils relating to the interests of morality and religion will no doubt be incidentally occasioned by this vast concourse.  Monsters in human form, who seek “the wages of iniquity,” by pandering to the gratification of sensuality and intemperance, will make the months of our world-festivities the season for plying all the bewitching arts of their deadly craft.  They will spread their toils with the utmost cunning, dress up profligacy and vice in the most gorgeous apparel, and deck their “chambers of death” with surpassing luxuries.  The strange woman will “sit at the door of her house, in a seat in the high places of the city, to call passengers who go right on their ways,” and to “lead her guests to the depths of hell.”  The harpies who live by the intemperance of others will not be slow in making provision for temptation, where the dissipated may “stretch themselves upon their couches,” and “chant to the sound of the viol, and drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the chief ointments.”  The gambling-house keeper will be also on the alert, to stimulate and keep alive a feverish avarice, or to excite some desperate attempt to repair an already ruined fortune.  In all these ways, and many more, evil agencies will be busy, even beyond their common wont, to seduce the innocent, to kindle passions impure and vile in the breasts of the unsuspecting, and to rouse afresh the palled appetite and the jaded desires of the man hackneyed in the ways of sinful pleasure.  Incentives to the breach of the sabbath will also be contrived; facilities for amusements and excursions on the day of rest will be multiplied; pleasure-gardens will be opened with new attractions; and steam-boats will ply, and omnibuses travel, in augmented numbers.  The Sunday press will, we fear, start on a fresh race for the favour of the worst portion of the public, by supplying more stimulants than ever to a vitiated and diseased taste; and other publications of vicious tendency will be industriously vended.  Against all these dangers we warn the reader.  If the young and unexperienced, when they visit the metropolis under common circumstances, need to be on their guard against the designs of the profligate and unprincipled, with more than double force does that necessity press upon them at the present season.  A much more than usual share of caution, wisdom, self-control, and virtuous presence of mind will be requisite, in order to preserve the visitor from falling a prey to such as “lie in wait to deceive.”  And let every youth, whose piety has been formed amidst quiet sequestered scenes, and has till now been sheltered by parental care, and quickened and trained by domestic example and instruction, seek, as he comes within the reach of new and unknown temptations, the special protection of Divine Providence, and the holy safeguard of the Spirit of God.  Carefully should he strive to fortify himself against peril, by fixed and frequent meditation on the precepts and principles of the gospel; and, above all, it becomes him earnestly and often to present to God that memorable prayer, “Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.”

But though mischiefs may be anticipated, yet it appears to us a vast preponderance of moral and religious benefit may be accomplished, if British Christians rise up to the spirit of the great occasion, and seek, under the blessing of God, to turn it to that valuable account which Divine Providence seems now to suggest to thoughtful minds.  We repeat, that England has created for herself an unprecedented opportunity for doing spiritual good: and we may add that her guilt will be indeed heavy if she neglect to improve it.

1.  The great gathering supplies singular facilities for making religious impressions on the minds of our foreign visitors.  As a preliminary to this, indeed an indispensable prerequisite, we must be careful to show them courtesy and kindness.  It was held to be a religious duty among the Greeks to give friendly entertainment to a stranger, because it was believed he might possibly be a god in disguise.  An inspired pen enforces the duties of hospitality, on the ground that “some have entertained angels unawares.”  We look for no such guests; but we are assured that, whatever be their costume, clime, and speech, they who visit us are indeed souls of Divine origin and enduring existence; and the dignity of their nature is a sufficient reason why we should “honour all men.”  A sedulous and constant endeavour to treat them, wherever they meet us, with marked respect, and with affectionate civility—to answer their questions, to guide their way, and to assist their examinations into objects of interest:—not to do this in a careless manner, but so as to exhibit that true politeness which is described as “benevolence in little things,” will tend to secure for us a vantage ground in all the direct attempts we may make for their spiritual welfare.  It will bespeak their friendly regards; it will be on the surface of our character a beautiful proof of the practical nature of our religion, and will recommend to candid inquiry the principles from which it springs.  A proud, an indifferent, a suspicious, an antagonistic, or even a patronizing air of intercourse—(one or other of which habits, or all in turn, some Englishmen are prone to display when travelling abroad)—will at once alienate from us the people of other lands, and prevent the success of our well-meant efforts, however vigorously employed, for their spiritual good.  We must look on them not as inferiors, not as individuals worse taught than we—nor as ignorant or foolish—but as men of like passions and powers, having heads as clear and hearts as warm as our own.  This propitiation of their favour is in a high degree important; and if, in the impetuosity of religious zeal, it be disregarded, the high purpose planned will be removed beyond the probability of accomplishment.

To secure great spiritual results, both combined and individual action are requisite.  The Bible Society has devised its methods for supplying foreigners with the word of life in all languages.  Means will be furnished for sending home many a sojourner amongst us, like him of Ethiopia, who returned from Jerusalem “sitting in his chariot, and reading the prophet Esaias.”  And, if he should receive a favourable impression of our civilization, as we hope he will, and be led to see that its chief excellences are based upon the influence which the holy book has wrought in English society—as we trust he may—then will he be thereby prepared, in some degree, to search out the blessed contents of that volume which unfolds the promise of the “life that now is, and of that which is to come.”  The Tract Society has also religious publications in various tongues for cheap sale or gratuitous distribution.  And perhaps when prejudice, or an indisposition to afford sufficient time, may interfere with the reading of the Scriptures, a tract may obtain a perusal, and drop into the mind some germinant thoughts which may grow and ripen into the strength and beauty of spiritual life.  A special organization, moreover, has been contrived to secure places of worship for “devout men out of every nation under heaven,” and to provide preachers in foreign languages, to conduct earnest evangelical ministrations.  And is it too much to suppose that when they hear, “every man in his own tongue wherein he was born,” the “wonderful works of God,” there will be some, who, like those assembled on the day of Pentecost, will be pricked to the heart, and will receive the word.  And let it not be forgotten that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned;” and moreover that this spiritual discernment is one of the “gifts for men,” which an ascended Saviour gives in consequence of his having “led captivity captive.”  The written letter is not “the power of God unto salvation,” save as the Spirit takes “of the things of Christ,” and shows them unto us.  Seeds of truth will not produce “them thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold,” till the Lord give the increase.  There can be no pentecost without an effusion of the Holy Ghost.  But, while we feel the necessity, we should by faith and prayer honour him who has promised the supply.  God is willing to do his part, if we do ours.  “Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

But associated efforts will not suffice.  Isolated action was everything once.  Combined action is too exclusive now.  The one must be done, and the other not left undone.  Each man must strive in his own sphere to do good to the stranger from a far land.  He may distribute tracts, he may guide to the house of prayer, he may know how to drop a fitly spoken word; or he may be able to introduce the foreigner to a courteous, intelligent, and educated friend.  Persons of wealth and influence, and especially such as, together with these, have tolerable facility in the use of modern languages, possess talents for usefulness at the present time, the value of which they can hardly overrate.  By judicious hospitality; by making a point of cultivating acquaintance with the guests of the nation, and selecting certain among them as guests of the family; by frequent and wise arrangements for this purpose; by entertainments, elegant but simple, generous but not extravagant; and, by methods easily understood and adopted by those who possess the requisite means, many may be brought within the reach of the gentle, tender, and softening influences of Christ’s blessed religion of friendship and love—may have images painted in their memory never to fade, and emotions kindled in their hearts never to be quenched, and

“Oft, while they live—
In their own chimney nook, as night steals on,
With half-shut eyes reclining,—oft methinks
While the wind blusters and the pelting rain
Clatters without, shall they recall to mind
The scenes, occurrences they meet with here,
And wander in Elysium.”

They may discover that they were entertained by angels unawares.  Elements of piety, like rich odours, may steal over their soul, to leave behind an undying fragrance.  Our Christianity, through our kindness, may become endeared.  In the reminiscences of future years they may strangely feel that never were they so near heaven, as during the memorable moments they spent around the domestic hearths, and at the domestic altars of England; and, stimulated by the recollection, they may embrace the truths and find the inward hidden life which will enable them to perpetuate and multiply such hallowed scenes.

2.  The great gathering affords an argument for making efforts to promote religion at home, and presents an opportunity for the purpose—“We are a spectacle to the world!”  The supreme Governor of the nations, the Prince of the kings of the earth, has assigned us a rank amongst the empires of the globe which cannot fail to attract the attention of mankind.  Our constitution and laws, our literature and science, our commerce and art, our army and navy, present points of interest, forms of grandeur, specimens of activity, and developments of power, which the other cultivated portions of our race intelligently study as great theorems in the science of civilization; while our brethren in distant regions, still half barbarous, gaze on the signs of our glory, or listen to the tale of what we are and do, with a vacant and bewildering kind of wonder.  And moreover the people, institutions, and language of this little isle have attained a sort of ubiquity.  They are seen, felt, heard, in almost every latitude of both hemispheres.  Something or other British, some foot-marks of our wide-spread influence, may be discovered on nearly every shore.  “We are a spectacle to the world!”  The Christians of our country—embracing the true disciples and servants of man’s Divine Redeemer, commissioned by his express mandate, and constrained by his infinite love—have united and are still employed in the sacred task of teaching to the ends of the earth the blessed name of him they worship and adore.  They send the missionary, the Bible, and the tract, to the pagan people of the world’s two continents, and to them that “are afar off upon the sea.”  “We are a spectacle to the world!”—rendered so by Providence, accepting and maintaining the position by our secular and still more by our sacred enterprises, we more emphatically than ever assert the publicity of the post we occupy, by now inviting the inhabitants of the world at large to visit our land.  As a professedly Christian nation, then, glorying as we do in that title—making a boast very often of the purity of our religion, of the reformation of old corruptions, and the brilliant beauty of its spiritual truths, “what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness?”  England should be the model nation for the world.  Will not some strangers come, almost expecting to find us such?  Will they not look for striking indications of the influence among ourselves of that Christianity which we preach to them as worthy of all acceptation?  Will they not inquire, what is it doing for us?  And we do not fear but the intelligent and candid among them will recognise not a few of the beautiful footprints of our religion in our institutions and our homes.  But will they not see something else?  Will they not mark, here and there, broad spaces in our civilization where the power of our Christianity has never come—spaces in society left uncivilized?  We need not now point them out; they have been laid bare again and again, and urged on our notice by home missionaries and city missionaries, by magazines, newspapers, and parliamentary records.  They have met our eyes and made us shudder, in revelations from the press, the pulpit, and the platform.  Terrible secrets have been divulged respecting some departments of English life.  Facts have been stated indicative of the vice and irreligion of some portions of the community.  Meditating on these things, we seem to hear, from the lips of the foreigner whose spiritual welfare we contemplate, those well-known words—“Physician, heal thyself; whatsoever ye have done in Capernaum do also in thy country.”  And the just retort makes us blush—not indeed for our Christianity, but for ourselves.  Our Christianity, wherever it has been purely taught and faithfully applied, has wrought marvels on a scale fully proportioned to the extent of our efforts.  What makes us ashamed is, that we have not discharged our duty in reference to its diffusion among ourselves, any more than we have done our duty in reference to its diffusion throughout the world.

The presence of so many foreigners, whom we virtually challenge to come and inspect the working of our Christianity, does not really increase our obligation, does not bind us more than we were previously bound, to promote the religious interests of our own countrymen; but surely it should powerfully remind us of our obligation, should press it on our conscientious regard, should awaken us from our slumbers, should stimulate us now vigorously to do what ought to have been done long before.  While we see so much in our great towns and rural districts to pain and humble us in the sight of men, much more ought we to be pained and humbled in the sight of God.  The observation of mortals is trifling compared with his.  Their reproach a light matter placed beside his condemnation.  For years has the eye of him who watched over ancient Israel to see what they were doing with his truth, whether they obeyed or dishonoured it, whether they taught its doctrines and precepts to the young and ignorant, or left them uncultivated, a prey to unbelief, to superstition, or false philosophy—for years has that eye been looking on English Christians and noting down their culpable neglect.  Happy will it be for us as individuals now, and for our country in all coming times, if the great event of the present year should excite a prevalent attention to the remaining spiritual necessities of the kingdom—if it should give an impulse to our schools, our churches, and our missions.  That is among the possible advantages to be reaped; and earnestly is every Christian reader who may glance at these pages implored to take up, and ponder, and carry out practically, with diligence, zeal, love, and prayer, the hints imperfectly suggested, that so the year may be signalized by an exhibition of Christian devotedness to the work of religiously benefiting our countrymen, for which we shall have the approbation of our Divine Lord, the testimony of a good conscience, and the grateful remembrance of posterity, who will “rise up and call us blessed.”

At the same time the assemblage of many persons from the provinces in London this summer, affords an opportunity, an unprecedented opportunity, for attempting, in a humble and devout spirit, something bold, significant, and generally attractive of attention, with a view to the spiritual good of the multitude.  Let thousands upon thousands of appropriate religious publications be cheaply sold or freely given to the crowds about the park, and the streams of passengers flowing through the principal thoroughfares.  And let the gospel be preached by well-known, accredited, intelligent, and earnest-minded men, in the spirit of the preachers in the day of Pentecost, not in spacious buildings only but in the open air, wherever it can be done with propriety;—judicious arrangements being made for the purpose, that holy and apostolic zeal may not, without prejudice and misrepresentation, be regarded as ignorant and rash enthusiasm.  The enterprise is commenced.—Exeter Hall has been engaged for public services on the Lord’s day through several months—preaching out of doors is also contemplated.  The initiative taken, let others follow up the work, till London and its environs be pervaded with the light and power of the gospel.

PART VI.
LESSONS, PERTINENT AND PRACTICAL.

“With arm in arm the forest rose on high,
And lessons gave of brotherly regard:
Mercy stood in the cloud with eye that wept
Essential love, and from her glorious bow
Bending to kiss the earth in token of peace,
With her own lips, her gracious lips which God
Of sweetest accent made, she whispered still,
She whispered to revenge, ‘Forgive, Forgive.’”

“Silence had a tongue; the grave,
The darkness, and the lonely waste had each
A tongue, that ever said, ‘Man, think of God,
Think of thyself, think of Eternity.’”

Pollok.

A century ago London was thrown into excitement by the shock of an earthquake.  In the streets, and for six miles round the city, slight undulations were plainly perceptible.  Houses were shaken, so that parts of them fell down; and ships in the river Thames were loosened from their moorings.  Numbers of the terrified inhabitants flocked into Hyde Park, which, being a vast area unencumbered with buildings, was supposed to afford a less perilous position for the people than they could find elsewhere, in the event of their being overtaken by the dreaded catastrophe.  Whitfield happened to be in London at the time, when the minds of the citizens were agitated by intense and distracting fears; and with an eloquence, which was surpassed only by his zeal, endeavoured to improve the terrific event by making it the occasion of appropriate religious appeals.  One night he addressed a vast concourse in the Park, and while the people pressed together to hear him under the open sky—and the silence of the scene, the bright stars overhead, the dim shadow of the speaker, like some impalpable visitant come on a warning mission from the other world, and the occurrence which had brought them together contributed to the effect of his discourse,—he with his almost superhuman voice which with mysterious intonations rolled into men’s ears, and moved their hearts as with an earthquake, described to them the terrors of the last day, and exhorted them to flee from the wrath to come.  Could a Whitfield now, in 1851, gather around him in the same spot the concourse attracted there under such different circumstances, he might with a little exercise of his ingenious powers of adaptation, with a slight effort of his talent for extracting spiritual lessons from passing incidents, address his auditory on duties of infinite moment, taking as a suggestive text one of the bearings of the festival of art already noticed in these pages; namely, its hopeful tendency to produce reconciliation and peace among the nations of the world.  We can fancy such a preacher at the quiet hour of eventide—the sky, clear azure, with a few fleecy clouds—the emerald-like tree-tops bathed in the rays of the setting sun, and scarcely moved by the gentle air—all nature seeming to repeat the angel’s song, “on earth peace, good-will toward men;” we can fancy him lifting up his voice to tell the crowd, softened and soothed by surrounding influences, that professing as they do to meet in national friendship, and to celebrate a feast of brotherly love, there are some other obligations to peace and reconciliation which come still nearer to their homes and hearts.

Failing the preacher—apart from the helpful influence of the scene imagined—and debarred the aid of that sympathy which thrills through a crowd when touched by the living voice of a loving fellow-man, we would attempt for a moment, through the medium of this little book, to enforce on the individual reader two methods of improving the present event suggested on slight reflection.

1.  The professed character, and what we fain hope to be the spirit, of the gathering, suggest a duty which concerns us in our domestic relations.

Men, some of them not long ago, in arms against each other, we see now on terms of amity.  Perhaps the Austrian meets in the park the Italian he has faced in the field—the Turk, the Egyptian at whom he aimed his scimitar—the veteran Frenchman, the British soldier with whom he grappled at Waterloo—but enemies or aliens no longer, they pass, if they do not recognise each other, as friends.  This congress on pacific terms, with a cordial understanding, is a spectacle on which the eye loves to linger, and over which the heart of the philanthropist dilates with hope.  Now, does not this festival, without any far-fetched application, seem to say to every one of us, as members of a family, that surely at this time consistency is added to the other grounds of duty which require us to cultivate towards those related to us by nature an unsuspicious temper, a frank and open disposition, a desire to conciliate where differences have arisen, and a determination to cement where cordiality prevails?  Should not each endeavour to make his home—whether mansion or cottage, hall or hut—a sanctuary sacred to peace and concord?  Should not each man now more than ever aspire to the fulfilment of the office and the enjoyment of the benediction described and pronounced by the Divine Teacher of love, “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.”  Unseemly and inconsistent is it, while we are inviting foreigners to forget past enmities, to consign to oblivion by-gone strife, for any of us to allow domestic jealousies and heart-burnings to torment our breasts, which should be full of domestic charities and sympathies.  While thousands, of different colours, climes, and costumes, join to bury the hatchet of strife under the Hyde Park elms, let those who own a common parentage, who in childhood sat on the same knee, and were nursed in the same bosom, or whose relationship, though not so intimate, is far from remote, between whom, alas, differences have sprung up, seek by mutual concession to arrive at a better understanding, and thus render the present year memorable in their domestic annals.  It would be a beautiful incident to associate with this bright passage in the history of the world a few lines relating to reconciliation and love, where private strifes had embittered hearts intended by nature and providence to be ever one.

The religion of Jesus Christ, as it is intended to bring together the nations of the earth in amity, is also meant to bind together the inmates of a home in friendship.  Wherever its laws are submitted to, and its spirit imbibed, there peace must reign, and the domestic circle be a refuge from strife.  The gospel teaches lessons above all others suited to this end.  It points the master to God, the model of fatherly government, and bids him remember that he has a Master in heaven.  It speaks to the husband, and points to Jesus Christ, bidding the husband love his wife “as Christ loved the church.”  It speaks to the parents, and charges them to train up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”  It speaks to sons and daughters, commanding them to honour their father and mother, and “obey them in the Lord.”  It speaks to servants, and tells them to “be obedient to such as are their masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart as unto Christ, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.”  In this great world of strife what should be so peaceful as a Christian home?  Amidst the storms which rock life’s ocean, where shall we find a harbour if not there?  While divisions are rife, where shall we find union, if not among the branches from a common parentage?  Scenes of domestic purity, innocence, and love there are to be met with in many of the homes of our land, over which religion has thrown its shield, where a happy exemption from the evils which tear society in pieces is enjoyed; where surely some relic is to be found of what Eden was; where the parent’s care, like a deep-rooted tree, spreads out its graceful branches, while the children’s love, like fragrant and flowery creepers, twists and curls tenacious tendrils around the venerable stem, “recompensing well the strength it borrows with the grace it lends,” and the dew of God’s blessing, and the sunshine of God’s smile, fall upon them one and all.  Happy scenes these, which Jesus visits as he did the feast at Cana, and the home at Bethany, teaching such families out of his own word, sanctifying them by his gracious Spirit, guiding them by his perfect example, protecting them by his mighty power, comforting them by his unfailing sympathy, and preparing them for a better home of which he gives them glimpses as they read the Bible and kneel together at the footstool of God’s throne.  Through faith in the gospel, and prayer for the grace of Him who is its source and life, these scenes might be greatly multiplied: and who but must desire it, and strive for its promotion, so that while this year we invite the nations to meet as a family, the family may meet as the brethren of Christ and the children of God.

2.  The character and spirit of the gathering suggest a farther lesson connected with our individual interests and our spiritual relations.

Would we fain look on the present year as sacred to reconciliation and peace? let each one inquire whether he has ensured the enjoyment of those blessings in their most precious and enduring forms!  It is a fact, to which the consciousness of most thoughtful men bears witness, that in connexion with the intellectual harmony of their nature, there is sad discord in their moral experience.  The heart is divided against itself—its little world is full of rebellion and strife, torn in pieces by intestine war, like an empire in the anarchy of an interregnum, even as that clear-sighted Hebrew, looking at himself in the radiance of a light which fell from heaven, most plainly saw, and mournfully confessed, when he cried, to his and our true Lord and Maker, “unite my heart to fear thy name!”  That inward confusion indicates the rejection of a Divine law of order, and that fact explains the secret of many a man’s misery.  The material world out of which he gathers the triumphs of art, and the intellectual power by which he achieves his victories over the physical, are in a state of unvarying subjection to law, and hence the admired results of his formative genius and taste; but he himself, the innermost and moral self, is out of harmony with law.  Hence the disorder and trouble which human beings carry with them everywhere, amidst the harmony and order of external nature; which, with a still small voice, reproves them for their disobedience.  Some lead mournful, miserable lives; they strive to be happy, but happiness flies from them.  All kinds of expedients are adopted to secure inward peace; but these all fail.  The disappointed ones still try.  Again cheated of the prize, they try—it is in vain.  And do you not know the secret of your sorrow?  You lay it perhaps on circumstances, or friends, or on the world, or on nature, or on God.  You invent causes and miss the right one.  Here it is lying within yourself, in your own heart and will.  Your inward life is not under the rule of the great God.  His laws run in one direction, and carry happiness with them.  Your soul rushes in an opposite direction, and dashes against these laws.  The collision is your misery and ruin.  “You stretch out your hand against God, and strengthen yourself against the Almighty.  You run upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers.”  Man’s heart, divided against itself, throwing off the yoke of law, is at emnity with God.  Divine relations are disturbed.  The bonds which alone could bind safety and peace to the human soul, by binding that soul to the omnipotent and loving Father of all, are ruptured and destroyed; and thus, giving up its Guide and Guardian, the wandering child is left to battle with storms in the dark ocean of evil over which it strives to push its bark.  How can there be security to a creature who breaks away from God?  How can that bosom be at peace in which there is no love to him?  His law has sanctions, as all effectual and perfect law must ever have—pain and trouble therefore follow disobedience here and hereafter.  “The wages of sin is death.”

Such being the facts of the case, the first desire of all should be to secure reconciliation with God, with law, with conscience.  The gospel, and it only, reveals the method of this reconciliation.  It teaches us that there is redemption in Jesus Christ; that God has set him forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins; that whoso believeth in him is justified; that there is no condemnation to them that are in him; that he is our peace; that to as many as receive him he gives power to become the sons of God; that being made sons they receive not the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father; that his people are renewed and sanctified through his Spirit, that dwelleth in them; that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in them who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit; and that having access by faith unto this grace wherein we stand, they rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

This Divine reconciliation, inward order, and holy peace are our best qualifications for seeking to promote domestic reconciliation, national order, and the world’s peace.  They are the proper preparatives for all usefulness, private and public—for all works of love towards our fellow-men.  For how inconsistent it is to think of binding up the wounds of a family, curing the ills of the commonwealth, or bringing a divided world together—while the very soul, dreaming of these achievements, is a spectacle of sorrow to unseen beings; inasmuch as it is engaged in an impotent warfare against its God, and is bleeding under fatal injuries inflicted on itself in a struggle so unutterably awful and insane.  Fraternity! concord! union!  These beautiful words come with a melancholy and mocking sound from any lips but those which have prayed for union with God, concord with law, and fraternity with a holy obedient universe.  How touching also, even to tears, is it to think that any of the minds so richly gifted by the Creator should devote themselves through life to artistic and intellectual toils, for the sole purpose of bringing into fair proportion and symmetry rude heaps of matter, or confused elements of thought—while their own nature, in itself and its highest relations, is left “without form, and void,” like the primeval deep, its face covered over with darkness.

These blessings to which we have referred alone can satisfy.  Other things, however fair and good—success in the formation of the beautiful, and even the production of the beneficent, leave a consciousness of want until the human spirit be reconciled to itself and God.  The soul wonders why the cup in which it has mixed such sweet ingredients should yet be dashed with bitterness; but so it must be while the vessel itself retains the wormwood of its spiritual enmities.  Let the cup be cleansed; let the moral nature be renewed and purified by a reconciling faith in the One Mediator; and then shall the man, however disappointed before, find himself blessed above all mortal blessedness.

These blessings too are of an enduring character.  It were to tell an oft-told truth, if we described the limited existence of all works of art and genius; if we reminded the reader of the crumbling touch of time, and pointed him to the all-enveloping ruins of the last day, when “the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and all the works that are therein shall be burned up.”  But these common themes are as indisputable and awful as they are common: nor should any one forget them as he looks on the palace of glass—(how forcibly symbolic is that word)—and on the manifold structures, possessions, and achievements of men.  In contrast with such brittle objects, how strong in enduring strength is that spiritual good to which, in the conclusion of this volume, we direct, with intense desire and hope, the thoughts of every reader.  “The world passeth away and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”  The Divine favour, so plainly promised to such, is an inheritance exempt from the condition of time, change, and mortality.  It is a treasure brought down to us from another world, and will be carried back there by him who finds it.  In the silent musings of eternity the soul, reconciled to God through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, will be able to look back with unspeakable satisfaction on a course through this world, in which the only thing not doomed to perish with itself was secured and appropriated.  “I could not stay in that earth,” will be the reflection of so happy a spirit.  “I saw but a little while what it had within it of the beautiful and the sublime in God’s works, and in the works which God enabled man to accomplish; I left them there to perish, and on the last day I saw them perish: but in my passage I discerned, by the aid of the Divine Spirit, something better than all that they signified to me.  I seized the Pearl of great price and have brought that away.” [161]  On the other hand, how inexpressibly dreadful must be the recollection of the opposite class of human souls,—of all unreconciled, unregenerate, earthly, sensuous, and even merely intellectual ones,—who will be for ever tortured with the accusation of their own mortifying and fatal folly, because they will have passed through a world of perishable objects with only one thing imperishable, and in striving to enjoy them forget that, and after a life of toil, ambition, and hope, came away with nothing.

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FOOTNOTES.

[14]  “The internal columns are placed twenty-four feet apart, while the external ones have no more than eight feet (a third of twenty-four) of separation; while the distance between each of the transept columns is three times twenty-four, or seventy-two feet.  This also is the width of the middle aisle of the building: the side aisles are forty-eight wide, and the galleries and corridors twenty-four.  Twenty-four feet is also the distance between each of the transverse gutters under the roof; hence the intervening bars, which are at once rafters and gutters, are necessarily twenty-four feet long.”

[54]  See an interesting lecture on the British Empire, by the Rev. Wm. Arthur.

[91]  Bishop Thirlwall’s History of Greece.

[94]  Lines from Longfellow’s Belfry of Bruges and Nuremberg are here blended.

[103]  Cyrene was a Greek colony.

[104]  Life of St. Paul, by Conybeare and Howson, p. 32.

[110]  Robert Hall.

[122]  Douglas, Advancement of Society, p. 151.

[161]  See Foster’s Discourses, second series, p. 128.  The passage is an imitation, indeed partly a quotation, of one of his.

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Table of Contents

- THE PALACE OF GLASS AND THE GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE.

- ADVERTISEMENT.

- CONTENTS.

- PART I. THE POET’S DREAM.

- PART II. CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT.

- PART III. VOICES OF HOPE AND WARNING.

- PART IV. ASSOCIATIONS, SECULAR AND SACRED.

- PART V. BENEFICIAL RESULTS, PROBABLE AND POSSIBLE.

- PART VI. LESSONS, PERTINENT AND PRACTICAL.

- FOOTNOTES.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE