238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



not far off. The gardens around his villa there still bear the 

 evidence of his taste and skill as a gardener. Thus another 

 day was pleasantly and profitably occupied. 



Allusion has been made to the grand Handel Festival at the 

 Crystal Palace at Sydenham, three performances of which took 

 place during the first week of my stay in London. Though 

 much occupied with my visits to the exhibition of the Agricul- 

 tural Society, I could not, of course, lose the opportunity of 

 attending what was designed to be, and what probably was, the 

 grandest musical festival that had ever been known. And so, 

 procuring tickets, I took the train early for Sydenham, twelve 

 miles out of London, long the residence of Thomas Campbell, 

 where he wrote the whole of his admirable poem of " Gertrude 

 of Wyoming." 



The Crystal Palace is the same that was erected at Hyde 

 'Park. for the great World's Fair of 1851, afterwards sold to a 

 corporation of gentlemen and removed to its permanent loca- 

 tion, with some alterations and improvements, and now with 

 its extensive grounds and its endless variety of interesting 

 objects on exhibition, forming truly a crystal palace, the most 

 enchanting, probably, in the world. One can hardly realize, as 

 he walks through the fairy-like courts, and the picturesque 

 grounds filled with every imaginable form of beauty, that he is 

 still in the real world. It is more like a dream that might 

 follow the reading of Undine, or some other high wrought 

 fiction of an excited brain. Architecture, sculpture and paint- 

 ing in all their infinitely varied forms, restorations of the most 

 celebrated edifices in all the world of ancient and modem 

 times, showing the whole progressive development from the 

 dawn of art, casts of the choicest and most celebrated works of 

 sculpture forming a vast and connected historical gallery from 

 the earliest monuments of Egypt to our own times, and almost 

 numberless in extent, constitute the attractions of this place. 



In the British Museum one sees the real, genuine, old 

 antiques, the very tombs, the sarcophagi, in which reposed the 

 ashes of kings and priests, but many of them, most of them, 

 showing the marks of time and ago and exposure. But in the 

 Egyptian court and collections of the Crystal Palace all these, 

 temples, porticoes and gigantic statuary, arc so exquisitely 



