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and of her Majesty's earnest wishes that its success may amply fulfil the intentions and expectations with which it was projected, and may richly reward the zeal and energy, aided by the cordial co-operation of distinguished men of various countries, by which it has been carried into execution. We heartily join in the prayer that the International Exhibition of 1862, beyond conducing to present enjoyment and instruction, will be hereafter recorded as an important link in the chain of international exhibitions, by which the nations of the world may be drawn together in the noblest rivalry, and from which they may mutually derive the greatest advantages."

Earl Granville then, on the part of the Commissioners of the Exhibition, presented to his Royal Highness the "key," technically so called, of the Exhibition. This is, in fact, a masterkey (manufactured by Messrs. Chubb), and which opens the entire number of the different suites of locks on all the doors of the buildings. It is beautifully wrought entirely by hand out of a solid piece of steel, and was inclosed in a crimson velvet bag.

This concluded that part of the ceremonial which took place under the western dome, and before the throne; and the procession, being re-formed, proceeded in the same order along the north side of the nave to a large platform under the eastern dome, immediately in front of the gigantic orchestra. Here had assembled a number of the visitors, British and foreign, distinguished for their rank and the high positions, official and diplomatic, which they hold. To this point the foreign Ambassadors had been conducted, and here her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, the Grand Duchess of MecklenburghStrelitz, and the Princess Mary of Cambridge, had been allotted places. Seats, too, were provided for the personages taking part in the procession; and, as soon as they had been duly arranged, the music specially composed for this occasion was performed by an orchestra consisting of 2000 voices and 400 instrumentalists, conducted, with one exception, by Mr. Costa. It commenced with a grand overture by Meyerbeer, comprising a triumphal march, a sacred march, and a quick march, and an embodiment of "Rule Britannia ;" then Dr. Sterndale Bennett's chorale, which had been composed for the words of the ode written by the Poet Laureate Tennyson, as follows :—

Uplift a thousand voices full and sweet,

In this wide hall with Earth's invention stored,
And praise th' invisible universal Lord,

Who lets once more in peace the nations meet,
Where science, art, and labour have outpour'd

Their myriad horns of plenty at our feet.

O silent father of our Kings to be,

Mourn'd in this golden hour of jubilee,

For this, for all, we weep our thanks to thee!

The world-compelling plan was thine,

And lo! the long laborious miles

Of Palace; lo! the giant aisles,
Rich in model and design;

Oh

Harvest-tool and husbandry,
Loom and wheel and engin'ry,
Secrets of the sullen mine,
Steel and gold, corn and wine,
Fabric rough, or fairy fine,
Sunny tokens of the Line,
Polar marvels, and a feast

Of Wonder, out of West and East,
And shapes and hues of Art divine!
All of beauty, or of use,

That our planet can produce,
Brought from under every star,
Blown from over every main,

And mixed, as life is mixed with pain,
The works of peace with works of war;
War himself must make alliance,

With rough labour and fine science,

Else he would but strike in vain.-
Ah, the goal is far away,

How far is it? who can say,

Let us have our dream to-day.

ye, the wise who think, the wise who reign,
From growing commerce loose her latest chain,
And let the fair white-winged peacemaker fly
To happy havens under all the sky,

And mix the seasons and the golden hours,
Till each man find his own in all men's good,

And all men work in noble brotherhood,

Breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers,

And ruling by obeying Nature's powers,

And gathering all the fruits of peace and crown'd with
all her flowers.

The performance of this Ode was a great success, and decidedly the most faultless and complete feature of the day. "Auber's Grand March" followed-spirited and melodious, and full of the best manner of the composer.

After the conclusion of the special music, the Bishop of London, with much fervency of manner, read an impressive prayer.

Handel's mighty choral hymns-the "Hallelujah" and "Amen❞ from the Messiah-which, coming directly after the prayer of the Bishop of London, formed a portion of the religious ceremony, towered above all in sublimity.

After the "Amen" the National Anthem was again sung, and with this the music to the religious part of the ceremony came to a conclusion.

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The Duke of Cambridge then rose, and in a loud voice said, "By command of the Queen, I now declare the Exhibition open.' The trumpets of the Life Guards saluted the announcement with a prolonged fanfare, and the crowd echoed it back with a cheer, which was taken up and speedily spread from one end of the building to the other. This ended the official ceremonial.

Sweet, and yet sad, those thousand voices rung,
Winding and travelling through the long defiles
Of courts and galleries and far-reaching aisles:
And bright the banners from proud arches sprung;
But not the less their drooping folds among
Lurked a dim hoard of grief; for over all

Chastening, not marring, our high festival,
The shadow of an absent Greatness hung-
Absent, but yet in absence present more
For all we owe to him, and might have owed,
For the rich gifts, which, missing, we deplore,
Than if he were rejoicing at this hour-
We with him-that the seed his wisdom sowed
Had blossomed in this bright consummate flower.
R. C. T.
Times, May 2, 1862.

Among the illustrations of our great subject, which partake of a poetic character, may be ranked an Address read by Mr. Monckton Milnes, M.R., at the Royal Institution, on the day after the opening of the Exhibition, namely, on the 2nd of May. Mr. Milnes modestly introduced this paper to his audience as prefatory to a series of special discourses, to be delivered at the Institution, and as "a few considerations on the natural scope of this wonderful congregation of the industries and intelligences of the world."

It was the habit of this Society to deal rather with facts than speculations, and he would therefore direct their attention to the geographical and political conditions which alone rendered possible such an event as this. It had been written with sufficient accuracy for verse, that

"The total surface of this sphered earth

Is now surveyed by philosophic eyes:

Nor East nor West conceals a secret worth

In the wide ocean no Atlantic lies:

Nations and men, that would be great and wise,

Thou knowest, can do no more than men have done;

No wond'rous impulse, no divine surprise,

Can bring this planet nearer to the sun-
Civilization's prize no royal road has won."

The accessibility of the ocean-waters of the globe was a first necessity to this end, and this had been now accomplished from the ice-bound fires of Mount Erebus to the grave of Franklin. We could not say quite as much of our knowledge of the land of the world, but we perfectly understood the limits of our ignorance, and could fairly assume that there was no position on the earth yet unsurveyed which could in any notable degree add to our physical science, or extend our observation of the habits and destinies of mankind.

Although great continents are represented in our Exhibition only by their fringes, we can hardly contemplate any such conversion of nature or man as should people the sandy spaces of Africa, the vast pastoral steppes of central Asia, or those huge fields of the unlimited liberty of animal and vegetable life which stretch in South America from the tropics to the polar snows, with the higher forms of industry, art, and civilization. It is enough that no longer can Tartar hordes swoop down on richer and fairer lands, and that the sage and saleratus prairies of North America cannot check the enterprising outgrowth of the Anglo-Saxon race.

And this brings us to another necessary condition of our Exhibition, the security of the seas and the general facility of our commercial intercourse. The exceptional piracy which obstructs the trade of the waters of Oceania, and which the energy of Sir James Brooke has done much to repress, was once the custom of the world, and carried with it no notions of cruelty or disgrace. This evil was partially remedied by placing commerce under the safeguard of religion. Where the modern state establishes a factory or a free port, the old state built a temple. Thus the Tyrian Hercules linked together the trade of Greece and Phoenicia in a common worship: thus the fame of Jupiter Ammon was the great resting-place and protection of the caravans of the desert: thus the lines of the chief Catholic pilgrimages were the paths not only of all travellers but of all merchants in the middle ages. The interchange of the gifts

of God was sanctioned by Pagan and by Christian piety, and the notion of connecting trade with any inferiority of social station or intellectual power is a perverted remnant of the feudal system, where the jealousy between town and country tended to discredit labour and to idealize brute force.

The speaker proceeded to draw the distinction between ancient and modern trade. In the old Asiatic nations, where influence is still palpable among mankind on the score of authority and the bond of religion, the ideas of free trade and competition would have been incomprehensible. The exclusion of foreigners from the internal navigation of the several countries was universal, and none were permitted even to enter foreign ports, except with the tessera hospitalis, or some other symbol of a commercial treaty. Bars were thrown across the mouths of some rivers, as by the Persians across the Tigris after their conquest of Babylon; traces of which impediments to navigation_still remain. And in modern Europe the growth of liberal commerce has been slow indeed, and it is one of the happiest privileges of our time, that as regards ourselves at least, we have come to see its consummation. In Sir Dudley North's Discourse on Trade, published in 1691, the principle is laid down "that the whole world as to trade is but as one nation of people, and therein nations are as persons." But the Hollanders and the Portuguese long remained the objects of a commercial animosity, which did not prevent the one from occupying our fisheries up to the very coast, and the other from sharing with us the dominion of India.

The social and political conditions represented by our Exhibition next occupied the attention of the speaker. The whole of this marvellous combination of energy and art is the result of free labour-of the spontaneous industry of mankind. It is not the mere application of local nature to local designs, but the collation and transmutation of most diverse and distinct elements to the use and benefit of our race: the juxtaposition of our coal and iron have suggested the manufactures of Sheffield, but it is the borax of Tuscany which assists the ingenious labourers of Colebrook Dale. It is the sign and symbol of the general education of the world, which renders it impossible that discoveries can be neglected or arts be lost. The ignorance and superstition which kept mankind in unnecessary physical pain after the invention of the "spongia somnifera" of the twelfth century, can no longer check the anæsthetic powers of a beneficial nature, nor would it require a Harvey to revive, however he might be required to develope, the knowledge that perished with the ashes of Servetus.

But besides the intercommunication of nations in space, the speaker remarked, our Exhibition surely owes much to what he would call the trade of time, the thoughts, the feelings, the interests, that pass from generation to generation; the arts of Greece, the laws of Rome, the religion of the Semitic peoples, the triple elements of modern civilization. The silent East gave the alphabetic character which has transmitted all the speeches and varied literature of the West; the Brahmin preserves the sacred language in which the linguistic science of modern times traces the mother-tongue of all the IndoGermanic dialects that pass from mouth to mouth beneath these lofty domes.

The singularity of the circumstance that England should be the scene of the meeting of nations was next alluded to. It was an illustration of the advantage of our insular position, which being combined with sufficient territory, gave us at once the best political conditions of external power and domestic independence. Our greatest danger in history has been, not our own conquest, but the conquest of France, which must have absorbed us into the continental system. Now, the peril of our power lay in the rapid political and moral elevation of the other European nations; but we could well afford to sacrifice some individual superiority to the common gain of mankind.

Upon the probable effects of this great display, the speaker, in conclusion, observed :—“Large congregations of men had always visibly struck the imagination, and the Jubilee of Pope Boniface

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so occupied the mind of Dante, that he illustrates it by one of his supernatural pictures, and fixed it as the date of his spiritual journey. Such assemblies have always been looked on as harbingers of peace, and we know what were the expectations of 1851. But though that hope has proved delusive, we may yet feel thankful that, with the exception of the American calamity, all the disturbances of the world have since that time been the conflicts of a lower against a higher civilisation, in which the higher has had the mastery. The materials here brought together must impress on the spectators the mutual dependence of nations, and the interests of amity. One of the chief objects of interest would be, the various applications of art to industry; advantages, perhaps, somewhat balanced by the injury of the application of industry to art. As art becomes mechanical, it loves the spontaneous dignity which makes it most divine; and it seems impossible to diffuse and repeat it, without some diminution of its highest faculties. But this qualification does not extend to the relations between industry and science,-there the moral is as certain as the material profit: intelligent labour is substituted for the mere exertion of brute strength; the supply of comforts is extended from the luxurious classes even to the necessitous: the diseases consequent on physical hardships are diminished, and the average longevity of man increased. To the progress of scientific education not only the philosopher but the statesman looks for the diffusion of public happiness and the permanence of modern civilization. If the states that now rule the world are to escape the doom of Babylon and Rome, of Egypt and of Greece, it is in that they have not made their science the monopoly of a caste or a priesthood, but they have placed it more or less within the reach of the individual intelligence of the humblest citizen. Let the education that enables mankind to apprehend and value truth proceed commensurately with the discoveries of science, and the community will gradually but continuously absorb into itself that knowledge which makes decay impossible; and our country may boldly and confidently meet whatever destiny remains for it in the inscrutable designs of the Creator and Ruler of the universe."

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