AS INSTRUMENTS OP EDUCATION. 21 



pression of tte shape and magnitude of those now extinct forms of life. 

 The Palace at Sydenham is a perpetuation of the Universal Exhibition 

 Building of 1871, only greatly extended and enlarged. 



The felt utility of the great temporary assemblages of objects at 

 international and universal exhibitions, as instruments of education, 

 has been a stimulus to the improvement of museums, and has led to 

 the establishment on a large scale of permanent exhibitions scientifically 

 arranged. 



Adjoining the Horticultural Gardens at Kensington there have just 

 been erected magnificent permanent exhibition buildings, 550 feet in 

 length ; and close by them is to be seen the beautiful Rotunda or 

 Colosseum, entitled the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences. It is 

 elliptical in form, its axes being 219 and 185 feet. A beautiful external 

 feature of the building is a band or frieze six feet six inches in length 

 carried round its whole circuit, 794 feet, towards the top, crowded with 

 groups emblematic of the arts and sciences and industries, executed 

 partially in colours in terra-cotta. The subjects are agriculture, astro- 

 nomy, geology, workers in wood, and stone, and iron, music, poetry, 

 construction, sculpture, and applied mechanics. 



This vast elliptical building, with a spherical roof of glass, has not 

 yet been opened : it has been built by the commissioners of the Exhi- 

 bition of 1851, out of a portion of the proceeds of that exhibition. It 

 will assuredly be one of the most striking architectural objects in 

 London, and will be one more of the scientific institutions containing 

 collections, which the studious visitor from Canada will earnestly desire 

 to examine. 



Altogether it will be seen that at the present time there are very 

 many appliances by means of which science in all its branches, especi- 

 ally natural science, can be thoroughly illustrated and made intelligible 

 and interesting to every inquiring mind. If the communities of 

 English-speaking countries do not steadily advance in their acquaint- 

 ance with the facts and laws exhibited in Natural Science, it will be very 

 surprising. Still no doubt patience will be required. Where the 

 so-called masses have been for centuries neglected, as, for example, in 

 Southern Britain, where, astounding to narrate, a comprehensive scheme 

 for elementary popular education did not exist until last year, severa' 

 decades must pass before the laws, the beneficent laws of Nature are 

 known and consciously obeyed among the classes at the base of the social 

 fabric. It will be a happy state of things when throughout a community 



