on the Great Exhibition of 1851. 359 
Now that which this scientific dream thus presents to us in 
imagination, the Exhibition of the Industry and Arts of all Na- 
tions has presented as a visible reality ; for we have -had there 
collected examples of the food and clothing and other works of 
art of nations in every stage of the progress of art. From Ota- 
heite, so long in the eyes of Englishmen the type of gentle but 
uncultured life, Queen Pomare sends mats and cloth, head-dresses 
and female: gear, which the native art of her women fabricates 
from their indigenous plants. From Labuan, the last specimen 
of savage life with which this country has become connected, 
we have also clothes and armor, weapons and musical instru- 
ments. From all the wide domains which lie-within’ or around 
but art soon goes beyond these first essays. F'rom Sumatra we 
ave the loom and the plough. lacquered work and silken wares; 
as we proceed from these outside regions to that central and 
ancient India, so long the field of a peculiar form of civilization, 
we have endless and innumerable treasures of skill and ingenuity, 
of magnificence and beauty. And yet we perceive that, in ad- 
savage hands! So that man is naturally, as I have said, not only 
an artificer, but an artist. Even we, while we look down from 
our lofty summit of civilized and mechanically-aided skill upon 
the infancy of art, may often learn from them lessons of taste. 
So wonderfully and -effectually has Providence planted in man 
the impulse which urges him on to his destination,—his destina- 
tion, which is, to mould the bounty of nature into such forms:as 
that with mere utility 
utility demands, and to show at every step that® 
