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THE LAST PROMENADE AT THE CRYSTAL
PALACE.
Does any reader wish a contrast F Does any reader rejoice in glaring opposites? Does any reader sigh for an example of glory pest, and pomp which is beet a vision, and magnificence which is but a memory? IPso, we will help them to what they seek. Let them call to mind the First of May, 1851, and place it side by side with the First of May, 18d2. Let them summon up their recollections of the Crystal Palace, when the Queen sat in her chair of state, with all the best and greatest, and proudest, not only of England, but of Europe, around her, and the Crystal Palace now—empty, desolate, forlorn—the wrEck of booths clustered where the costliest productions of skill and art were piled ; a handful of lounging dealers bargaining and wrangling over planks, where bishops and archbishops blessed the work, and time noble of letters, arts, sciences, and birth rejoiced to bear the Royal mandate go forth that this labour was achieved, and that the world was welcome to admire it!
On the First of May, 1851, how unprecedentedly glorious was the scene! Rich as it was in visual splendour and in brilliant and beneficent ease- clations, the pageant was still richer in u.s perfect novelty. Dli ever Kingly banquet or Imperial coronation suggest the same ideas or swell with the same import? Mere splendour the world has long been sated with. Embroidery and cloth of gold, the waving of banners and the pealing of trumpets’, the glitter of processions and the gorgeousness of heraldry—all this has for centuries and centuries been gradually “used up.” No doubt, mere glare and pomp may still possess some lingering charms for the eyes of the groundlings; and, so far as they contain in themselves the elements of beauty, reasonably so. But, on the First of May, 1851, a scene of niece superb and overpowering gorgeousness lb as was ever witnessed within the four seas of England was invested with a significance which, more than any occurrence the world has yet seen, told of him glad hew era before us, the era of the acts arid sciences, of the era when man is every day more and more triumphantly asserting his power over the elements.
Nine-tenths of our ceremonials and our pageantry come down to us through the grey gloom of the olden times. We trace in them the savour
feudality. The armour rings out in their rejoicings, and through its clash we hear the solemn chantings of the old church. But on the First
May, 1851, we had our first great national festival—free from the manners, the associations, and the relics of our fathers. Although the magic and the cantri1me by which the old story-tellers loved to account for the feats of great minds are gone, one magic is left—the greatest of them alL It was appealed to in aid of the Labour Festival of modern times. It is a magic which, properly sought, is ever found; fairly wooed,
ever won; a magic whose spirits are sure to come when you do call upon them—the magic of Science and Art! And this magic built a Palace fitted for the modern idea amid the modern purpose. Neither draw - bridge nor portrullis, neither barmizan nor watch-tower, did it rear; but reverendly and gracefully adopting that ecclesiastical torus which is shadowed in so many fanes—beautified in as many shrines, it called, as
were, from the turf a fairy edifice—modern in material, modern in fashioning; novel, also, in material and in fashioning; a structure which
who raised the Cathedral of Canterbury or the Dom of Cologne might have gazed at in muta wonder, and deemed that it surpassed even his greatest feats in architecture.
This was the crowning and the peculiar glory of the Exhibition—that
was entirely and totally of our own times. Truly, the First of May, 1851, was a great May-day—thee greatest May-day which ever was celebrated in England. For, after all, may not the crystal fountain be taken as our Maypole? and—with all grace be it spoken—the Queen as our Maid Marian; and did not all the world bow to the one, and cluster fondly and for months and months around the other? Yes, the First of May of last year was the great modern May-day. Our forefathers hailed May
the in-coming of the joyous summer-tide, when the green heaves burst out in the wood, and the lusty corn sprang upwards, amid the rejoicing time of the birds was at hand. Why, then, may not our modern May-day be equally typtcal_ty1mical of the advancing summer
knowledge and wisdom
True, for the moment, the contrast, so far as the shrine of our great festival goes, is, as we have said, striking, and, as we now say, strange end sad. The outward and physical portions of the ceremony—the relics of the occasion—are, it is said, we know not with what truth, on the eve of being utterly swept away. A few weeks, and we are threatened that s.ll that remains of thee Crystal Palace will be the evanescent mark it has made upon the earth. ‘The enthusiasm of May, June, July, and August, 1851, has gone in the way of all enthusiasms: it has had its fierceness, its glitter, and its heat. It has now chilled down. How the opening of the Palace stirred us all—how London was moved to its depths—and not only London, but England and the Continent. How we talked but of the one great approaching show. How all oilier entertainments were neglected, and how even the high and mighty Houses of Parliament gave over oratorising, inasmuch as they could find no listeners. Now the summer opens as summers are wont to do; we have got back to our politics and our theatres, our concerts and our panoramas. We are at little timings again. We are frittered as of old, and yet not without some sore of struggle. Decided as the general apathy appears
be, it has not been without its exceptional sparks of existence and regret. In the assemblages, concerts, and promenades of the last month drawn to the desolated Crystal Palace, nominally by the attractions of military bands, but sally, eve are sure, by a haunting desire to see the last of the scene of so many happy and instructive hours—are
be traced the signs of a lingering and fitful love for the Building. Significant and melancholy were the lest gatherings at the empty shrine. People entered the Building impressed with a sad and thoughtful curiosity. “how well it look? Bare, empty, gutted, time corpse of iron and glass, left at last untenanted and dead ?“ But on the outside the general coup d’oeil was more cheering. The sun of May, 1851, seemed again
play upon the greenery of the Park and the shining Serpentine. The crowds of May, 1851, scented again to be pouring westward; again the creaking omnibuses were loaded outside and in; again the cabs moved
double and triple lines to the grand rendezvous; again policemen struggled to keep order due in the advancing cavalcade and abmen flattered themselves that the old times were come once more. It ices, indeed, a pleasant retrospective glance. It was delightful to abandon oneself to it—to allow oneself be cheated into the notion that a year had not rolled away—that the Crystal Palace was still the Crystal Palace; that we could still march straight from the west transept door into India, or turn to the right into Tunis,
cross the nave once more to call Upon the Persian amid the Turk Leaving the street for the Park, the illusion was still kept up; time slender iron columns rose as gracefully, and time long expanses of glass shone as brilliantly as they did before, only the flags had been stripped; the long lows of national blazonries had disappeared; stare and stripes and tricolours, Crescents and black eagles, had vanished together—. touching memento of the state of matters inside. Bat still the crowd thronged Palaceward as of yore. They poured along the  road walk running parallel with Knightsbridge ; they made their way beneath 
the trees along the head of the Serpentine from the “ Lady’s Mile ;“ and they c a nO stretching across the award in caravans from the Bayswater corner, where the Marble Arch now rears its triumphant clumsiness, and they re all absorbed at the yawning portah; and the shillings rang, and the turnstiles clicked, as merrily as before. lint one step across the threshold, and the dream was past I “Barren,” like Justice Shallows patriomony—” Barren, barren, barren.” If ever the force of the common expression, “full of emptiness,” was experience, it was when the visitor crossed the threshold, How blankly and vacantly the eye took in the long vistas of nave and aisles, the vast ranges of gallery, the huge wastes left naked and desolate, only heaped with the rubbish of fittings, dirty calico which bad once shown bravely, and piles of smashed carpentry which had once borne the wuaders of the place. A city sacked—a ship gutted—a costly volume with all torn rudely out between the battered boards—the sense, the imagination, the poetry and the toil—the whole place was an iron and glass type of desolation and of the passing away of things. Perhaps even lie aspect of your own household despoiled would not be more melancholy. For while it lasted the Crystal Palace was a sort
second household to all London. People here set up a species of extra and supernumerary Lares and Penates. They had their arw and their focce in two places at once. Every night a man was at home chez
Every day saw him at home chez Paxton. For a moment people
clearly’ indignant. Where was their ameublement? Here was a trick played. upon a manifest and lawful property. Was Prodhi n at work, or had. Cabet set up a second Icaria in Hyde Park? A man felt that he was despoiled if his Englishman’s castle had not been broken into, N s Englishman’s palace had been cleared out; all the old association had been snapped like straws; all the old pets in the way
favoured articles had been laid violent hands on; not an old familiar form met the eye, not an old familiar hue was there to greet
as a friend: the visitor stood in the most dismal of all structures—a well loved, well known house empty and deserted.
It i as curious and interesting to watch how the people cast melancholy Wondering glances at the bare spaces of boards and iron pillars which had been regions and continents, and islands and towns: how they roam hither and thither, pointing out where such a statue had stood, such a a engine had worked, such a tapestry had been hung, or such a trophy had been built; they looked for sites, and sought recollect 5 is. Like antiquaries gleaning out old battle-fields, and determining the position of camps or cities which only live now in ancient vellums and emblazoned parchments, they went calculating distances, and calling up memories, and settling quite’ positively where ran the boundary which separated the Free Stat as from the Zollverein; and where stood some particularly favoured object, some triumph of artistic or industrial skill, which was one of the Lions, and to which all memories naturally recurred. And this was done’ generally in a mood of sober regretfulness, quietly and calmly’ with a half-smile and a half-nigh—a natural lingering longing mental look, lack at the departed glories. Here and there might be seen the more’ eager curiosity of the occasional visitor—of course, a stranger in London—to whom the Palace itself was a novelty, who had never witnessed it brilliant and busy. You might know him by his flighty anxious manner, his constant questions, his anxiety to comprehend the vaui aed arrangement. “Au! so here the crystal fountain stood?
And here was the Koh-i-noor, and there time silk trophy, and there the pail en and tropical trees, and there India, and there the Chinese Empire 1 “ But the vast majority knew these landmarks well; and often you ; might see a contemplative soul, quietly seated upon a morsel of boo b -wreck, and clearly occupied in summoning up before his mind’s eye IJ se well-remembered pageant visible from the spot. The east end orge would sometimes for a moment rouse him by its familiar notes; but ‘the close-following clang of the brass baud would remind him that.. he was listening but to a passing hymn.
S et ted in such solitary musing, in such a place and beneath such influences embracing in one view all the great majesty of empty desolation around—might we not imagine ourselves the Last Man, gazing on the chaos of a bygone world. Where now were all the cities and the palaces, the villages, and the busy places of the earth—where the kingdoms, with their boundaries, their law , their habits, and their rulers ? This desolate place was En 1 and ; that desolate waste was France. No fear now of
or clashing interests. No difference now between the white cliff s of Grinez and the white cliffs of Dover. There was the Austrian frontier—a waste now on both sides. No difficulty in slipping across it, or a’ /en across the grim boundary of all the Russians. No customhouse a, no passports, ass garrisons, no national flags; mere earth, monot s ous earth; and the names of Russia, or Austria, or France, or Britain nicknames, breaths of empty air, symbols which have lost their value, bubbles which have burst
i strange, dreamy notion to think of Europe so vanished, and only tbe earth on which Europe had been, left—a collection of rocks and mc, id, and clay and stones, in no way different from the rocks, mould, cla- , and atones of Asia or America. Yet this is what on its own scale one’ sees in the Crystal Palace. A collection of boards and iron pillars, an a sky of glass; none of the boards or the pillars differing, and
glass sky monotonously the same. Nothing more is left of the vz shed world. Search for Greece, Spain, Russia, America, for New Zealand and Bombay, for Birmingham and Manchester, for Paris and Vienna, and you find—boards, iron pillars, and the glass sky. The kingdoms have vanished, the boundaries are extinct, the capitals are , ed, and all that is left is the memory of the collocation of the spies I
How strangely different in their freshness and their hopeful curiosity sre our feelings one year ago, as all London was panting to be let i, ass upon the new-created world. How anxious and eagerly speculating crowds hung from morning to night round the Building, and i jade wild guesses at the glories within. How the wagons and carts e reakiag under their burdens, were scanned and criticised; and how th driblets of information in the newspapers touching the day to day progress—how Austria was nearly arranged, and how China was quite ready—how Switzerland was perfectly represented, and what a comparatively meagre collection would do duty for the States—how these morsels of diurnal information were greedily swallowed! And then the opening ceremonial. Every one had something to say of it, Would not the Queen go in state? Would not the pageant rival in grandeur a coronation? The most brilliant theoretical replies dew about, and the good public stood higher and higher on its tiptoes. Than bow crowded town became; how the railway trains pulled up, loaded with sight-seers-—how lodging-house and hotel-keepers anticipated a home California—how the streets became dotted with country groups going along huddled together, and keeping a sharp look-out for pick-’ pockets; and how the elite of our foreign neighbours, French and German,
poured in—moustached and frowning artists, and keen, wide-awake journalists, with all their eyes and, their ears open for behoof of their respective V 5UllCtOflS And then came the First of May—Queen’s weather—the sky one arch of summer blue—the sun bright as that which shines on Naples. London never rose so early as on that May-day morning; never even when the dew was to be gathered and the garlands to be  
Woven, and the May-pole to be danced round. At an hour ‘when the
streets are generally silent and clear, except ‘when market-carts go
rumbling by, or the last straggler of the night cabs makes its way I
like an owl to his hole, streams of gaily-dressed people were pouring
westward, and cavalcades of vehicles were taking the same direction.
Closer and thicker grew the ranks as they progressed to their destination. The trot soon steadied to a walk, and the walk soon collapsed in
a dead stop. Piccadilly was all one jam—a hopeless mass of moveless
four-wheeled things ; so the occupants were fain to get out and join the
foot-procession eis the paud, flowing agreeably and equally on, with no
more crowding, pressing, or squabbling than if the good folks were
marching to their parish church. It was a sight that May-day morn-
ing, to see the English people govern themselves. No surly Chassenrs de
Vincennes were there, No masked batteries of artillery quietly built
up in by-streets. No psi-ties of ruthless Lanesra or Cuirassiers coming
down in sudden charges upon the crowd, and driving it and bullying it
hither and thither. The usual ceremonial line of the Guards, indeed,
marked out the path her Majesty was to take. But we do not count
them soldiers in the Continental sense, They are a portion of the
pageantry ; and we no more believe that they are aught than citizens
playing their parts in the ceremony, than we do that the warriors in an
Adelphi melodrame, who threaten to shoot the hero, are other than
number of honest supernumeraries earning an honest penny, and enter-
taming the highest respect for the gentlemanly brigand, or the unfor-
Innate Prince, at whom they level their respectable old flint muskets.
The whole scene was one in which truly l’ordre regnait partout—order
in the English, not the French sense. The utmost stretch of popular
license was comprised in the fact. that certain small boys climbed into
trees, and from them chaffed corpulent policemen, who vainly at-
tempted the ascent in pursuit. Including, however, even this symptom
of popular, disturbance, the sharp-eyed French journalists had before
them a scene which they never saw before, and which they must re-
cross the Channel if they ever wish to see again—a people come to the
of discretion.
And through this multitude passed, amid their triumphant acclamations, the Queen, with hoer excellent Consort, who was indeed fairly
entitled to be called the founder of the feast. And the great gates
were flung open, and to the thousands and thousands congregated in
the glorious edifice, their senses still dazzled by the gorgeousness of the
picture in the midst of which they stood, the long and loud fanfares
of the trumpets proclaimed the approach of Royalty—just as in
Shakspeare’s history-plays we me accustomed to “ A flourish
of trumpets, enter the King.” Need we pause here further
to recall the memories of that day’s pageantry. They are still
fresh in all minds, The Throne, the chairs of State, the circle of
ministers, courtiers, and ambassadors, the surrounding multitude of the
beauty and the intelligence of the greatest city in the world, all enshrined in a fane the like of which had never before been reared by
man. Do we not recollect the moment when the Queen rose to her
feet, and all the assemblage rose with her, when she stretched oat her
baud with a queenly air which befitted, and proclaimed with her own
lips that the Exhibition was open ; and when on the instant the bands
and choirs and organs all burst forth together, their people drowned,
however, in the roar of acclamation which was straight taken up by
the crowd outside, and through which could only be faintly heard
the thunder of the cannon, and the merry voices of an hundred perish
bells !
And now we are told that this great shrine is to fall ; and that May,
1852, is to see destroyed what May, 1851, inaugurated. The Tumour
may be true ; but, until it ceases to be a rumour, and takes the palpable shape of a fact, we shall continue to disbelieve it.