country. It would constitute, too, a contribution to the domestic history of the period, the importance of which could not be very easily over-estimated. It were well, surely, that the appetite which exists for information regarding the true state and feelings of the working-classes should be satisfied with other than mere pictures of the imagination. A series of cheap volumes, such as we desiderate, would furnish many an interesting glimpse into the lives of the labouring poor, and deepen the interest in their welfare already so generally felt. And we are sure the scheme, if attempted by some judicious bookseller, would scarce fail to remunerate.—October 27, 1849.

ESSAYS, LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.

PARTING IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.

FIRST ARTICLE.

THE Exhibition closed upon Saturday last; and one of the most marvellous and instructive sights which the world ever saw now survives only as a great recollection, -as a lesson unique in the history of the species, which has been fairly given, but which, upon the same scale at least, we need scarce hope to see repeated. I spent the greater part of last week amid its long withdrawing aisles and galleries; and, without specially concentrating myself on any one set of objects, artistic or mechanical, set my thoughts loose among the whole, to see whether they could not glean up for future use a few general impressions, better suited to remain with me than any mere recollections of the particular and the minute. The memory lays fast hold of the sum total in an important calculation, and retains it; but of all the intermediate sums employed in the work of reduction or summation it takes no hold whatever; and so, in most minds, on a somewhat similar principle, general results are remembered, while the multitu

dinous items from which they are derived fade into dimness and are forgotten.

Like every other visitor, I was first impressed by the great building which spanned over the whole, having ample room in its vast areas for at once the productions of a world and the population of a great city. I was one of a hundred and eight thousand persons who at once stood under its roof; nor, save at a few points, was the pressure inconveniently great. If equally spread over the building, all the present population of Edinburgh could, without the displacement of a single article, have found ample standing room within the walls. And yet this greatest of buildings did not impress me as great. In one point at least, where the airy transept raises its transparent arch seventy feet over the floor, and the sun-light from above sported freely amid the foliage of the imprisoned trees and on the play of crystal fountains, it struck me as eminently beautiful; but the idea which it conveyed everywhere else was simply one of largeness,—not of greatness. There are but two great ideas in the architecture of the world,—the Grecian idea and the Gothic idea; and though both demand for their full development a certain degree of magnitude, without which they sink into mere models, very ample magnitude is not demanded. York Minster and St Paul's united would scarce cover one-fourth the space occupied by the Crystal Palace, and yet they are both great buildings, and it is not. Hercules, the son of the most potent of the gods, was great; whereas the earth-born giants that he conquered and slew were simply bulky. And in works of art, so much depends, in like manner, on lineage, that things of plebeian origin, however large they may eventually become, rarely if ever attain to greatness. Two or three centuries ago, some lover of flowers and shrubs bethought him of shielding his more delicate plants from the severity of the climate by a small glass-frame, consisting of a few panes. In

course of time, the idea embodied in the frame expanded into a moderate-sized hot-house, then into a green-house of considerably larger size, then into a tall palm-house; and, last of all, an ingenious gardener, bred among groves of exotics protected by huge erections of glass and iron, and familiar with the necessity of adding to the size of a case as the objects which it had to contain multiplied or were enlarged, bethought him of expanding the idea yet farther into the Crystal Palace of the Exhibition. And such seems to be the history and lineage of perhaps the largest of all buildings: it is simply an expansion of the first glass-frame that covered the first few delicate flowers transplanted from a warmer to a colder climate; and, notwithstanding its imposing proportions, is as much a mere case as it was. And were its size to be doubled, if, instead of containing two hundred miles of sash-bars and nine hundred thousand superficial feet of glass, it were stretched out so as to contain four hundred miles of bars and eighteen hundred thousand feet of glass,— it would be of course a larger building than it is, but not a greater. Nay, I should perhaps rather remark, that it would be impossible by addition to render it not only more, but even less great than it is,-in itself a mark of inferiority. a truly great building it would be impossible to add; for unity, as a whole, forms the very soul of all great edifices. He would be a bold man who would attempt making a single addition to St Paul's;-one tower more would ruin it: whereas the length or breadth of a railway terminus may be increased ad infinitum, without in the least affecting its unity or proportions; for the railway terminus is also a mere case, and its unity and proportions bear reference to but the rule of convenience, which directs that it should be made quite large enough to hold what it had been erected to shelter. It is ill, I may add, with an architecture of what at least ought to be the higher kind, when it is found to come under this

To