50 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
an average of 43,000 daily. Its success was pheno¬ 
menal also from a financial point of view, as after all 
expenses were deducted there was a surplus of £ 150,000, 
with which the land from the Park to South Kensington 
was purchased, on which the Albert Hall and museums 
have been built. 
It seems to have been the complete originality of 
the whole structure that captivated all beholders. In 
his memoirs the eighth Duke of Argyll refers to the 
opening as the most beautiful spectacle he had ever 
seen. “ Merely,” he writes, “ as a spectacle of joy and 
of supreme beauty, the opening of the Great Exhibition 
of 1851 stands in my memory as a thing unapproachable 
and alone. This supreme beauty was mainly in the 
building, not in its contents, nor even in the brilliant 
and happy throng that filled it. The sight was a new 
sensation, as if Fancy had been suddenly unveiled. 
Nothing like it had ever been seen before—its light¬ 
someness, its loftiness, its interminable vistas, its aisles 
and domes of shining and brilliant colouring.” 
It was with the recollection of this world-famous 
Exhibition fresh in men’s minds that the site for the 
Albert Memorial was chosen. The idea conceived by 
Sir Gilbert Scott was the reproduction on a large scale 
of a mediaeval shrine or reliquary. When it was erected 
an alteration was made in some of the avenues in Ken¬ 
sington Gardens, so as to bring one into line with the 
Memorial. A fresh avenue of elms and planes straight 
to the monument was planted, which joined into the 
original one, and a few trees were dotted about to break 
the old line. As first planned, the avenue must have 
commanded a view of Paddington Church steeple in 
the vista. 
