field, share with their
more wealthy neighbours the feast of reason and imagination spread out
in the Crystal Palace.

It is strange indeed to see so many nations assembled and represented
on one spot of British ground. In short, it is one great theatre, with
thousands of performers, each playing his own part. England is there,
with her mighty engines toiling and whirring, indefatigable in her
enterprises to shorten labour. India spreads her glitter and paint.
France, refined and fastidious, is there every day, giving the last
touch to her picturesque group; and the other countries, each in their
turn, doing what they can to show off. The distant hum of thousands of
good humoured people, with occasionally a national anthem from some
gigantic organ, together with the noise of the machinery, seems to send
life into every part of the Crystal Palace.

When you get tired of walking, you can sit down and write your
impressions, and there is the "post" to receive your letter, or if it be
Friday or Saturday, you may, if you choose, rest yourself by hearing a
lecture from Professor Anstead; and then before leaving take your last
look, and see something that you have not before seen. Every thing which
is old in cities, new in colonial life, splendid in courts, useful in
industry, beautiful in nature, or ingenious in invention, is there
represented. In one place we have the Bible translated into one hundred
and fifty languages; in another, we have saints and archbishops painted
on glass; in another, old palaces and the altars of a John Knox, a
Baxter, or some other divines of olden time. In the old Temple of
Delphi, we read that every state of the civilized world had its separate
treasury, where Herodotus, born two thousand years before his time, saw
and observed all kinds of prodigies in gold and silver, brass and iron,
and even in linen. The nations all met there on one common ground, and
the peace of the earth was not a little promoted by their common
interest in the sanctity and splendour of that shrine. As long as the
Exhibition lasts, and its memory endures, we hope and trust that it may
shed the same influence. With this hasty scrap, I take leave of the
Great Exhibition.

LETTER XIX.

_Oxford--Martyrs' Monument--Cost of the Burning of the Martyrs--The
Colleges--Dr. Pusey--Energy, the Secret of Success._

OXFORD, _September 10th, 1851_.

I have just finished a short visit to the far famed c