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THE FRONT ROW OF THE SHILLING
GALLERY.

WE like occupying the Front Row of the Gallery on a Shilling day of the Exhibition, and comfortably seated down, with plenty of room for our legs, to enjoy all the little incidents that are being quietly exhibited below. It is like going behind the scenes—if a person can be up in the gallery and behind the scenes at the same time—and peeping at the audience through a hole in the big curtain.
The great mob keeps playing about the floor like an immense sea of Jack-o’-lanterns. You cannot look at them without winking. It is a Quadrille of colours—a Real of prismatic rays—which may well turn the poor Koh-i-noor pale with envy. There they are dancing in the most fantastic figures—Poules—Paslorals—.Panalons innumerable— Grandes Rondes without end round the Crystal Fountain—Cavaliers Seuls looking after their partners—and inextricable Chai’iees de Dames extending, like garlands, the whole length of the building. Fancy these all moving, surging, tossing together, whilst countless sets are wildly rushing up and down the middle, and balancez-ing, like summer lightning, from one side to the other, and you will have but a poor notion, after all how l’Rté is danced through, with a gaiety it has never known before, at this year’s Exhibition. The dazzling effect we can only compare to a series of TURNER’S pictures being viewed, on a summer’s day, through the windows of an express train going at the rate of sixty miles an hour.
After a time, however, this flying panorama of colours slackens its speed: a bit, and the eye, at first blinded by the immense glare, begins gradually to recover its power, and to settle on distinct objects. Here it distinguishes a sunny corn-field of bonnets, gracefully waving backwards and forwards, as if they were curtsying to the beauty of the scene• there it can discriminate a sullen acre of black hats, running in lines, like a newly-ploughed field, hone spot is a rich garden blooming with all the gorgeous hues of fashion; and, in another direction, spreads an immense plantation of poplar-lookmg boys, and of sturdy men of the circumference of oaks. Ihe scene grows before you, an almost articulates; here a Statue speaks, and there a bright fountain leaps up, laughing like a child with joy. It is, to be extatic, a living chapter of Boccacio read aloud with the eyes.
But we must descend from our imaginative balloon, ard step on earth. The cynosure (or rather, the sinecure) of all eyes seems to be the Koh.i.noor diamond. Poor jewel—there is something the matter with it, for it disdains to shine. It has been lately served up with gas—but this, apparently, has only subjected it to more roasting than before. There is something touching in the fact of a sick diamond calling in the assistance of one of its poor relations—for both the diamond and gas are descended from the same family of coal—which said family, by- the-bye, must be about the oldest family in the world, for it numbers more generations under ground than any other. But this is not the first time, by many, that the Koh-i-noors of society only shine with the borrowed light ot those working beneath them in station! But we leave the perfect setting of this brilliant moral to others.
Do you see what a crowd hems in the monster bird-cage P—which bird-cage many a fine lady would give up her pew in cliurcii to be able to hang up in her drawing-room. What a number of cats (on two legs) there would be jumping up after it, to be sure!
This same Koh-i.noor rises and sets every mornin” and evening, just like the sun, and “giving,” as we heard a stupi Frenchman say, “about as much light as the sun in England.” This rising and setting, however, may be only to illustrate the various ups and downs the diamond has had in its day. This lump of crystalised carbon may be said to invert the stereotyped recommendation of the Evening Paper—for its fate seems to be, “the less it is seen, the more it is appreciated.” One half of the ladies, who push, and pant, and pinch their way amongst one another to see it, go away with hearts as crushed as their bonnets, and live in hopes of catching a glimpse of it the following day. But the other half who are fortunate enough to be smiled upon by this stony-hearted Diamond, are made happy for the rest of their lives. In fact, its rising and setting are made matters of as much excitement in the fashionable world, as the rising and setting of the sun amongst travellers on the top of Mount Righi; and we must say that a little rigging would do the Diamond and its worshippers no harm. A young lady, who is present at its morning levee, rushes home, in the greatest ecstacy, and. exclaims—” Oh, Mamma, I ‘m so very very happy! I’ve seen the Koh-i-noor rise this morning 1” And we have been told of a lady who was old enough to know better, bursting into a large party, and exclaiming, “My dears, what do you think! I ‘ye just left the Koh-i-noor and I never saw it set so beautifully in all my life!”
When you have had fun enough out of the Mountain of Darkness,
you had better refresh your aching orbits a little, by plunging them
into the Crystal Fountain. This is the grand booking office, to which all appointments are directed. It is a depot for stray children—a
little receiving-warehouse for all live articles. “Oh! meet me at the
Fountain,” seems to be the great song of the Exhibition; and the
pathetic scenes that sometimes take place there between husband and
wife, after an agonisine separation, perhaps, of four or five hours, are
more than enough to 1ll your eyes with water, more especially if you
standing close to the brim.
What a good view you have from the Gallery of the little dinner-party
that is generally given once or twice a day in the neighbourhood of the
Fountain, when the Shilling guests are invited to the Exhibition.
is or allowed to be drunk on the premises “—so the poor
people are obliged to drink water—faute de M(i)eux.

But there is something to regale all the senses in the Exhibition—
excepting, perhaps, the sense of touch ;—and yet Portugal allows that
indulgence which England denies—though w& always understood that
the latter was a much more pinching climate than the former. You can
regale your eyes with the treats di played in every direction; your ears
and palate, with the pianos and fountains that are playing with such
delicious accompaniments around you; and your olfactory organs, with
the snuff that makes of Portugal a happy land—a laud of fragrance and 
contentment, where you may take what you please—and what you take
(as we heard a “mad wag” call it) is “mien (snuffing) to nobody.”
This is not the
only treat for
which every visitor has to pay
through the nose.
There are the
fountains, which
strangely enough play everywhere in the Exhibition
but in Cologne.
The applicants
for the perfume
must sometimes
astonish the liberal dispenser;—
ploughbys and
farmers, hold out
their handkerchiefs
to be saturated, and are
not always very well pleased with the result. The agriculturist nose has evidently
still to be educated to a sense of the high refinement of Eau-de
Cologne ;—but one rural youth was so tremendously tickled with
the new olfactory sensation, that not satisfied with having his bird’s-eye
mouckoir .twice replenished, he pulled off his wide-awake, and held it before the HEBE of the fountain to have it filled.
Another amusing view
from the Gallery is to watch
the stall of American revolvers. The sense of touch
is again liberally indulged there—so liberally, that we cannot help congratulating the Greel- Slace upon the fact that they are not loaded— or else, with the American hatred of everything like slavery, she would certainly not long occupy her present elevation as a Model Slave
from the Model Republic.
The gentlemen, who handle
the revolvers, are principally
officers, but we noticed one
individual pressing to be
instructed in the use and
mystery of the instrument,
who evidently intended to 
carry out the theory into practice at the very earliest opportunity.
We hope the police has its eye upon that intelligent individual, for it will be too bad if America is frequented as a School for English Burglars, where the use of the Revolver is taught free of expense.
It is growing late, and it is as much as we can do to discern objects distinctly. But the cries of a child attract our attention to the Amazon Statue, and there we discover a young gentleman, in feathers, who has lost his maternal parent. The Police take him up tenderly, and, doubtlessly, to-morgow, we shall read an advertisement like the following:
FOUND yesterday, near the Amazon Statue, a Young Child, in pink Hat and
red feathers, and who answers to the name of “Bobby.” He had in his possession
at the time he was fond, a straw rattie in one hand, and a piece of gingerbread in the
other. Any one giving full particulars to the Police, Princes Gate, as to the ownership
of the Child, may have it instantly restored to them.
N. B. It is urgently requested that the Child may be removed as soon as possible, as he has done nothing but cry since he was taken.