exchange--articles mostly of the class and quality succinctly
described as "Brummagem." It is obvious that prizes, diplomas, medals,
commissioners and juries would be thrown away here. The palace
of glass and iron can only loom in the distant future, like the
cloud-castle in Cole's _Voyage of Life_. It may possibly be essayed in
a generation or two, when Ekaterinenborg, built up into a great
city by the copper, iron, gold, and, above all, the lately-opened
coal-mines of the Ural, shall have become the focus of the Yenisei,
Amour, Yang-tse and Indus system of railways. But here, again, we are
overstepping our century.

[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRANSEPT OF CRYSTAL PALACE.]

To us it seems odd that in the days when an autocratic decree could
summarily call up "all the world" to be taxed, and when, in prompt
obedience to it, the people of all the regions gathered to a thousand
cities, the idea of numbering and comparing, side by side, goods,
handicrafts, arts, skill, faculties and energies, as well as heads,
never occurred to rulers or their counselors. If it did, it was never
put in practice. The difficulties to which we have before adverted
stood in the way of that combination of individual effort to which the
great displays of our day are mainly indebted for their success; but
what the government might have accomplished toward overcoming distance
and defective means of transport is evidenced by the mighty current
of objects of art, luxury and curiosity which flowed toward the
metropolis. Obelisks, colossal statues, and elephants and giraffes by
the score are articles of traffic not particularly easy to handle even
now.

[Illustration: NEW YORK EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.]