common, as to excite the remark and contempt of every wellbred stranger. The palace is filled at once, as if from a hundred sluices, with all kinds of people. Invalids, even, in their conveyances, are drawn through the courts. Painters and drawers are perched here and there, copying the articles and scenes. Policemen are taking their stations. Red coats are brushing off the dust from the articles. Paxton was at a loss for a cleaner to the building, and invented, at great expense of time and money, a hundredhousemaid-power-broom for the purpose. He found, after the first day's experience, that the long sweeping trains of the ladies performed the office to a nicety. I began to-day with France, on the southern side. Amid the jewelry, which shone as "from a sky," we discerned some clocks, fashioned curiously out of trees, in the branches of which chirped, fluttered, and leaped from bough to bough a choir of birds. There were some pecking at beetles, others in the nest, but all pervaded by a vivacity which, at first glance, made the illusion perfect. gar Here, too, we saw the rarest fruit-piece of porcelain painting which ever delighted the vision. The grapes and other luscious fruitage hung from a golden frame-work, while tulips and lands of every flower seemed to hide an angel, of form so ethereal, and with shading so softened, and light so mellowed, as to enthral the fancy. Tapestry overhung all. Further down, and into the nave, is a fine piece of statuary, representing Love scizzoring off the claws of a lion; allegorizing the French sentiment: Amour, Amour quand tu nous tien, Silver service, pictures raised, and interminable vistas of dry goods, we fly from, to find refuge in the arms of Belgium, which are spread just above the next department. Here are chimney pieces, with carvings exquisite. Nests of little Cupids and flower bas-reliefs surround us. On move we with the crowd, until the Austrian statuary room receives us. What a sweet piece is that nun, veiled with marble, and in very truth realizing Wordsworth's line, breathless in adoration. The effect of a veil of marble, dimly showing the beautiful cast of countenance, is indeed a triumph of the chisel. The machinery department has been slighted. My foolish eye has been caught by gauds, as "larks by looking-glasses." Imagine a vast vista of convolving, revolving, intertwisting, gyrating, perpendicularizing, horizontalizing, and whirlygigging generally; yet all playing as silently as polished steel, well oiled, can go, and as gracefully as the stir "Of a swan's neck among the bushes;" and you have a glance at the engine-room with its contents. Here on our right is a new locomotive runnning by atmosphere; there is, also, an improved "feather" paddle-wheel, with two shafts, one within the other, the inner one a screw; the set of paddles, as they rise out of the water, turning so as to find no resistance, and presenting their edge to the air. Miniature engines of every form, are in motion, and the machinery so bright as to reflect, in itself, its own motion. A steam engine with a moveable cylinder seemed a singular piece of adaptedness of means to end. Needle machines were at work, washing and drying machines, hydraulic pumps, machines for dressing stone, (from Bosting!) diving-bells, already in the bottom of the mock sea, and, last, printing-machines of many kinds, all in operation. The "Illustrated News" is struck off at the rate of over 5,000 to the hour. From four points the paper issues. The exhibition is thus rapidly illustrating itself to the wide world. But to my unpractised eye, the looms and mules and the other machinery for weaving, are the most wonderful. Large laces and splendid table-linen, costly cloths and cheap cottons, alike come forth from the swift-flying shuttle, amid a maze of rotation, driving and springing, the machinery performing every motion and intricacy from which power is evolved and comforts multiplied. This, amid the roar of water-falls, the buzz and hum, the click and clatter, the throbbing, glittering and dancing of wheels, is all dependent upon steam power, which is hidden from the eye. Is there not here a magic beside which Aladdin was a dunce, and the old enchanter, Merlin, a booby? Hurrah! for the age of steam wonder! Pyramids and Pantheons, Gothic buildings and Babylon gates, should sink into oblivion beside this steam-century, with its palace of Industry. The west end, in the gallery, to which, with the help of fancy, you are transported, is now filled with prisms flung by the colored glass between you and the setting sun. You have passed royal couches, with Aurora and Somnus carved and painted, all golden and glittering. You have passed intricate mazes of food, seeds, woods, and fabrics, from Scotland and other parts of Great Britain. You glance at the naval glory of Britain, represented by her innumerable models, with the Battle of Trafalgar to top the group. You observe that centrifugal machine, illustrating the planetary motions completely. At last, relieved, you stand upon the threshold of start not! It is only the organ, near which you are unconsciously standing. It strikes up, with four men to blow, and three to play. As I am a living soul, its thundering sound made the-yes, believe it, Rochesterknocking credulity-it made the UNIVERSE tremble!! I have told some things which unsophisticated Buckeyes rarely see, and can hardly imagine; but I was not under oath then. Now I am. I distinctly swear that I saw Jupiter quake amid his satellites, Venus tremble in her sandals, and Mars in his boots, Saturn shake in his ring, and the Sun itself start from his sphere, as the flood of sound rolled out of the organ and upon theorrery! While observing this phenomenon, which Herschel must explain, the organist struck up Yankee Doodle! My heart beat hot and queer. I felt the Declaration of Independence and a couple of Bunker Hills rising in my bosom. As such feelings were inconsistent with this temple, dedicated to peace, and as I was a delegate from Ohio to the World's Peace Convention, I prudently retired out of the British domain and seated myself again at the transept, to take a last look before going to the Continent. At the four corners there are crowds, looking down on throngs beneath, moving in and out under canopies, and into the courts. Opposite is a large glass chandelier, almost the counterpart of the fountain, which, with its sisters three, are making melody by graceful water jets amid the palm and flower groves below. The sight woos the thirst, and the hum almost sinks one in a “swound," like a murmur of bees. White as ghosts, the long lines of statuary guard the little apartments, with varied hangings suspended from their roofs. Away down on either hand is seen one living stream moving amid gorgeousness, and under glancing sunlight. How many hearts beat within those vital frames, the mechanism of which, comparable with nothing in this vast theatre of ingenuity, is hidden from the eye! How many immortal souls are here intent on seeing-seeing-seeing; forgetful of every thought as to the wondrous mind-mechanism which evolved all these wonders. "Ye fools and blind! for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple which sanctifieth the gold?" The gold must perish, the temple and its spirit survives. Wrap those moving bodies in the silks of yon pagoda; or bury them amid the glitter of those Indian gold cloths, but they will not stay. Those flowers may be renewed by the genial breath of spring; those bodies, of form so radiant, must lie in "cold obstruction." Surround their tombs with the bronze and stone which line the nave; their memory is soon erased by the footstep of time. Yet this undying mind is perpetual. It lives through its creations. Nation to nation, man to man, hands down the results of the vigilant life. Who can tell what thoughts have been here developed to bless the race? What ideas of beauty suggested, what cordialities cultivated to decorate this world of tears? Behold below, a world's representatives interlacing themselves. As Shakspeare has it: "No man living Can say this is my wife, there; all are woven So strangely in one piece.” Listen to the hum of speech; look to the produce of thought. Hear ye not therein the shuttle of kindness flying from heart to heart, weaving its viewless warp and woof into one sublime fabric, many-hued as that tapestry, intricate as that mechanism; a fabric fit to be hung from the battlements of heaven, between the sins of man and the majesty of God! The sun is sinking toward America. Its slanting radiance kisses the concave crystal. The statues in the transept fling long shadows down the nave. The thousand glitters of the glass are reflected from jewels and glass within. What if all the minds here represented by their results were gathered into a common mental palace, so transparent that the most profound thought of each and all could be perceived; the astronomer sweeping the sky with that telescope, down to the humble African who made yon miserable human image; the genius of the sculptor bodying forth his exquisite ideal in stainless Parian, embracing the tiny thoughtlet of him who mechanically turns a machine which thinks for him; could we not then approximate toward the idea of an Omniscient Reason, in the largest sense of that term? Yet these all these are the varied product of His hand, modified through the contaminated reason of man! With such reflections half saddening the spirit, and with a curiosity to see the delightful environment of Hyde Park which surrounds the palace, I am led to the open air, to be freshened into new life by the side of a river of beauty-the Serpentine, set in emerald. A massive stone bridge arches it, over which are passing crowds from the exhibition, horsemen practising in |