PLEASURES AND PANICS OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE. QUEEN Vic-roue is
to open the Exposition in Hyde Park on Thursday week, in person, but not in the presence of the public ! The first part of the announcement redoubled the pleased expect- ancy, already warmed by the tardy arrival of the sun—long sup- posed, this aarksome April, to have been detained altogether on the Continent. The second part of the announcement has pro- voked disappointment, a vague apprehension of the probable rea- son for it, annoyance at the apprehension, and much discussion in the journals.
If the English public had been timid, indeed it might have been alarmed at the rumours that have been current for several weeks, respecting a disturbance in the Metropolis this summer ; especially since a marked prominence has been given to such rumours in certain quarters. At one of the Police-offices, not long since, a Frenchman told a cock-and-bull story about his being persecuted for not joining in a conspiracy among the foreign refugees, to sur- prise London. The Paris correspondent of the Times has reported, among his small talk, that the refugees have Bent to Paris for a supply, of "men of action" to come over as visitors to the Exposition. The Leading journal affords space to long pa- pers, extracted from the New York Herald, describing the state of England as being most precarious, from political effete- ness, religious discord, and social disorganization among the labouring classes; and announcing an expedition of " com- bustibles " from the United States —Republicans, Commu- nists, Anti-renters, &e.—in concert with "the Reds" of France, with the Chartists, Socialists, Democrats, and so forth, already in
England. Various hints have been given that the 10th of atpril '48 is to be transferred to Midsummer '51, if not to dettroy our institutions, at least to smash the newest of those institutions, 'by assembling in the Park to throw stones at the "aristocrats" in the glass house. The questions in Parliament by Lord Lyndhurst and Mr. Stuart Wortley have elicited the assurance that Minis- ters are vigilant and prepared ; which implies that there is some- thing to be watched and controlled. The Times also persists in the formidable reassurance that the Commander-in-chief is "con- centrating troops round London." Finally, Queen Victoria is to open the Exposition in person, but not in presence of the public. Cumulatively, these portents, of which we have grouped only' the most overt, have created some mystification if not apprehen- sion; but in the main, we believe, the sound instinct of the public has kept tolerably near the common sense view. It is at once seen that men acting with leaders like Mazzini,—who aspires to stand on an equal pedestal with Rienzi, friend of the immortal Petrarch,—could not engage in anything so idle and low-minded as a London riot. A Frenchman like Louis Blanc, Republican and Socialist as he is, must be too good an historian to fall into such a base trap of political ignorance. Arnold Huge and Gottfried Kin- kel are not men of a lower stamp. The Hungarians are not Re- publicans at all, either in opinions, sympathies, or conduct. Ledru- Itollin, indeed, has filled two octavo volumes with a tirade about this country, unbroken and extravagant; but surely even his friends would know better than to let him revenge himself for the ridicule cast on his Decline and Fall of England by trying to realize it
The public has jumped to these conclusions concerning the re- volutionists as a body. But the public knows also, as well as the Police, that there are men in London who speak very broken Eng- lish, whose sport it has been to "seek the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth" together with something more substantial, who are very short of plunder just now, and who would not at all dislike to have the- Duke of Wellington and Colonel Sibthorp pre- occupied in defending the Crystal Palace, while two ends of the Strand or Cheapside should be blocked up, that they might enjoy but one short hour in ransacking the portable commodities of the shops most worth visiting. There is therefore a nucleus of sound. reason for taking thoroughly, efficient military and police precau- tions, without paying the slightest attention to the gobemoueherie of Parisian correspondence, even when magnified to Transatlantic proportions. These considerations, indeed, do not altogether dispose of the fact, that although the Queen should not be advised /to open the Exposition with a manner of mistrust, yet an oidi- nary public opening might be excessively inconvenient. The announcement, however, is manifestly immature and imperfect, and it will probably be amended ; as more than one journal has presumed. Without excluding the public, it would be quite possible to take ample precautions for securing the order not only so necessary to the comfort of the chief actor in the ceremony, but- so suitable to the occasion. It has been suggested that the exhi- bitors who are in London ought to be invited to meet Queen Vic- toria and Prince Albert—the Sovereign of the country and the chief of the Commission—a most proper suggestion : but if the exhibitors were marshalled in preoccupancy of the ground, if due means were taken to maintain order within and around the build- ing, there needs be no question of "excluding the public." If the Leading Journal has been engaged in "preparing the public mind" for any such inopportune over-caution, it will be quite proper to revise the intent, and to show, as the crowning glory of the peace- ful rivalry, Queen Victoria safe in the midst of the flower of her people.
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