488 Mr. R, M. Milnes on the International Exhibition. [May 2, 



billed with sufficient territory, gave us at once the best political condi- 

 tions of external power and domestic independence. Our greatest 

 danger in history has been not our own conquest, but the conquest of 

 France, which must have absorbed us into the continental system. 

 Now, the peril of our power lay in the rapid political and moral 

 elevation of the other European nations, but we could well afford to 

 sacrifice some individual superiority to the common gain of mankind. 

 The speaker concluded with noting some of the probable effects of 

 this great jubilee of commerce. Large congregations of men had 

 always vividly struck the imagination, and the jubilee of Pope Boniface 

 so occupied the mind of Dante that he illustrates by it one of his super- 

 natural pictures, and fixed it as the date of his spiritual journey. Such 

 assemblies have always been looked on as harbingers of peace, and we 

 know what were the expectations of 1851. But though that hope 

 has proved delusive, we may yet feel thankful that, with the excep- 

 tion of the American calamity, all the disturbances of the world since 

 that time have been the conflicts of a lower against a higher civilization, 

 in which the higher has had the mastery. The materials here brought 

 together must impress on the spectators the mutual dependence of 

 nations, and the interests of amity. One of the chief objects of interest 

 would be the various applications of art to industry ; advantages perhaps 

 somewhat balanced by the injury of the application of industry to art. 

 As art becomes mechanical, it loses the spontaneous dignity which 

 makes it most divine, and it seems impossible to diffuse and repeat 

 it, without some diminution of its highest faculties. But this qualifica- 

 tion does not extend to the relations between industry and science, there 

 the moral is as certain as the material profit ; intelligent labour is sub- 

 stituted for the mere exertion of brute strength ; the supply of comforts 

 is extended from the luxurious classes even to the necessitous ; the 

 diseases consequent on physical hardship are diminished, and the average 

 longevity of man increased. To the progress of scientific education 

 not only the philosopher but the statesman looks for the diffusion of 

 public happiness and the permanence of modern civilization. If the 

 states that now rule the world are to escape the doom of Babylon and 

 Rome, of Egypt and of Greece, it is in that they have not made their 

 science the monopoly of a caste or a priesthood, but they have placed 

 it more or less within the reach of the individual intelligence of the 

 humblest citizen. Let the education that enables mankind to apprehend 

 and value truth proceed commensurately with the discoveries of science, 

 and the community will gradually but continuously absorb into itself 

 that knowledge which makes decay impossible, and our country may 

 boldly and confidently meet whatever destiny remains for it in the in- 

 scrutable designs of the Creator and Ruler of the universe. 



[R. M. M.] 



