It was the great Jubilee of art and industry, to which almost every corner of the earth had sent some token of its skill and brotherly feeling, and to which the inhabitants of the most distant climes had come, each to gaze at the science and handicraft of the other. Never was labour—whether mental or manual, whether the craft of the hand or of the brain—so much honoured—the first great recognition, perhaps, of the artistic qualities of the artizan.
With the first gleam of daylight, the boys of London, ever foremost at a sight, had taken up their places in the trees, like their impudent counterparts, the London sparrows, and men and women grouped round the rails, determined at least to have a good place for seeing the opening of the World’s Show. Hammers were to be heard on all sides, fastening the timbers of the wooden stages that were being set up by the many who delight in holidays solely as a matter of business. Some were pouring in at the Park-gates, laden with tables and chairs for the sight-seers to stand upon. Others again, came with the omnipresent street provisions—huge trucks filled with bottles of ginger beer—baskets of gingerbread and “fatty cakes”—and tins of brandy-balls and hardbake—while from every quarter there streamed girls and women with round wicker sieves piled up in pyramids with oranges. Then there were the women with the brown-looking trotters, spread on white cloths, and the men with their ham sandwiches, as thin as if made out of whitey-brown paper; while at the gates and all along the roads, stood men with trays of bright silvery-looking medals of the Crystal Palace, and filling the air with the cheapness and attractions of their wares. Nor were the beggars absent from the scene, for in every direction along which the great mass of people came pouring, there were the blind and the crippled, reaping their holiday harvest.
As the morning advanced the crowds that came straggling on, grew denser and denser, till at last it was one compact kind of road, paved with heads; and on they went—fathers with their wives and children, skipping jauntily along, and youths with their gaily-dressed sweethearts, in lively-coloured shawls and ribbons—and many—early as it was—munching apples, or cracking nuts as they trudged on their way.
All London, and half the country, and a good part of the world, were wending their way to see the Queen pass in state on her way to open the
GREAT EXHIBITION OF ALL NATIONS,
CHAPTER XIII.
“See frae a’ quarters, east and west,
I’ drwoves th’ country coman,
Wheyle flocks o’ naigs an’ kye are press’d