From the London Examiner.
A GLIMPSE OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.
There is one country which is not represented at the Great Exhibition, one power which refused to send any specimens of its produce, lest the having done so should be considered as a tribute to the commercial greatness of England, and lest exhibitors and exhibited should incur contamination by contact with specimens of the world's industry. One is not sorry that this should be the case, and that the felon power of Europe should have thus passed judgment on itself, and of its own accord placed itself in Coventry.
The country we allude to is Naples. The horror which the king entertains of any thing constitutional since his Majesty took the oath to his own constitution, and since he hanged those who committed the same crime without afterwards perjuring themselves after the royal example, has induced him to prohibit the sending of any specimens to London. Naples, to be sure, has little to exhibit. Industry in that country, so blessed by nature, has been crushed and annihilated by the hand of tyranny. Sulphur and other volcanic products, wine which science has never enabled to bear exportation, silk in its brut state, with some coarse fabrics of cloth and linen, and hats in imitation of Tuscany, compose all the industry of one of the finest countries in Europe. No marvel, therefore, it should have shrunk upon any pretence from occupying a booth at the Great Exhibition.
A very different place in that great show is held by Piedmont, which has furnished a large assortment of raw materials and manufactured articles. On the other hand, Florence and Venice are far, we fear, from even keeping up a shadow of their old reputation. The country of Benvenuto Cellini has lost the gift of the arts with that of freedom; and the manufactures with which Venice used to pay for the merchandise of the East are no more. Strange to say, however, Milan supplies one of the most interesting and perfect compartments of the Exhibition, that of small sculptures, in which the youth of the region are so skilled as to distance all competition.
The United States must be held to have furnished far less valuable specimens of either art or nature than might have been expected; and this will be the more evident, as its stall occupies the great compartment of the Exhibition adjoining the eastern entrance, and first meeting the eye. France and Germany, especially North Germany, hold their ground well. One thing, however, seems certain, and the more remarkable as it was not altogether expected, which is, that England is not inferior to her competitors in any department. That her machinery, and the results of her science and skill in working in metals should distance all competition, might have been looked for. But what will greatly astonish people, is her very signal success in so many departments of the ornamental: and whilst of natural productions her various colonies have supplied specimens the most novel and most startling, the produce of the looms as well as of the mines of Indostan offer among the most novel and interesting sights that the curious could flock to see.
In a general way it is not yet possible to guess what effect the Exhibition is likely to have. So many persons will crowd to it with widely different views, that it is extremely difficult to sum up its probable impression on the whole. But we believe that those most gratified will be scientific persons, who can see and compare for the first time all raw materials and all finished productions gathered together under the same roof. It is, indeed, as a creator of new combinations and of new ideas, that the Great Exhibition must in any permanent sense be chiefly valuable; for it is hardly conceivable but that many most startling inventions in art manufacture must ultimately spring from it. But these will be silent enjoyments, and for a long time secret profits. Those on whose fertile minds the good seed of new ideas may fall, will silently cherish and allow them to germ in the shade, and years may elapse ere we see the growth or the fruit. What meanwhile we may count upon hearing most of for the moment will be the enjoyment of the curious at the view of the Koh-i-noor, and the other mere sight-wonders of the Exhibition.
Let us add that not the least pleasure of this kind is the view which each race of the human family will be enabled to take of the other. The crowds now brought together are essentially, the greater part of them, of the middle and artisan class, although it may be generally of those already successful and enriched. This is a kind of people that would never have come amongst us but upon an occasion such as the present, and whom to see and be seen by, cannot but be productive of large, friendly, humane, cosmopolitan results.