GREAT OF 1851. A.D. 1849-1852. Part II. Selections. Mr. Braidwood's advice. Since the foregoing remarks were written, I have had the advantage of a lengthened conversation with Mr. Braidwood on the subject. He recommends that iron supports should be used, perhaps covered with cement, and that the walls be of lath and plaster. By this means "the building would be the most manageable in case of fire." For security, he would greatly prefer this mode of construction to iron, which would give very great difficulty in case of fire, and, in his opinion, be very dangerous. He suggests "that as many of the draughts between the outside and inside lath and plaster as possible, should be stopped;" that there should be provided the most "easy access possible to and along the roof, so that in case of fire the glass may be broken," and the draught of air and fire led upwards. Fire mains should be laid on; the pipes should be large, "certainly not less than nine inches diameter, along the building." Unless the water could be laid on at all times, cisterns ought to be provided. The summary of Mr. Braidwood's advice, is, that the security will consist in having efficient means to suppress a fire, if it should happen, instantly. His words were, "it must be extinguished in a few minutes, or there will be great trouble." HENRY COLE. Royal EXTRACT FROM FIRST REPORT OF ROYAL AT T the commencement of the Commissioners' proceedings, while they were incurring no expenses beyond those of the remuneration of their officers, and the necessary outlay on printing, advertising, and other comparatively small items, the subscriptions received from time to time were amply sufficient for their wants; and they did not experience any inconvenience from the want of a more definite legal position than that of a mere Commission of Inquiry. But when, in the month of July, 1850, the plan for a building estimated to cost £79,800 had been approved, and it became necessary that a contract should be made for its erection, questions naturally arose as to the power of the Commission to EXHIBITION OF 1851. A.D. enter into and to enforce such a contract,-as to the person or GREAT persons by whom such contract should be signed, and the individual responsibility which, by so signing it, they would incur,—and as to the mode in which the money that would be required beyond Part II. the amount of the subscriptions received, was to be provided. 1849-1852. Selections. "These considerations led to the Commissioners' soliciting and obtaining from Her Majesty a Royal Charter of Incorporation, dated 15th August, 1850, under which they at present exist as a corporate body. Having thus obtained a legal status, they found themselves in a position to enter into the necessary contract for the erection of the Building, and were also enabled to procure from the Bank of England an advance of such sums as they required, on the personal guarantee of certain individual members of Guarantee. the Commission, and other well-wishers to the undertaking. The sums so advanced from time to time by the Bank of England, amounting in the whole to £32,500, were repaid, with interest, on the 22nd of May last (1851), out of the receipts at the doors, after the Exhibition had been open for three weeks." EXTRACT FROM THE "LONDON GAZETTE," THE WINDSOR CASTLE, OCT. 28. conferred. HE Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour of Honours Knighthood upon Joseph Paxton, Esq., Fellow of the Linnæan Society, Horticultural Society, and the Society of Arts. The Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour of Knighthood upon Charles Fox, Esq., of New Street, Spring Gardens, in the County of Middlesex. The Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour of Knighthood upon William Cubitt, Esq., Fellow of the Royal Society. DOWNING STREET, OCT. 25. The Queen has been graciously pleased to give orders for the appointment of William Reid, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel in the GREAT A.D. 1849-1852. Part II. Selections. Corps of Royal Engineers, Companion of the Most Hon. Order of the Bath, formerly Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Bermuda Islands, and in and over the Windward Islands, sometime Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, to be an Ordinary Member of the Civil Division of the Second Class or Knight Commander of the said Most Hon. Order. Her Majesty has also been graciously pleased to give orders for the appointment of Sir Stafford Henry Northcote, Bart., sometime one of the Secretaries of the Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, of Dr. Lyon Playfair, sometime one of the Special Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations for communicating with Local Committees, and one of the Members of one of the Committees of Sections of such Exhibition, and of Henry Cole, Esq., sometime one of the Members of the Executive Committee of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, to be Ordinary Members of the Civil Division of the Third Class or Companions of the said Most Hon. Order of the Bath. LECTURE XII. SECOND SERIES. DECEMBER 1, 1852. ON THE INTERNATIONAL RESULTS OF THE BY HENRY COLE, ESQ., C.B. cause, instead GREAT EXHIBITION of 1851. OF A.D. 1849-1852. Selections. N looking at any result, great or small, we are generally disposed to attribute it to some solitary cause, instead of viewing it as the consequence of many, in fact innumerable, antecedentseach one forming a link in the chain. We look upon Guttenberg's Part 11. invention of moveable types as the cause of printing, overlooking the fact that the number of scribes in the sixteenth century was inadequate to supply the demand for written books. Manuscripts could not be produced in sufficient numbers to meet the wants of readers-readers created by increased knowledge; so mechanical repetition, or printing, came in aid of writing; and the earliest books were partly printed and partly written, and were sold as manuscripts. Guttenberg's and Schöffer's little bits of metal were merely the mechanical answer to a want, without which they would not have made them. In like manner, historians have attributed the Reformation in this country to Harry the Eighth's desire to exchange his wife-no doubt a link in the chain of causes, but a far less important one than the corruption of the clergy and the alienation of the sympathies and adhesion of the laity. The King might have quarrelled with the Pope, but he would not have seized the monasteries unless the people had been alienated from them. You will smile, perhaps, if I were to attempt to connect the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations with the invasions of Roman Cæsar, of Danish Hengist and Horsa, and Norman William. But a moment's reflection will show that there are some relations which may be really traced, between the holding of the first cosmopolitan Exhibition of Industry by the most cosmopolitan nation in the whole world, and the character GREAT A.D. 1849-1852. Part II. Selections. Free Trade. M. Buffet's of that nation. What more natural than that the first Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations should take place among a people which beyond every other in the world is composed of all nations? If we were to examine the various races which have been concerned in the production of this very audience, we should find the blood of Saxons, Celts, Germans, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Hindoos, and probably even Negroes, flowing among it. To repeat a passage from one of the many philosophical essays that adorn the columns of the newspaper press at the present time,—a passage from The Times-I have seen it remarked that-" The average Englishman is a born cosmopolite, and to that mixed composition he owes the universality of his moral affinities and mental powers. No country in Europe has harboured so many migrations, whether as conquerors, as allies, as refugees, or simply as guests, and no people are so free as we are from the follies of nationality." To come to causes nearer at hand which produced the International Exhibition, and placed in this country that first of the long series of Exhibitions, which I have no doubt will follow, I think must be named Free Trade, or, to substitute Latin for Saxon words, "unrestricted competition." It would have been a folly to have proposed an International Exhibition before that great statesman, Sir Robert Peel, had loosened the fetters of our commercial tariff, so that it might be the interest of foreigners to accept the invitation to show us the fruits of their Industry. Had an International Exhibition of Industry been proposed in the good old times, when our manufacturers of silk, and cotton, and metals, were protected from the competition of their foreign neighbours, we should have rejected the idea just as the French manufacturers did, whose development is still cramped by protective tariffs. But it was decidedly the interest of England to adopt the idea, and she did so on that account, and because she was ripe for it, which France was not, and is not, although she may be certainly advancing to that point of reason. You are all well aware that the honour of the first idea of an proposition. International Exhibition does not belong to England. Like many other theories, it came from France, having been proposed by M. Buffet, the Minister of Commerce after the Revolution of 1848, and was submitted by him to the several Chambers of Com merce. He said to them :-"It has occurred to me, that it would |