THE OPENING 



OP 



THE CRYSTAL PALACE 



CONSIDERED IN SOME OF ITS RELATIONS TO THE PEOSPECTS OF AET 



I BEAD the account in the Times newspaper of the opening 

 of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, as I ascended the hill be- 

 tween Vevay and Chatel St. Denis, and the thoughts which it 

 called up haunted me all day long, as my road wound among 

 the grassy slopes of the Simmenthal. There was a strange 

 contrast between the image of that mighty palace, raised so 

 high above the hills on which it is built as to make them 

 seem little else than a basement for its glittering stateliness, 

 and those low larch huts, half hidden beneath their coverts of 

 forest, and scattered like gray stones along the masses of far 

 away mountain. Here, man contending with the power of 

 Nature for his existence ; there, commanding them for his 

 recreation : here a feeble folk nested among the rocks with 

 the wild goat and the coney, and retaining the same quiet 

 thoughts from generation to generation ; there, a great multi- 

 tude triumphing in the splendour of immeasurable habitation, 

 and haughty with hope of endless progress and irresistible 

 power. 



It is indeed impossible to limit, in imagination, the be- 

 neficent results which may follow from the undertaking thus 

 happily begun. For the first time in the history of the world, 

 a national museum is formed in which a whole nation is In- 



