"I made my way into the building; a most gorgeous sight; vast;
graceful; beyond the dreams of the Arabian romances. I cannot think
that the Caesars ever exhibited a more splendid spectacle. I was
quite dazzled, and I felt as I did on entering St Peter's. I wandered
about, and elbowed my way through the crowd which filled the nave,
admiring the general effect, but not attending much to details."

And again on the last day he wrote: "Alas! alas! it was a glorious
sight; and it is associated in my mind with all whom I love most.
I am glad that the building is to be removed. I have no wish to see
the corpse when the life has departed."

The Royal Party were received with acclamation all along the route.
"It was a complete and beautiful triumph,--a glorious and touching
sight, one which I shall ever be proud of for my beloved Albert and
my country," wrote the Queen. Six million people visited the Great
Fair during the time it remained open.

In one respect, however, it could scarcely be considered a triumph
for this country. It was still an ugly, and in some respects a vulgar,
age. The invention of machinery had done little or nothing to raise
the level of the public taste for what was appropriate and beautiful
in design. That an article cost a large sum of money to manufacture
and to purchase seemed sufficient to satisfy the untrained mind.

Generally speaking, the taste of the producers was uneducated and
much inferior to that of the French. Most of the designs in carpets,
hangings, pottery, and silks were merely copies, and were often
extremely ugly. England, at this time the first among the Industrial
Nations, had utterly failed to hold her own in the Arts.

Machinery had taken the place of handwork, and with the death of the
latter art and industry had ceased to have any relation. Public taste
in architecture was equally bad. A 'revival' of the art of the Middle
Ages resulted only in a host of poor imitations. "Thirty or forty
years ago, if you entered a cathedral in France or England, you could
say at once, 'These arches were built in the age of the
Conqueror--that capital belonged to the earlier Henrys.' . . . Now
all this is changed. You enter a cathedral, and admire some iron work
so rude you are sure it must be old, but which your guide informs
you has just been put up by Smith of Coventry. You see . . . some
painted glass so badly drawn and so crudely coloured it must be
old--Jones of Newcastle."[9]

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