l and
hampered position and retain so entirely the sincere respect and esteem
of the British Nation. His labors in promoting this Exhibition began
early and have been arduous, persistent and effective. Any Inauguration
of the Fair in which he did not prominently figure would have done him
injustice. The Queen appears to be personally popular in a more direct
and positive sense. I cannot remember that any one act of her public
life has ever been condemned by the public sentiment of the Country.
Almost every body here appears to esteem it a condescension for her to
open the Exhibition as though it were a Parliament, and with far more of
personal exertion and heartiness on her part. And while I must regard
her vocation as one rather behind the intelligence of this age and
likely to go out of fashion at no distant day, yet I am sure that change
will not come through _her_ fault. I was glad to see her in the pageant
to-day, and hope she enjoyed it while ministering to the enjoyment of
others.

But let us reverse the glass for a moment. The ludicrous, the dissonant,
the incongruous, are not excluded from the Exhibition: they cannot be
excluded from any complete picture of its Opening. The Queen, we will
say, was here by Right Divine, by right of Womanhood, by Universal
Suffrage--any how you please. The ceremonial could not have spared her.
But in inaugurating the first grand cosmopolitan Olympiad of Industry,
ought not Industry to have had some representation, some vital
recognition, in her share of the pageant? If the Queen had come in state
to the Horse-Guards to review the _elite_ of her military forces, no one
would doubt that "the Duke" should figure in the foreground, with a
brilliant staff of Generals and Colonels surrounding him. So, if she
were proceeding to open Parliament her fitting attendants would be
Ministers and Councillors of State. But what have her "Gentleman Usher
of Sword and State," "Lords in Waiting," "Master of the Horse," "Earl
Marshal," "Groom of the Stole," "Master of the Buckhounds," and such
uncouth fossils, to do with a grand Exhibition of the fruits of
Industry? What, in their official capacity, have these and theirs ever
had to do with Industry unless to burden it, or with its Products but
to consume or destroy them? The "Mistress of the Robes" would be in
place if she ever fashioned any robes, even for the Queen; so would the
"Ladies of the Bedchamber" if they did anything with beds except to