As Thackeray wrote:
A blazing arch of lucid glass
Leaps like a fountain from the grass
To meet the sun.
The Queen took the greatest interest in the work, which she felt was her
husband's. She visited it almost daily, entering into interested
conversation with the manufacturers who had brought their wares for
display. The building was opened on the 1st of May, which the Queen names
in her diary as 'a day which makes my heart swell with pride and glory and
thankfulness.' She dwells lovingly on 'the tremendous cheers, the joy
expressed in every face,' adding, 'We feel happy--so full of thankfulness.
God is indeed our kind and merciful Father.'
After the building had served its purpose, the exhibition building was
removed to Sydenham, a London suburb then almost in the country, and
opened by the Queen, 10th June 1854. Under its new name of the 'Crystal
Palace' it has since been the resort of millions of pleasure-seekers. It
was fondly hoped by its promoters that the Great Exhibition would knit the
nations together in friendship, and 'inaugurate a long reign of peace.'
Yet the year 1851 was not out before Louis Napoleon overthrew the new
French Republic, of which he had been elected president, by a _coup
d'etat_, or 'stroke of policy,' as cruel as it was cowardly. Lord
Palmerston's approval of this outrage, without the knowledge of either the
Queen or Lord John Russell, procured him his dismissal from the cabinet.
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