386 SECOND JOURNEY IN EUROPE. [1851, 



On our way down the nave, we stopped for a mo- 

 ment to see the Koh-i-noor, but the Mountain of 

 Light looked to us little brighter than a piece of cut- 

 glass. It does not come up to the general expecta- 

 tion. Manage it as they will, it does not shine at all 

 wonderfully, and the people got it into their heads 

 that the authorities were shamming them with a glass 

 imitation instead of the veritable Koh-i-noor ; an 

 idea well expressed in " Punch," who called it " the 

 knave of diamonds." We determined to show our 

 patriotism by going first of all carefully through the 

 American department, and quite a trial to one's pat- 

 riotism it is, a great space, very scantily filled with 

 an ill-assorted, incongruous collection (although they 

 have given up to Russia and France about one quar- 

 ter of the space that Mr. Lawrence asked for and 

 insisted upon having) : one long shelf displayed only 

 half a dozen wooden pails ; another side was decorated 

 with a miserable collection of cast-off specimens of 

 autumn-leaves, and below with a case containing five 

 or six dozen bottles of prepared magnesia, all just 

 alike, flanked at the sides with a similar collection of 

 Old Jacob Townsend's Sarsaparilla, surmounted by a 

 portrait of the illustrious inventor. The strength of 

 the nation has gone to daguerreotypes, of which there 

 are about two thousand very good specimens of the 

 art, it must be said, far better than they can produce 

 in England. The same may be said of many things, 

 creditable in themselves, but of which they have filled 

 up their space, or attempted to fill it, with an enormous 

 number of specimens, where one or two would suffice. 

 But wherever anything is quite poor and commonplace, 

 the exhibitor is sure to make it up in brag, in which 

 it must be confessed we do " beat all creation." 



