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.
From Leigh Hunt's Journal.
DR. DAVID STRAUSS IN WEIMAR.
The Visitor's Book of the Elephant Hotel in Weimar contains, under the date of the 12th August, a rather remarkable autograph, which the curious collector would do well to buy, if possible, or, if not possible, then to beg or steal. Perhaps, among the many distinguished names which the long series of Fremdenbücher kept at Weimar during the last fifty years must necessarily exhibit, there are few to which an earnest, thinking man would attach the same profound, though somewhat painful degree of interest. It is the name of "Dr. David Strauss, aus Ludwigsburg," written by himself.
"How!" you exclaim in a mingled tone of surprise and incredulity, "Dr. Strauss in Weimar? David Strauss among the pilgrims to the tomb of the poets?"
It does sound apocryphal—mythical, if you will. One would almost as soon expect to hear of the late Dr. Jordan Faust himself paying a visit to the ghost of Goethe. Nevertheless, and in spite of all that learned critics, a thousand years hence, may advance and prove to the contrary, a veritable fact it is, Strauss actually has been among us—has been seen here in the body during several days by several witnesses, the present writer being one.
It is my intention here briefly to record the impression which I still retain of my transient intercourse with this celebrated man. Such a record can scarce be considered as a breach of confidence, an invasion of the sacred domains of private life: the author of the "Leben Jesu" is a public, I had almost said, an historical character.