r the erection. The contemplated size
of the "Palace of Industry" was such as to make the undertaking one of
much courage and enterprise on the part of those who made themselves
responsible for its construction: the particulars will be most properly
given under another chapter.

On the 2nd of March, the Lord Mayor of London gave a splendid
entertainment at the Mansion House to the chief magistrates of as
many towns and cities of Great Britain and Ireland as could accept the
invitation. There were present two hundred and two chief magistrates of
English and Welsh cities and boroughs, ten provosts of Scotch burghs,
and five mayors of Irish cities and boroughs. Prince Albert was present
on the occasion. The assembled magistrates received such information as
enabled them in their respective localities to promote the object. The
bringing together so unusual an assembly attracted the notice of the
empire and of the civilized world; the project was in that way greatly
accelerated.

A very large portion of the upper classes were, however, very much
opposed to the whole design. An alarm was spread that men would be
brought together from all nations, revolutionists and anarchists,
especially from France, Italy, and Germany, and that possibly, with the
assistance of these invaders landing upon our shores in the disguise of
promoters of peace and industry, a revolution of the disaffected among
ourselves would be attempted. Many were the dissuasions resorted to for
the purpose of checking the zeal of the committee, and causing the
court to swerve from its patronage of so bold a measure! The court,
the government, the committee, and the leading men in the mercantile
interests of the metropolis and the provinces, pursued the even tenor of
their way, amused at the folly of so many persons in a condition of life
to know better. These fears proved how large a portion of the classes
who occupy the higher positions in society are ignorant of their own
countrymen, and of the world. They could not comprehend the scheme,
sympathise with its objects, or appreciate its benefits. Many men of
strong conservative tendencies who wished to persevere in what they
called the good old ways for ever, declared that the shopkeepers of
London would be ruined, and that western London would be lost in a
deluge of immorality, the result of such an influx of wicked foreigners
from every clime. All these apprehensions were destined to be
dissipated; but it wa