who now addresses you. I believe, however, that it is the very feeling which we all entertain of the deep importance of this great national undertaking, which has led us to the conclusion that, at this stage of the proceedings, the ceremony of inauguration would be most fitly entrusted to the official organ of the Company. Recollecting as we all do that the parent idea which we are now labouring to carry out in new and untried developments, originated with the meritorious Prince whose name is so deservedly and intimately associated with the glories of the Great Exhibition-recollecting, also, that the fairy structure which is about to rise like a phoenix from its ashes, was so often honoured by the presence of our gracious Sovereign-I confess we feel very strongly that any patronage short of the very highest would be unworthy of the objects at which we aim, and of the enterprise which we have undertaken. On all occasions when the interests of art and science are concerned, and above all when the moral and intellectual improvement of the mass of the population are concerned, the country has never lacked-I will not say the patronage, but that which is worth all the patronage in the world-the enlightened action and affectionate solicitude of our Sovereign Lady the Queen and her illustrious consort. At the same time, every one must feel that in order to command such patronage, we must show that we deserve it; and that until we have fully emerged from the chrysolite state of a commercial company, and given actual pledges, not only of our wish, but of our power, to carry out the high and noble objects by which we profess to be animated, it would be premature and disrespectful to venture to solicit such patronage, as we are ambitious enough to say that we hope at some future, and not very distant, day to obtain. In the mean time it only remains that we, the plain men of the people, should do our work quietly, effectively, without parade or ostentation; and truly when we consider the work which has this day been formally commenced, it is no light enterprise which lies before us. Former ages have raised palaces enough, and many of them of surpassing magnificence. We have all read of the hanging gardens of Babylon, the colossal palace temples of Egypt, and the gorgeous structures of Nineveh and Persepolis. Many of us have seen the scattered fragments of Nero's Golden Palace on the Palatine Hill, and the vast ruins which still speak so magnificently of the grandeur of Imperial Rome. But what were all these palaces, and how were they constructed? They were raised by the spoils of captive nations, and the forced labour of myriads of slaves, to gratify the caprice or vanity of some solitary despot. To our own age has been reserved the privilege of raising a palace for the people. Yes, the structure of which the first column has just raised its head into the air, is emphatically and distinctly the possession of the British people, and it is the production of their own unaided and independent enterprise. On us, to whom circumstances have entrusted the direction of this great popular undertaking, devolves the duty of seeing that it is carried out in a

manner worthy of the public spirit of the age in which we live, and of the magnitude of our high mission. I assure you we all feel very deeply the responsibility of our position; and although, for the reasons to which I have already adverted, we have judged if premature and unseemly to make any formal religious ceremonial on the present occasion, we feel not the less profoundly that in carrying out this undertaking, as we hope to do to a successful issue, we are but acting as the instruments of that beneficent and over-ruling Providence which is guiding our great British race along the paths of peaceful progress. I trust that the assurance that we are all deeply and intimately impressed with what I may almost venture to call a religious policy of our duties and responsibilities, will be accepted as a guarantee that to the best of our judgment and ability this great undertaking shall be conducted in a proper spirit and with a view to noble and elevating objects. As regards the material portions of the enterprise, words are but feeble instruments in which to paint the triumphs of art and the beauties of nature. It is better to ask you to look around you and say for yourselves whether the site is worthy of the People's Palace and the People's Park. Figure to yourselves the surrounding area which is now defined by a circle of beauty, converted into a crystal dome, and raised aloft under the blue vault of heaven, and you will form some indistinct image of the new central transept as it exists in the genius of a Paxton, and as it will shortly exist as a tangible reality for the wonder and admiration of millions. But I will not detain you longer by attempting to describe that which no words can adequately represent, and I will conclude by the expression of another sentiment to which I am sure you will heartily respond. In looking so peculiarly and emphatically on the fact that this is to be the palace of the people, the time was when I should have risked calling forth some antagonistic feeling, as if the cause of the people were placed in invidious contradistinction to that of the Crown and the aristocracy. Thank Heaven! the time when such distinctions can be drawn in England has disappeared. It is the grand characteristic of the reign of our present gracious Sovereign to have witnessed the most rapid progress in the material, moral, and intellectual improvement of the mass of the population; and, as a consequence, a corresponding increase in their social importance and political power, not only without any outbreak of democratic passions, but, on the contrary, with an equally marked increase in the attachment of those very classes to the institutions of their country and to the person of their Sovereign. The feeling of loyalty, which had dwindled into a faint dilettante speculation or vague historical reminiscence, has in our days been most happily and wonderfully revived, and exists now as a general glow, pervading all classes of society and binding the highest and lowest in the land together by one common and ennobling tie of reasonable and intelligent, yet devoted and affectionate veneration for the character and person of our beloved Queen and her illustrious consort and family. Towards

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the creation of this happy feeling I believe no incident has contributed in a more marked degree than the Great Exhibition of 1851. None of us will ever forget to whose comprehensive and philosophic mind we are indebted for the original idea of that transcendant Exhibition, and to whose courage, resolution, and business aptitude, we owe the prosecution of that idea to a successful conclusion amidst all manner of doubts and difficulties. Nor shall we hastily forget the affable and condescending manner in which our gracious Queen, surrounded by her family, mixed there day after day in free and unreserved intercourse with her subjects, setting an example by which all from high to low might profit, of enlightened interest in worthy objects, and unaffected sympathy with the tastes and enjoyments of her people. With these recollections fresh in our minds, I must confess it has been an inspiriting idea with us that in perpetuating an enduring memorial of that great and glorious Exhibition, and in expanding the noble and philanthropic idea of Prince Albert into fresh developments, we should be at the same time rearing a monument, perhaps not altogether inappropriate or unworthy of the reign under which we have the happy privilege to live. I feel that you all respond to this sentiment, and that in calling on you now to join with me in celebrating the act of laying the foundation-stone of the People's Palace, I cannot suggest a better mode of expressing our common feeling than by asking you to unite in one loud and hearty acclamation of 'God save the People's Queen!""

The ceremony of raising the first column having been thus brought to a completion, the visitors proceeded to share the hospitality of the contractors, Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., who had provided a sumptuous entertainment beneath a large marquee on the summit of the hill. There, in eloquent addresses, many and varied toasts were proposed, and that of "Prosperity to the People's Palace!" was heartily and cordially drunk in flowing goblets of the best and most delicious wines which the extensive stores of Mr. Higginbotham could furnish.

PROGRESS OF THE WORKS.

The works connected with the erection of the building, and laying out the grounds of the Park under the direction of Sir Joseph Paxton, were now pushed forward with as much rapidity as possible; indeed it was expected that they would have been so far advanced as to have enabled the Directors to have opened the Crystal Palace in the month of May, 1853. A continuous succession of rain and unfavourable weather, however, retarded the operations of the contractors. "Still, however," said a writer in the Times, humorously describing the progress of the work under these difficulties, “amid a chaos of rain and mud, blown upon by all the winds of heaven, there is slowly rising up a fabric,

which only asks a short respite from the fury of the elements, to be able to defy them for good, but which, very naturally it may be said, does not obtain that brief truce. All the minor miseries inflicted by rain and wind on the whole population of London, are a trifle to those which tax the ingenuity, perseverance, and hardihood of the thoroughly British band of men now engaged at the highest point of the Surrey Hills in rearing the grandest edifice of its kind—we had almost said of any kind—in the world. The centre slope of a lofty hill is being formed and fashioned, excavated, embanked, terraced, walled, stepped, and balustraded into a paradise of gardening far surpassing the architectural grandeur of Versailles, and combining with them the peculiar features of English landscape gardening. Thus far the whole fairy creation, like the monsters said to be engendered by the sun on the banks of the Nile, is struggling to extricate its limbs from elemental mud. Everywhere it is mud-mud, excepting where the mountain of granite has already been reared, a graceful slope already turfed, or a long train of planks bends under processions of wheelbarrows. The uniform of the place, from the labourer floundering at the bottom of a huge tank, to the engineer spanning the sky with an arch of glass, under which the monument of London might stand, with some feet to spare, consists of trousers turned up to the knees, and sleeves to the elbows. Were it not that the wind is alternately sou'-wester and nor'-wester of the most furious description, this adaptation of the dress to the work to be done would doubtless proceed further; but flesh and blood require comfortable clothing at the top of Penge Hill-the southern boundary, as everybody knows, of our London horizon. The sums total of work and material are incredible; more granite than ever was brought into London before, more ironwork than can be produced or delivered, the earthwork of a railway, besides three actual railways from the metropolis to be constructed; miles of public road to be diverted, fountains throwing up two thousand gallons a second, and every kind of poetical extravagance in iron and in water, with a bit of the antediluvian world, with gigantic saurians and plants to the life size-all run up into a bill which it is frightful to think of."

To add to the misfortunes of wind and weather, an unfortunate catastrophe, attended with the loss of fifteen lives, and the risk of destruction to a great part of the building, occurred in the month of September, in consequence of the falling of the scaffolding used in the erection of the great central transept. The erection of a new scaffolding, raised from the ground instead of being constructed upon the same suspension principle as that upon which the previous one was raised, caused a further delay of more than three months in the completion of the works connected with the building.

A TERRIFIC BANQUET IN AN IGUANODON.

At the lower end of the park, in a rude and temporary wooden building, almost inaccessible for deep ruts and acres of swamp and mud-a miniature Serbonian bog-Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins was steadily engaged in the creation or restoration of a series of now extinct animals, which it would appear were destined to roam, as in their native state, through the deep Penge morasses, or bury themselves in the deep excavations of the park. By the close of the last year, Mr. Hawkins had so far succeeded with the formation of some of the members of his monster family, as to be in a position to give effect to a design which he had for some time previously contemplated, of giving a dinner to the Directors and some of his friends within the carcass of one of his antediluvian monsters. The last day of the old year (1853) was selected. Accordingly Professors Owen and Forbes, Mr. Gould, Mr. Francis Fuller, Mr. Belshaw, Mr. Ingram, and a number of other gentlemen, assembled, to do honour to the unique and novel entertainment. Twenty-one of the guests were accommodated with seats ranged on each side of the table, within the sides of the iguanodon. Professor Owen, one of the most eminent geologists of the day, occupied a seat at the head of the table, and within the skull of the monster. Mr. Francis Fuller, the Managing Director, and Professor Forbes, were seated on commodious benches placed in the rear of the beast. An awning of pink and white drapery was raised above the novel banqueting-hall, and small banners bearing the names of Conybeare, Buckland, Forbes, Owen, Mantell, and other well-known geologists, gave character and interest to the scene. When the more substantial viands were disposed of, Professor Owen proposed that the company should drink in silence "The memory of Mantell, the discoverer of the iguanodon," the monster in whose bowels they had just dined. The Professor paid an eloquent tribute to the value of the labours in the wide field of geology and paleontology of such men as Cuvier, Hunter, and Conybeare. He told the company how the researches of Cuvier in comparative anatomy had provided the means of reconstructing an extinct animal almost from a single fossil-bone, for so perfect was the individuality of each species of animals, and so peculiarly adapted was the construction of their parts, to the purposes for which they were destined, that a skilful observer could tell, with the most perfect accuracy, to what species of animal any particular bone belonged. The researches of Hunter had confirmed the theories of Cuvier, and from a single bone, or a single tooth, Conybeare, Buckland, and others, had succeeded in building up an entire animal. The beast in which he was then speaking, whose original had once roamed through the vast forests of Sussex, had perished there by some great convulsion of nature; a single bone was discovered a few years since by Mantell, and from that fossil-limb the iguanodon had been constructed.