Endowed as we are with a principle of suggestion—one of the most active principles in the human mind, ministering greatly to the pleasures of existence, and giving to men of enlarged intelligence the means of various and extensive gratification—it is very natural, on looking at the great event of the present year, to cluster round it in thought a number of facts bearing in relation to it some kind of affinity. Even the structure and its contents are not without suggestive interest, while the great gatherings of the people to behold them excites the memory and imagination, and brings out many a picture of things that have been or that shall be. Associations are suggested, commercial and classical, romantic and religious.
As a simple exposition of art, the Exhibition reminds us, in the first place, of the Expositions of Art in the French metropolis, which at intervals have taken place during the last fifty years. We go back to the times of the first republic, when after the tragedies of the revolution, and their dire effect on industry and commerce, it was felt that some stimulus and encouragement were needed to revive them; and the deserted palace of St. Cloud, under the superintendence of the Marquis d’Avèze, was enriched and adorned with the productions of a people whose tasteful ingenuity no social disorders could extinguish. The walls were hung with costly draperies from the Gobelin manufactory—the floors were covered with rich carpets from the looms of La Savonnerie, and, amassed in profusion and arranged with skill, there was a display of the variegated porcelain of Sevres, that hive of curious industry which borders the spacious park of the palace we have mentioned. Succeeded by a second Exposition at the Hotel d’Orsay, in the city of Paris, the two were regarded by Napoleon,—who, though flushed with his early victories, failed not to discern that war without commerce would but exhaust his country,—as sufficient to warrant a third and greater attempt, and accordingly the Temple of Industry, as it was called, was reared in the Champ de Mars. It was of simple construction, adorned with oriflames, and the victorious tricolours of the first Italian campaign, and within the walls there were exhibited for three days, some of the most beautiful works of art the country could supply. The temper of that great nation at the juncture was candidly expressed by the prime minister: “Our manufactures are the arsenals which will supply us with the weapons most fatal to the British power;” and as we read his words we rejoice in the far different relations of the two empires now, and the pleasant union and amicable rivalry of our Gallic neighbours with ourselves in the present enterprise. Other Expositions followed, but the ninth, under Louis Philippe, in the magnificent Place de la Concorde, in the year 1839, eclipsed them all; and as the gratified monarch gazed on the trophies of French ingenuity and skill, he exclaimed, “These are the true victories which cause no tears to flow.” Nor can we, while these imposing scenes in the French capital and its neighbourhood pass before us, forget the humble attempts made in our own country in connexion with our valuable Mechanics’ Institutions, to exhibit in some of our large towns, especially Manchester and Leeds, the products of native industry. They are worthy of honourable and grateful remembrance, as indications of that indomitable and individual spirit of enterprise, which is one of the secrets of our commercial prosperity.
The Exhibition is a great Bazaar. It is, to a considerable extent, based on the true principle of such establishments. That principle is one of classification, and therefore the term Bazaar is incorrectly applied to certain marts in the metropolis which are but heterogeneous clusters of shops under a common roof. The original principle is a classification of products according to the trades to which they belong; here it is a classification of products according to the countries from which they are received. The Bazaar, as essentially oriental, carries us away to Cairo and Constantinople, to Persian towns and Indian cities. We find ourselves in the crowded alley of some vaulted building, with shops of a similar kind presenting goods of the same general description, lining either side the way. Provisions, wares, and fabrics, both mean and gorgeous, rude and ornamented, simple and ornate, are piled or spread forth to please and entice the passer-by, while, in some cases, the moody Turk, who sits cross-legged amidst his stores, smoking his pipe, is so absorbed in the enjoyment of that soporific luxury, that he seems hardly to care about attending to the wants of his customers. In Persia, we are told, the buildings are of rich appearance, decorated with paintings, particularly under the domes, with portraits of hunters and heroes, and pictures of animals, real or imaginary. Generally in the East these markets are places of immense resort, including the characteristics of an exchange, a news room, a debating theatre, a promenade, and a rendezvous for idlers. The gaiety of oriental costume affords a marked feature in the promiscuous assemblages, while the noise of many voices, in various tongues and dialects, is like the echo of that strange confusion of sounds once heard on the plains of Shinar. In this respect the mixed scenes and various languages in the Hyde Park Bazaar will be less surprising to the Eastern visitors than to the people of the West. It will seem to them the augmented and multiplied counterpart of one of their own busy markets—a city-like mart, an immense assemblage of shops beneath one crystal roof—and embosoming in the midst of it a pleasure garden, with great trees, and fresh flowers, and gushing fountains—the whole the work, as they might think, of some of their most famous magicians.
The spirit of industrial activity and commercial competition creates all these scenes, and as we trace them to their source we cannot help noticing the desire of acquisition, one of the original principles of human nature, which often and most generally kindles and keeps that spirit alive. The desire of gain, regulated by justice and generosity, is to be distinguished from that love of money which is so strongly reprobated in the best of books, as “the root of all evil;” but it cannot be denied that the innate acquisitiveness of man which may be trained up into a virtue is too apt to sink down into a vice. Influenced by a moral feeling, especially by those considerations which Christianity suggests, and by those precepts which Christianity enjoins, this principle prompts individuals to gather only that they may prudently appropriate a befitting portion, and generously distribute the rest; but apart from these checks and guides, and stimulated by the sordid passions of man’s fallen soul, the natural tendency to acquire, in a multitude of cases, degenerates into the sin of covetousness, which is idolatry, and he who makes haste to be rich becomes a worshipper of Mammon. Nor can we here omit to notice what a wonderful spring of human energy; what a motive to exertion has the material wealth of this world ever proved; how, perhaps, even beyond the highest prizes of warlike ambition, it has more frequently and continuously agitated the surface of society, and moved it from its lowest depths. It has been like a strong east wind sweeping over the world from the earliest ages, and keeping the sea of civilized life in constant commotion. As we read the history of commerce, and think of the mercantile cities of antiquity, Tyre, Corinth, Alexandria, and the rest—as we trace the stream onwards through the middle ages, by the way of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa;—as we descend to latter times, and touch on Amsterdam, Bruges, and Louvain, and then come home and muse on the rise and rivalry, the progress and changes of the great centres of commerce in our own country;—as we pause in each place to look at the busy traffic going on within them, to the crowded quays, the well-stored warehouses, the mart of the trader, the shop of the artisan;—as we see groups of merchants, mechanics, and mariners;—as we listen to the buzz of many lips, and the noise of unfurled sails, and vessels loosened from their moorings, the tramp of men piling up bales of goods, the click of the shuttle and clangour of the anvil, we have an impressive illustration of the high estimate of that material wealth, which it is the object of all this energetic activity to produce and preserve. Percival’s description of the pearl fishery at Ceylon—itself a branch of most profitable traffic, and exhibiting a scene of bustle akin to that of an oriental bazaar—may be regarded as a parable of the great world-mart we are thinking of, and of the precious prize which the thousands who throng it all covet to obtain. Several thousands of people of different colours, countries, casts, and occupations, continually passing and re-passing in a busy crowd: the vast numbers of small tents and huts erected on the shore, with the bazaar or market-place; the vast numbers of jewellers, brokers, merchants of all colours and all descriptions, both natives and foreigners, who are occupied in some way or other with the pearls, some separating and assorting them, others weighing and ascertaining their number and value, while others are hawking them about, or drilling and boring them for future use; “all these circumstances tend to impress the mind with the value and importance of that object which can of itself create this scene.” On reading this description it suggests another parable, a holy one from the holiest of lips. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls: who, when he hath found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Wandering far back into the regions of classic antiquity, the finger of association points to Olympia and her games, those Greek celebrations of which such graphic sketches are preserved in the triumphal odes of Pindar. Though “the immediate object of these meetings was the exhibition of various trials of strength and skill, which from time to time were multiplied so as to include almost every mode of displaying bodily activity, they became subservient to the interests of genius and taste, of art and literature.” Statues were reared to the memory of successful combatants, “and the most eminent poets willingly lent their aid on such occasions, especially to the rich and great. And thus it happened that sports, not essentially different from those of our village green, gave birth to master-pieces of sculpture, and called forth the sublimest strains of the lyric muse.” “The scene of the Olympic Festival was during the season a mart of busy commerce, where productions, not only of manual but of intellectual labour, were exhibited and exchanged. In this respect it served many of the same purposes which, in modern times, are more effectually indeed answered by the press, in the communication of thoughts, inventions, and discoveries, and the more equable diffusion of knowledge.” [91] But these memorable institutions are suggested to us in the way of resemblance, chiefly on account of the vast and various concourse of persons which they periodically attracted. At the time when the games returned, the banks of the Alpheus became a centre of universal interest, and exhibited a pilgrim population typical of a congregated world. The festival “was very early frequented by spectators, not only from all parts of Greece itself, but from the Greek colonies in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and this assemblage was not brought together by the mere fortuitous impulse of private interest or curiosity, but was in part composed of deputations, which were sent by most cities as to a religious solemnity, and were considered as guests of the Olympian god.” It is curious to observe—in contrast with the inclusion of so many of the female sex in our gathering of the nations, the circumstance illustrative of the different position of woman in society in the old classic world—that, with the exception of the priestesses of Ceres, and certain virgins, none but men, during the earlier periods of Grecian history, were permitted to appear in Olympia at the time of those national festivities. The history of this remarkable institution, through the many ages in which Greece was the pattern and mirror of artistic, intellectual, and social civilization, exhibited that civilization in its rise, progress, and decay—its spring-tide freshness, summer pride, and autumnal beauty. There might the hand of providence be seen, disclosing, expanding, and then folding up forms of thought, modes of association, and habits of life, which while they actually existed gave much of their own impress to the foreigners who were gradually familiarized with them, and will long continue, through the medium of their history and their remains, to refresh the imagination, stimulate the genius, chasten the taste, and arouse the emulation of mankind.
Other associations, which belonging to the mediæval ages may be grouped together under the class of romantic, next occur to our minds, bringing in procession before us a train of images nearer in point of time, but more remote in point of resemblance. We think of the rich old picturesque cities of Europe, which sprung up, after the fall of the Roman Empire, in Spain, and France, and Germany, and the Netherlands, a hardy and robust offspring, born in troublous times, cradled amidst storms, thrown on the world in infancy to take care of themselves, and gathering, like individuals, strength and nerve and wit and prudence from this rough and irregular sort of training:—and forthwith the quaint-looking narrow streets are seen crowded with flocks of foreign visitors to drive a bargain in the bourse, or to barter their wool at the staple, or to mingle in the amusements of some civic festival. And amidst the concourse of merchants, and pedlars, and workmen may be seen the knight and the squire, the monk and the minstrel.
“Quaint old towns of toil and traffic, quaint old towns of art and song,
Memories haunt their pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng.
Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the master-singers chancing rude poetic strains.
From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,
Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.”“I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames like queens attended, knights who bore the fleece of gold;
Lombard and Venetian merchants, with deep laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations, more than royal pomp and ease.” [94]
And, then, Venice is seen, rising out of the sea—a “mazy dream of marble palaces, old names, fair churches, strange costumes, while the canals are like the silver threads, the bright unities of one of sleep’s well-woven visions.” Within that great city—the modern Tyre, her history full of warnings pointed at pride, cupidity, ambition, and tyranny—are seen her merchant princes, with strangers from other lands, “Greek, Armenian, Persian,” meeting together in busy excited crowds to look on the wares and treasures supplied by her richly freighted ships; nor can we help glancing at the annual festival of that commercial republic, when, to use the words of Rogers,—
“The fisher came
From his green islet, bringing o’er the waves
His wife and little one, the husbandman
From the far land, with many a friar and nun,
And village maiden, her first flight from home,
Crowding the common ferry. All arrived:
And in his straw the prisoner turned and listened;
So great the stir in Venice. Old and young
Thronged her three hundred bridges.”
And then these cities disappear, and give place to some curiously carved chapel—a gem of architecture—within whose dim aisles there gather groups of pilgrims from far-off places, to pay their vows and offer their gifts at the shrine of a popular saint. Walsingham and Canterbury show eager and zealous worshippers, coming from distant towns and other lands, to kneel with ignorant and superstitions reverence on the altar steps, and to help by their genuflexions to deepen the indentations on the wave-like surface of the floor. And then again our thoughts wander away to Mediterranean ports, and pilgrims are seen gathering there to go forth on a more formidable expedition to the Holy Land, and as the vessel weighs anchor, the old church hymn, the Veni Creator, chanted by the sailors, is heard stealing over the waters, as they spread their canvass to the wind. Nor can we forget that even these gatherings, with all their superstition, folly, waste of time, and pernicious moral influence, nevertheless enlarged the circle of human knowledge, and the domains of civilization, and corrected errors in geography, and wore away prejudices between race and race, and promoted the interests of commerce and navigation; and, towards the latter part of the mediæval age, contributed, by the knowledge which many of those who visited Rome acquired respecting its corrupt and licentious court, to create and swell that deep tide of anti-papal feeling which preceded the Lutheran reformation and promoted it when it came. Far greater crowds than ever are seen, in the eleventh century, embarking: in the richly painted galleys of Genoa and Venice, on their way to the East. Zeal for the Crusades was the very spirit of the times, fanned in some instances and kindled in others by the eloquence of Peter the Hermit. Europe precipitated itself into Asia, and multitudes who marched on foot, as well as those who crossed the Mediterranean, appeared on the plains of Palestine. Rarely has our world, which has so often witnessed the gathering of armed men, seen such a host as met the eye of our Richard Cœur de Lion when he reached Acre. “Around the city spread the camp of the besiegers, a collection of warriors from every country in Europe, with their separate and appropriate standards. The walls of the place were manned by its resolute defenders, urging their active engines of warlike defence. Beyond, at a visible distance, the powerful army of Saladin appeared covering the hills and plains: their tents radiating with the gorgeous colours so precious to Turkish taste.” The Crusades wasted an immense amount of wealth, sacrificed human life to an awful extent, and were productive of intense misery in various forms. But, as in the case of all great gatherings of the human race for a common purpose, the evils were in the main temporary, the good produced permanent. They did on a large scale what pilgrimages did on a small one. They tended to undermine the system of feudalism and to sow seeds of liberty. Men were waked as by a thunder-clap from the slumber of centuries. A movement was produced in society, the impulse of which never died away, for from that era European affairs underwent a change; intellectual, moral, political, religious life began afresh to throb through the Western world, and never since have men completely gone to sleep again.