VISITS TO THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF INDUSTRY.

Tars time, we will enter the building by the Eastern approach, which is reserved exclusively for foot-passengers.

You are pleased to note how much more orderly and beautiful are the extensive compartments here allotted to American industry and art ;

though, on examination, you still find cause to "guess" that our cousins

have " calculated " somewhat in their "whip-all-creation" style, the quantity of space which they could well and creditably occupy. An

American friend, however, encourages us to hope that there is a "con- siderable spec more of notions " yet coming over, for display in their compartment. Almost as you enter, you discover an addition to the in- teresting American objects : a model, done to scale, by Mr. Catlin, the Indian traveller, of the Niagara Falls ; which gives you at once the true scale of this ocean cascade, by combining it with the landscape of the hills and forests around. The English observer, however, wishes for fuller topographical explanations than are vouchsafed. On the Northern side of the American department, is a court full of machinery, containing instruments whose theoretical ingenuity and practical finish of work- manship place American inventors and artisans on a par with our own in some particular divisions.

Passing up the Foreign nave till you come to France, you are astonish- ed every step at the progress made during the past week in completing exhibitional arrangements ; if you had come every day you would have been as often struck with the advance : it is indeed by this movement onwardsthat you now feel how little of the Exhibition was really completed when it was inaugurated. Even now there is a vast deal to be done.

On the ground floor, France has, in evident competition with Austria, fitted up a salon with choicest specimens of her furnishing art. Above are the tapestries of Gobelin, below the rich carpeting of Aubusson and Beauvais ; it presents a superb assortment of Sevres porcelain ; and is embellished with marble sculptures and a profusion of smaller fine-art decorations; while around are ranged some light but brilliant couches or

chairs, bedight with gilding, enamelling, and sumptuous embroidery. You note also a gigantie buffet of oak, nearly thirty feet high—by far

the largest in the Exhibition : its massive entablature is supported by four human figures as large as life, " symbolizing the four quarters of the world." On the front of some of the French bays are a variety of beauti- ful philosophical instruments—astronomical and chemical : and if you step into one of the Northern bays, you may see a French lady busy with en instrument which geometrically diminishes a drawing sheis tracing

with her pencil: the instrument copies with faithful exactness the angu- lar tracery of florid Gothic architecture, the dotted tints of a finely-toned lithograph, or the microscopic lines and shadowings of a daguerreotyped moss.

Passing beyond France, you enter the compartments of Tunis and China on your left, the very next to the transept. In Tunis is a bazaar

fitted out with all the native articles of dress, from the plain cottons which constitute the turban and the flowing body garments of the simple Bedouin, to the embroidered silks and velvets, almost encased with gold and precious stones, which cover the chiefs of tribes and the rulers of kingdoms on the Mediterranean shores of Africa. Such a collection of

Chinese art certainly never was before seen out of the flowery land : the bowls, and greater specimens of china, with patterns grotesque yet not without a certain classic abstraction of Chinese grace and beauty, and colours blended with a skill and artistic feeling that might instruct as well as astonish us Europeans ; the ivory balls, one within another to the fiftieth generation—the magic of our youth and the amazement of our grown understandings ; and the landscapes in rare woods and ivory, carved with a minute fidelity that only undeceives you by the colour of the material.

In the transept, the canopy which overhung the Royal group on the opening-day is removed : if you had visited from day to day, you would note another alteration, with some regret. The raised dais was taken possession of by the public from the second day of the Exhibition : its..

highest tier gave a good point of view to range the eye afar for approach- ing friends; and its successive steps gave bevies of beauties their best

advantage for an irregular display a. la Watteau. The groups we have seen reclining in every variety of pose on those steps can no longer dis- pose themselves picturesquely ; the dais is removed ; and we may now aee.nothing but rows of sixes, eights, and tens, like girls at school sitting back to back on their forms, or elsewhere in short straight parterres, like the gilliflowers and mignionette which you place in boxes at your street-windows.

On the English or Western side of the transept, you see fresh evidences of the growth of the Exhibition : within a few days the East India Com-

pany has added, in a great case—the riches of which are jealously guarded by plate glass and brazen rails—a collection of magnificent Mogul jewel- lery, personal habiliments, and horse trappings. The Boh-i-noor here has its glories emulated on a diminished scale, by a diamond larger than

the red diamond on a playing-card, and called "the Sea of light." The extent and value of the collection of the East India Company are not ge- nerally known : in some future number we will give indications of its extent, and point out features of its interest that do not lie on the surface. In the English nave the signs of progress are not so marked : yet here, day by day, you note additions. For instance, the wonderfully complete series of flax-machinery, covering some half an acre of ground by itself, is not yet put in moving order; the workmen are still busy with their thousands of spindles, screws, and nuts : when it is set in motion, you will have a flax-factory bodily transported from Belfast to the Exhibition for work under your own studying eye. To the locomotive engine de- partment the Great Western Railway Company have just sent a mam- moth engine, which with its tender weighs nearly fifty-three tons—about three times the weight of ordinary passenger-engines it is able to draw about a thousand passengers at an average speed of a mile a minute, with occasional friskings at a considerably higher velocity.,—the pace of a car- rier-pigeon through the air being about one mile a minute, or rather less. Such a monster must digest a coal stratum at a meal, and breathe forth a mineful of steam and carbonic acid gas at every snort.

Before ascending for the first time into the galleries, we must return to the French department, and look at their display of goldsmith's and sil- versmith's art : for up-stairs is the corresponding display of our English jewellers.

There is one thing in the French collection which has no sort of paral- lel in any other national display. It is a cabinet-table of silver inlaid with gold, and richly enamelled. The general design is antique, and somewhat formal, befitting the purity of the metallic tints : but the de- tailed ornamentation is in modern taste. A delicate tracery of inlaid work gives a general harmonious tone, which contrasts with and adds to the brilliancy of the crystal mirror, and of the silver where it appears in its virgin surface ; while it throws up the metallic primary colours of the enamel work with the splendour of precious stones. The piece is inde- scribably beautiful as a work of art ; but to us Northern it has some- -what an air of congealed comfort and taste. Crystal splendours are best appreciated in the Tropics, and by those Sultans who refuse to believe in ice. When you have admired this principal work, you will have admired almost the only thing that decidedly eclipses our own work in the pre- cious metals. Much of the French work in silver shows a fine adapta- tion of beautiful vegetable forms in the making of fruit-baskets, and pieces of a similar character : but you do not see so great a range of conception beyond this field as you expected. Pass now across the transept into the British nave, and seek, in the Southern gallery, the exhibition of work made by the English workers in silver and gold. There is a goodly show : you are at once struck with the greater generality of smooth surfaces, and at first sight you think you note a homeliness of design; but you will find specimens of the most elaborate finish, and rich detailed ornament ; and you will presently think that what seemed plainness was due to greater breadth and simpli- city of design. Some of the compositions have the large free spirit of statuary moulding ; and if there is less taste shown in adapting the beau- ties of vegetable nature, there is greater skill in the illustration of the work by the history or moral of animal life. Upon the whole, you are surprised that in this department of art our Parisian friends are so little our superiors.

Opposite or nearly opposite to the work in precious metals, is the Eng- lish display of the various china and porcelain wares—in the Northern Gallery from the transept-comer both along the transept and for some distance along the nave. The display here made is one of the most cha- racteristic parts of our national contribution. It is altogether above comparison with that made by any of our foreign rivals—despite the spe- cialities which France, Saxony, and Holland, can contribute in some particular departments of the manufacture.

We mentioned that Belgium and the Zollverein have exhibited a re- markable display of cutlery : as an offset, we ourselves make a display in the department of iron castings, which encourages strong hopes that Ber- lin will not remain unrivalled in that department : the gates of the Coal- brook Dale Company in the transept are equally beautiful in their general design and exquisite in the sharp delicacy of their castings.

One final glance into another department, the comparative national ex- cellency of which, English and French, cannot yet be fully estimated—that of the laces and silks. The differences of the two are only appreciable by the cultivated eye : in the English you see a wonderful variety of design, embracing elaborate geometrical combinations, and beautiful studies from nature : the different French sorts have their counterparts in various Eng- lish sorts, and the differences of merit appear to be in degree rather than in species : you see a more delicate harmony of composition in the French, as you see in the Indian shawls that higher species of harmony in colours which they excel in; but in the English productions you recognize a freshness and individuality of beauty which impress you with the belief that it is an English art whose growth you are watching, and that nature, as you see it in this your own country, is supplying the types. However, we may yet be further excelled in these departments, for the French show is not nearly completed. The preparations for a display of the silks and velvets from Lyons are on a gigantic scale, and in this division we may expect to be overmatched.

The Queen and Prince Albert, sometimes with two of their children only, at other times with some of their foreign guests also, visited the Exhibition last Saturday, and nearly every day in this week ; generally tiocsing an early hour or two in the morning, between nine and eleven.

The following table of the receipts at the doors up to Monday last has been published.

May 2d, at P., f.560 0 0 May 3d, at 1/. • 482 0 0

May 5th, at 58 1362 10 0 May 6th, at 58 1458 10 0 May 7th, at 58 1790 15 0 May 8th, at 58 2018 0 0 May 9th, at 58 1824 10 0 May 10th, at 5s. 1843 15 0 May 12th, at 58. 1597 10 0

Total £12,93710 0 The influx was great again on Tuesday, the receipts for the

entrances being 2159/. ; not so great on Wednesday, owing to a dull morn- ing ; but on Thursday it rose higher than ever, and the receipts at the five-shilling fee were 24301. The sale of season-tickets also increases ; nearly a thousand pounds' worth were sold on Thursday. The amount yesterday was the largest that has yet been received, and the visitors were the most numerous. Of the five-shilling fees 25771. 108. were taken ; and for additional season-tickets 16001. was received. The crowd is supposed to have at one time numbered forty thousand persons.

Professor Cowper gave his first lecture to the students of King's Col- lege, within the building, on Thursday.

The Corporation of London has resolved to give an entertainment— perhaps a aeries—to the distinguished foreigners who visit London on occasion of the Exhibition ; and the Clothworkers Company, and other guilehr, will fellow the example.