st object that attracted their
favourable attention was a trophy of arms, representing the fashions
of the past and the present. On one side were shrapnel and magazine
rifles, on the other flint-locks and the ordnance of an age long gone
by. Next they passed through the Arctic section, wherein they found
dummies drawing a sledge through the canvas snow of a corded-off North
Pole. Then they entered the Picture Galleries called after NELSON and
BENBOW, wherein magnificent paintings by POWELL, full of smoke and
action, served as an appropriate background to the collection of
plate, lent by that gallant sailor-warrior and industrious collector
of well-considered trifles, H.R.H. the Duke of EDINBURGH. They glanced
at the relics of Trafalgar, and then hurried away to the HOWE Gallery,
which, containing as it did specimens of the implements used in
the game of golf, might have as appropriately been christened the
WHEREFORE. Next they skirted a corridor full of plans, and here they
discovered that the Committee of the Exhibition must be wags, every
Jack Tar of them! This corridor was close to the Dining-rooms, and the
Committee (ha! ha! ha!) had called it (he! he! he!) after COOK! (Ho!
ho! ho!) Oh, the wit of it! How the Members of the Executive must have
nudged one another in the ribs as the quaint idea dawned upon them!
And how they must have laughed, too, on the Opening Day, when the
Guard of Honour, presenting arms, and the "Greenwich Boys" singing
"_Ye Mariners of England_," were drenched in the rain! And what a
capital notion it was on that occasion to put "the Representatives of
the Fourth Estate" (no doubt called by _them_, with many a sly twinkle
of the eye, "the Press Gang") into a pen that soon, thanks to a series
of water-spouts, assumed the appearance of a tank!

After leaving the Galleries, the Scribe and the Artist looked up at
the model of Eddystone Lighthouse, and entered a shed declared to be
an "Arctic Scene." Here they were reminded by the introduced ship
of those happy days of their boyhood spent in the toy-shops of the
Lowther Arcade. Next they visited the Panorama of Trafalgar, and
revelled in the carnage of a sea-fight that only required Margate in
the distance to be entirely convincing. They glanced at the arena, and
gazed with awe at the lake which is to be devoted to the manoeuvring
of miniature ironclads. It will be interesting to note whether these
mimic combats will hold their own in the coming sea