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THE APPROACHING FESTIVAL OF ALL NATIONS.

The time approaches when the great spectacle, upon which the inward eyes of all nations are at present directed, will be open for display. Some of the long-expected crowd are already coming, and others are preparing their money and their baggage. People are already beginning to ask one another if they think the town is filling. The answer depends very much on the place where the question is put. In Cheapside or on London Bridge it is crammed or cramming; but on Southwark or Waterloo Bridge, where you pay a halfpenny toll, a drunken man may swagger from one side of the road to the other with ae much comfort as if the Metropolis were in ruins and deserted of its inhabitants.
Some nervous people are apprehensive, however, that ere long the whole world will be down upon us, and that they will raise the price of bread, butter, potatoes, and everything else, and eat us all up before the harvest be gathered. Already we have heard a lady complaining that servants are not to be had for love or money, and that those that are already bad are as saucy as French cooks, and more disposed to give orders than to take them. And one who seas lately looking for a heonse complained, that all the beat houses were taken up by speculators, and furnished with borrowed furniture, with nobody in them but a frump of a housekeeper, waiting for Done and Barons, Basliaws and Mandarins.
Some who have exhausted the common-place apprehensions, by way of being singular have a touch at the sublime, and contemplate a seizure of the Metropolis by the bands of foreigners who are expected to come, like the locusts upon Egypt, by some mysterious conveyances, not yet constructed or even imagined. A million or two of additional inhabitants are, with shrewd calculation and grave physiognomy, given to the Metropolis, which, standing over great caverns and large pools of water in the bowels of the earth, may be so overloaded with the superincumbent weight, as to sink into Tantalus, or rather into his cup, with a ‘terseel squash, and disappear for over. Others anticipate a great revolution, or turning of the political earth, like a cat on its paws when it tries to catch its tail, but cannot; and a Yankee seer, that peeps far beto futurity, hae good authority for believing, that Lancashire contemplates a separation from England, and the erection of itself and North Wales into a great republic, in federal communion with Carolina and Virginia!
Innumerable and infinitely absurd are the notions, both at home and abroad, of this Great World’s Fair of 1851. Let us try if we cannot form an accurate estimate of its real character.
In the first place, then, with respect to numbers, we expect nothing very novel or surprising in time history of the world. Great as it may or will be, it has already been surpassed in the pilgrimages of the middle ages to the Holy Sepulchre, to Rome, Loretto, Compostella, Tours, and even to Canterbury. We shall see no such crowds as these places leave seen. The promise of a plenary indulgence and pardon for all aloe has brought more people to Rome its one day than the Exhibition of all Nations will ever bring to London. Giovanni Villani, describing a Roman Jubilee, says, that not a single day passed in the course of the year that there were not in Rome, besi4es its inhabitants, 200,000 pilgrims. And Golielmo Ventura d’Asti, himself a pilgrim, thus describes the crowd and its consequences. “Leaving Rome on Christmas Eve, I saw an immense multitude which it was impossible to count; the Romans supposed it might amount to 200,000, male and female. I there saw 10011 and women trodden under foot by one another; and I myself incurred the same danger several times. The Pope received from these persons mealesmlah±e coma; for there were two priests, night and day, standing beside the altar of St. Peter’s, and furnished with rakes, gathering up enormous qnametiiies of money.” All the Romans grew rich tlmat year, on the savings and squanderings of the pilgrims; and such was the zeal of these pilgrims, that iaany of them, men, women, and children, lead walked on foot 1,000, or 1200 miles! (An. 1300).
We shall leave nothing like that in London. We shall leave neither the &owds, nor (lee zeal, nor the pedestrians to admire. The age ie too cold and rommon-place for these, and we have no Pope to draw, tbough plenty of rakes to gather the money. We are utihitariane, and with all our ingenuity, wealth, and skill, we are incapable of getting up so strong an attraction as even a “ Pope’s Indulgence
We shall see s cry little difference in the interior of London. Around the (‘rystal Palace will be a constant crowd, especially in dry weather; and occasionally, in the great thoroughfares of time metropolis, we shall witness groups of singular figures, bearded, moustached, and perhaps even bloused; and here and there a white, sometimes, perhaps, even a green turban, and a re’l,tarboosh; bait all the vehicles they have at their disposal would not settee to bring as many visitors frons abroad to London, as daily romue to ua, eu ordiuarv occasions, from oar own provinces. Thirty or forty thousand ‘visitors cmee daily to town, and we oever perceive them, because they daily retorts. If two thousand foreigners come daily to London, during the ensuing Exhibition, u-s shall think it a large number; and as, after the first week, as many will go out as daily come in, we shall only have enough to give comfortable employment to our waiters and waitresses. The great mass of visitors will come from the provinces by railway. 4Now, let any man calculate how nlaoy more, than thirty or forty thousand daily, the railways are even capable of’ bringing in upon us; and, moreover, let him estimate the probable number of days which each visitor, on an average, will remain in time metropolis, and we think he will scarcely fail to come to the conclusion, that the streets of Lmedon, during tIes ensuing summer, cviii be little more crowded than they usually are.
V/ho, after all, will come to the World’s Fair? From tIme three Isundred euhllions of Chinese, how many? Some half-dozen pair of cat’s-eyes. From tIme hundred millions of Hindoos, how many ? Some dozen or two of leather-skinned Pagans, at the most. From all Asia, that contains one-half of the l,umsn race, is it probable that there will he more tlemmu one hundred or two special visitors? The great Republic has already sent off a elup-load. how many is that? Some two or three hundred ! As many come from Gravesend or Greenwicle daily. Suppose a hundred sleip-loade come? We cau swallow them all, even if they do not return. How many will Russia eeemd out of her forty or rather sixty millions of serfs ? A general, a colonel, and a few suhmaltern officers, special emissaries of the Emperor, whose servants are all militeires; and as many spies to watch tleeir behaviour and report to Count Benckendorff, time cloef of pelice, if still alive, for we are uot in the habit of reading the Russian obituaries. Will Africa send ally of leer uiggcrs? XV11I the Emperor of Dahomy send any of his amazons, or his slaves, or Isis leangman and executiouer, who is alwaye the prime minister of his empire, as being the head-man? Will Naples contribute a single nun or a benedict, bond or free? The king has already declined to give them passports to come. Will St. Peter’s Patrimony risk the orthodoxy of a Roman in the capital of heresy? The Pope and this cardinals mean to follow the King of Naples’ example. Will Spain send any but her own exhibitors? Spain is not an industrial country. 11cr people all hate innovations; and all thee trade of the country is in thee hands of smugglers, of whom she supports an army of 400,000. Will they come or will they send delegates? They would rather go on a pilgrimage to Compostehla. Will Portugal send a ship-load? or will Sweden or Norway send a steamer full? We have travelled now nearly ever the whole world, and yet ave cannot find as many visitors as would fill the square at Charring Cross.
Where, then, will all our foreign visitors come from ?—France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Denmark. These are the principal places, after all. Will they send many? No, they cannot. The German governments are timeron’, and will refuse ties passports to all but the rich, the influential, and the evehh disposed; and these are not very numerous. Bemidea, these very countries leave been all of late so convulsed with revolution and civil war, or appreheusions of both, that the fir,sneiai means of all classes Ire much inepsiresh, and they will adopt the economical system of seeing the Exhibition by proxy or delegation, to save their personal expenses. Some thousands will coins from the great cities of Paris, Vienna, Lyons, Marseilles, Brussels, Frankfurt, Hamburg, &c., but they will be as nothing in London; for ties nuneber, supposing it to be even two hundred thousand, will be distributed over six neontbs, and, therefore, scarcely sufficient to ensure good houses for thee season to theatrical masmegere, or to fill thee new foreign end nncsnsecrated chapels of the Bishop of London.*
For our crowds we must depend upon this provinces; yet, snort as they will, the engines and trains cannot pour in upon us a population theat wiih at all incommode us. Crowds there will be in Hyde Park, but the greeter proportion of thmese crowds will be the Coehoseys theneselves, when, at tsmm minutes’ notice, or to u-itness a fire, a hanging, or a political deenonstrat’ion, can make up a host as large as any that all the svorhd hesides can invade us withal, without a pops of the west to rival the pops of the dark ages, amed muske London the focus of a universal pilgrimage.
having ahhayed our own apprehensions of a crowd, if not those of our readers, we uow proceed to make a few remarks on the Exhibition itself
it is a utilitarian Exhibition, and, -therefore, however useful, it is not in itself essentially an attractive object; hint it is made attractive by its magnitude, its multiplicity, its universality, and its mystery. Its chief attraction it owes to thence ideal features that are not utilitarian. Theoss svho visit the Crystal Palace, as s school to learn, u-ill be comparatively a small number to those who visit it merely as a sight to be seen. Most people will go to it, as they go to a play, or to see a giant, or a dwarf, or a picture• at thee Surrey Gardens. It was not thee original intention of thee Exhibition to gratify this vague and artless curiosity; but thmis u-ill be the strongest motive to assemble the crowds. The mere utility would not bring so many as would pay for the glass that covers the ceiling. But the reah headers of art and science, hike the real governors of a country, are a small number of men. They are the princes of industry; and if these few men, from all countries, are individually enlightened on their respective arts, one greet object of the Exhibition is gained. This cannot fail to be thee cave; and, therefore, tIns one good result may be said to be guaranteed. Moreover, thee mass who go from curiosity may find themselves involuntarily and unexpectedly impressed with new ideas. They must see and learn, if they use their eyes; and lhmey must compare one nation with another, and perceive a speciality of character about each, of which they were not before aware. It will be a little world, in which they will travel on foot, from nation to nation, or stand on thee frontiers between two nations, and, with a bird’s-eye glance, detect the peculiarities of each. But, at the best, theis is oemhy knowledge; and searele as you will, in that greet Crystal Palace, you u-ill find nothing there but a collection of facts. It is a palace of facts—a faet-totum palace—that is all.
Is that not something ? says the matter-of-fact philosopher. Certainly it is; everything is something. But unless you can deduce a great moral from your Palace of Facts; unless it embrace a moral, or a series of morals; unless there be hope in it for thee poor man, as well as entertainment for the rich unless the labourer can perceive in it a means of redeeming lsisn from bondage of shortening his hours of toil, and raising his wages of labour; unless it can open up a prospect to the oppressed and the impoverished—of better days to themselves and their children in the years to come, we can only regard such a Palace of Facts, as we would regard a picture at the Surrey Gardens, or an exhibition of fire-works at Vauxhall or Cremorne in a summer night! If it have no tendency to moral improvement, it is to us, and to all but the prizegainers, nothing but vanity. Now, it unfortunately happens, that the condition of the people does not keep pace in improvement with Science and Art. Our industrial genius is wonderful, and our riches are the envy of the world; and yet in the huge Metropolis of ours, which the nations are coming to see, there are vast deserts of humanity peopled with slaves, who are stinted in growth through continuous labour and scanty nourishment. In this tri-nne Empire of ours, the end of Christendom and its representative, there are millions of people covered with rags, and living on roots in common with pigs. Great as we are in wealth, industry, and skill, we have not been able to conquer the Demon of Poverty, or curtail its power. The poor do actually increase with our wealth, because it is the poor that make it. Where does our wealth come from? Where do our luxuries and our comforts come from? Driven by the great slave-driver, Fell Necessity, how many are drudging above ground, and beneath it, pouring with perspiration, covered with dust, soot, and filth, blackened with smoke, inhaling poisonous atmospheres, daily and hourly incurring the danger of death, and mutilation that is worse than death, enjoying no relaxation but that of scanty sleep, no society hut that of their own fellow- drudges, no change but that of work and meals—meals and work, and a ‘srlsiff of tobacco-smoke, and a draught of beer, in a comfortless beer-shop; and all this continuously, from boyhood to old age, if ever old age be attained, in order that they who live in the upper stories of the Great Tower of Babel may enjoy the comforts and facilities of civilized existence! Beautiful as civilization may be in some of its higher features, it is melancholy to think at what a cost it is purchased.
Now, will the Great Exhibition tend directly or indirectly to remedy any of these evils? Or will it tend to make men more virtuous; the intemperate, temperate; the dishonest, honest; the improvident, provident? No; nothing of the sort is ever expected from it. It is merely a bazaar.
Some go so far as to say that it may contribute to the promotion of international friendship, and the removal of international prejudices. In so far as commerce has a mission to effect such a purpose, we do not deny that the Exhibition may contribute its quota of influence; but commerce can never destroy the great prejudices that separate the nations and tribes of men; it can only present a motive for concealing them. Commerce is essentially a combative principle. The buyer is always an antagonist to the seller; and all sellers are rivals to one another. Commerce has its own peculiar prejudices and antipathies; and deep, and indelible, and heartrending they are; whilst, so far as commerce and trade have yet developed their moral results, they are compatible with an excess of misery, beside a superabundance of wealth.
It is rather as a sign of the times than as a cause of anything morally good or bad that we regard the Exhibition of all nations. It is the expression of an idea of international communion and friendship; and the response which it receives is the utterance of the feelings which the nations experience. Such utterances, on so large a scale, are voices of no common import; they are voices from Heaven, which all men hear, and all men understand; for they speak the language of all nations. And every man will comment upon this voice, and brood over it, and bring forth more or less in himself and isis offspring the result which it foreshadows, of an Era of Peace, in which the strife of the sword shall cease, and the less violent strife of genius and industry shall occupy its place.
May a moral and religious power be era long revealed to turn this new and peaceful direction of human activity to a good account—that the poor may enjoy the benefit of the change—that the vicious may be reclaimed, and society cleansed of the mass of corruption that has bean accumulating for ages, and is now sanctioned by the prestige of immemorial usage.