that decent people never can learn how to humor.

Then what a flood of life! men, women, and children from parts unknown and unsuspected; militia-men and fire-companies; benefit-societies at half-price, and schools at no price at all; swarms of little gray coats and pink sun-bonnets from Randall's Island, with pigmy bands of drummers and fifers; Catholic charity scholars, attended by picturesque nuns; the gallant cohorts of the Free Academy, headed by their professors; and long, trailing garlands of pretty school-girls,

By twos and threes, till all, from end to end,
With beauties every shade of brown and fair,
In columns gayer than the morning mist,
The great hall glitters like a bed of flowers,
How might a man not wander from his wits,
Pierced through with eyes!

We should be deemed extravagant if we attempted to say how we regard the advantage of setting up such standards of beauty, use, and completeness in the opening minds of our city children; but the reader has only to look back upon his own youthful impressions, and compare the amount of such inspiration offered to him at that forming time, with the suggestion offered by the Exhibition to his children. If this age and its wonders be the natural product of that infant period, what may we not expect as the growth of such seeds as are now sowing? Even the noble maternal gift of an education, offered by our city to every child that

breathes her air, is enhanced in value by the opportunity that the humblest child has now enjoyed, of seeing whatever of ingenious, splendid and inspiring, the world could show to kings and emperors; and as all have had the privilege of one visit, through the liberality and courtesy of the managers of the Crystal Palace, we could desire that the bounteous and far-seeing mother should now afford her little ones a second view, at her own proper cost, quite sure to be repaid, at no distant date, by added power, skill, taste, and virtue in her growing citizens. Self-respect is cultivated, in no unimportant measure, by the fact of having seen excellent things; and to introduce self-respect into a human soul is to add to its expansion and availability in a degree which would be but faintly illustrated by a comparison drawn from the lately discovered increase of steam-power by the introduction of atmospheric air. Let us be pardoned if we seize the opportunity of bringing to the recollection of those who have the direction of these things, the famous old lines of Sir William Jones, oft quoted, but never too often read and pondered:

What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlement or labor'd mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd;
Not bays and broad-arm'd ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
No! MEN, high-minded MEN,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;

Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aited blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
These constitute a State,

And sovereign LAW, that State's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill.

We never visit one of our great Free Schools, and see the bright answering glances of hundreds of young eyes to every enlightening or encouraging word of a teacher or examiner, without thinking of these pregnant lines, or without a thrill of pride and pleasure at the reflection that we are acting upon the spirit of them, in the advantages we offer to our country and citizens. May those advantages be enlarged rather than curtailed, and may every new light of the age increase the intelligence, liberality, and humane wisdom with which they are regulated. One of the important points, in our humble judgment, is to show the children such things as are to be seen in the Great Exhibition.

How many of the visitors, young or old, at the Palace, had ever enjoyed the opportunity of examining the construction of the Magnetic Telegraph, of which we shall present a drawing to our readers? And, of all this whittling nation, how large a proportion had seen such fruits of the penknife as are exhibited in various exquisite specimens of wood-carving? Has not more than one youth felt this last in his fingers (like our accomplished friend, the sculptress), as he gazed on wreaths and figures, magically brought out, in a material which our country affords in the highest perfection and greatest variety? One of the most elegant objects in the Exhibition is a specimen (engraved in the Record, but too large to be presented here) of an illuminated volume, executed by a lady. Would the fair artist ever have conceived the thought or attempted the elaborate work, if she had not seen beautiful things of the kind from European collections? The Mosaic picture of St. John is the first specimen ever seen in this country, of an art which has attained great perfection in Italythat of copying, in imperishable and unfading stone, valuable pictures, which are liable to so much deterioration by damp and accident. This is accompanied by mosaic tables of that far-famed Florentine manufacture, of which all the colors and shades are the natural ones of the stone, whereas the pieces composing the ordinary Roman mosaic are of an artificial vitreous composition, eighteen thousand different shades of which are found necessary. Both kinds of mosaic are, of course, a revelation to most of our native observers, and must suggest new ideas of what

may be accomplished by skill and patience. The specimens of ancient armor contributed by the British government are an important commentary on the history lessons over which our young people spend so much time; for whatever removes one shade of dimness from their conceptions of what is described, is worth gold in their education. The film-fine laces of Ireland induce respect for the ingenuity and delicacy of a people who have been forced, by a hard and undeserved fate, to occupy for the present the position of "hewers of wood and drawers of water " to their more fortunate neighbors, and remind us what valuable coworkers they are going to be in the higher departments of labor. One single contribution, of all the rich and splendid ones sent from France, is enough to hint to us that under the showiness usually attributed to a nation by which Taste is almost deified, there lies a basis of patient investigation and useful inventiveness for which Science can never be sufficiently grateful. It is a humble-looking machine, that the cook might mistake for a newfangled tin coffee-boiler, or the farmer for a gimcrack steam-engine or perpetual motion; an apparatus, made of pure platina, for distilling sulphuric acid, invoiced, simple as it stands there, at sixty thousand francs. No flummery there! And see those groups in terra-cotta, modelled by skilful fingers into such truth of life that, diminutive as they are, only breath seems wanting! A lesson and an encouragement to all who imagine that they have not means wherewith to bring their talents into use. own porcelains here exhibited show that there are some among us who need no such hints of what may be done with the dust under our feet, if only taste and industry try the plastic art.

Our

One cannot help thinking what a splendid crown it would make to the list of wonderful inventions in machinery here exhibited.-inventions that do all but breathe and talk, and certainly double man's life by the addition of power and economy of time they offer him,-if one had been contrived that would give us, in one view, the thoughts, fancies, motives and hopes of each exhibitor. In looking over the catalogue, one seems to catch glimpses of far off interiors; household scenes, as well as dark, oily workshops, and cold and dreary attic ateliers; silent, anxious night-watches, as well as rattling looms and the grating of saws and millstones. There is one class that touches our curiosity and interest above all: "Specimens of fine needle-work; " "Octagonal silk quilt, of 6500 pieces;" " Fancy bed-quilt, highly ornamented with designs

of birds, fruits, and flowers;" "Black apron of knitted silk, with bead embroideries; "Rag hearth-rug; ""Worsted work, Auld Robin Gray;"-dozens more of just such things, done in our neighboring country towns, and in close and reeking streets of our own city, by female fingers; "Specimens of Irish pearl, tatting, &c., by Sophia A. Ellis, Kildernoc Rectory, Louth, Ireland, " "Doylies embroidered with views in Ireland, by the Countess of Clancarty and Lady Anne Butler, Ballinasloe, Ireland;" "Vestments, embroidery, flowers in lace, &c., Sisters of Mercy, Kinsale, Ireland;" "Crochetwork, from the Industrial Poor School of the Ursuline Convent, Black Rock, near Cork, Ireland;" "Crochet and knitted articles from Breslau, Prussia; " "Fine embroideries, Miss Brasch, Bremen ;" "Embroidered Cushion, and newly invented toys, Charlotte Paulsen, Hamburg." (the noble-hearted woman who has been the life and soul of the great ragged schools there, persecuted and almost proscribed by the government, who could not tolerate the catholicity of her views); "Cassava Starch, Mrs. McClintock, Demarara; " and a Bird's Nest," from the same place; "Poems," by a lady at St. John's, NewBrunswick; "Various specimens of embroidery, by Signora Madalina Tedeschi," whose whereabouts we need not doubt of; and so on and on, through all the courts, the modest and elegant contributions of women appeal to the eye, carrying the imagination back to the homes where these things were contrived and labored over, and the hopes and the honest pride with which they were dispatched to the Great Exhibition. It makes one almost shudder to think that every item, in all that vast array of offerings, from men and women, poor and rich, obscure and famous, has hopes behind it. We pass by a thousand things to look at one; we give to that one hardly more than a passing glance; yet there are garnered lives every where, and human hearts interested in every pause we make. Who knows whether the artist himself, poor and depressed, is not at our elbow, seeing our indifference, or hearing our contempt? He has been toiling in silence for years to perfect that little implement, which is to the careless eye as the small dust of the balance amid the grandeur all around it; to his thinking, the ingenuity, or the utility, or the elegance of that is as conspicuous as it could have been in a form ever so imposing, yet, host after host, day after day, sees no lighted eye, no lingering footstep near the life-product. The sculptor, some stranger from the other side of the ocean, who brought to the New World the sta

tue which seemed to him unnoticed at home only because it was surrounded by Art's perfected pearls of all time, understands English enough to be stung by the "Horrid!" of the pert young lady, or the uplifted eyebrow of the cool critic.

It is a mistake to forget the human background of that immense show, which looks, at first sight, like the triumph of Materialism. The people whose brains contrived and whose hands made all, are greater than the things made, and the hearts and hopes and happiness of that multitude are bound up in and under the public reception and appreciation of the various works there presented. If we could see, in some special "Arcade ”—(it would need to be longer than the Machine Arcade, which is only 450 feet!) the entire army of artificers, with all those who love and who depend upon them, ranged in order due, it might be only a smutched and grimy host to the fastidious observer, slightly relieved, here and there, by a more genteel specimen of humanity. Keen eyes there would be, and expanded foreheads; pale cheeks, and hard hands, and travel-soiled feet; men of all climes, from China to Peru, women of all complexions, the Anglo-Saxon predominating; little children, too, for no small amount of the work, is, in some cases, done by such as are hardly old enough to be trusted out of the mother's sight-the silver and gold filagree of Genoa, for instance (of which the statuette of Columbus is an exquisite specimen); all this were to the lover of his kind a moving sight; to God who made and loveth all, an array of life most worthy and precious; a host of workers in His service even better than they know of; helpers of His plan by the natural and legitimate use of the powers and faculties He gave them; rolling on the great Car of Improvement towards the supernal goal to which all that is good and true must tend-the assimilation and reunion of man with his Maker.

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new,

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

Strange, that a novelty so grand, a sight so splendid, an enterprise so humane, should not have stirred to its inmost core the great commercial metropolis which was its natural and proper seat. Strange that men far-reaching and high-souled, who see in their own commerce something above and beyond the pelf which the vulgar suppose to be their only aim, should not at once have joined hand in hand, to exalt and dignify a display so entirely in consonance with their own comprehensive views of the advancement of our country,

in all that she yet lacks to bring her to the highest level of the nations, in arts, as she has already proved herself in arms. Strange, passing strange, that the advocates of Peace, so numerous here, should not have seen, in this consent of foreign lands in a general exhibition and competition of their choicest products, a founda

tion and an earnest of that condition of things, when the ledger and not the sword shall decide the relations of countries to each other; and when the loom shall be more potent than the cannon in settling national difficulties. Strange above all is it, and sadly laughable, that there should have been heard even a whisper that the Palace was to be slighted as a "moneymaking scheme!" This sounds like a

joke and a bad one; such an objection, it would seem, could never have been even whispered in New-York, that great common sense city, which has long ago discovered that the thing that "won't pay," isn't worth doing. "Mammon led them on," said some wiseacre, and his kindred quickly echoed the damning hint

Mammon led them on; Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From Heaven; for e'en in Heaven his looks and thoughts

Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd
In vision beatific; by him first

Men, also, and by his suggestion taught
Ransack'd the centre and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures, better hid.

This does very well for a poetical objection to money-making, but it never deterred, nor should it, a single adventurer to California, and as an objection here it was only for the surface; the real fear was that the thing wouldn't pay ! hence a contemptuous prognostic and consequent indifference. And out of that grew a poor attendance of the very people who ought to have given the earliest impetus. the cultivated and enlightened inhabitants of the city of New-York. The great deficiency of the Exhibition has been in people; "live critters," as the old lady said; not exactly quadrupedal but bipedal, and not only bipedal but endowed with heads with brains in them. Multitudes from the north and from the south, and from the east and from the west, have flocked to the shrine of our bright wonder; but those who, above all, should have done it and themselves honor by an intelligent interest, have almost disowned