excitement. It looks as though England had
said to the continental nations—"Pause
awhile to take breath after your barricades,
and the putting to flight of your kings, and
consider whether a good round of industrious
work will not show us all whereabouts we
are; whether it will not give time to reflect
upon the best means of gaining greater
strength by means of the knowledge of
things, and of each other, than can possibly
be acquired by the sword. Who can tell but
the political rights of nations may be more
easily and permanently attained by works of
peace, by studious observation, and by steady
persevering resolution, than by any number
of émeutes, however successful at the time?"
Far from thinking that such a course is likely
to merge energies in abstract speculation, or
that it can supersede the ever-present necessity
for practical action and direct effort, we are of
opinion that such a speech from the mouth of
sturdy Old England is very worthy of careful
consideration, by many of those nations who
have contributed to the present Exhibition of
Industry.

Of these special signs and tokens of the
peaceful progress of the world, how numerous,
how diversified are they!—and—let us
honestly add—how impossible to be thoroughly
singled out and examined amidst the crowding
masses of men and things, raw materials and
manufactured articles, machines and engines
that surround you on every side! Where to
begin, and how to advance with any prospect
of concluding in a reasonable number of
daily visits—is the difficulty. It is not
much diminished by the great official
Catalogue, (to say nothing of the "Synopsis," the
"Popular Guide," &c.,) to which no index is
attached, nor any compass-box—which is almost
equally needed by the persevering navigator
of all the "bays" and other intricacies below
and above. Suppose, therefore, we lay aside
the Catalogue, and turning over Porter's
"Progress of the Nation," adopt his divisions
to guide us in our examination.

Mr. Porter begins with "Population." We
cannot do much with this question, as it is
not at all represented or representable by any
exhibition of this kind. Yet the question is
too important in any consideration of national
progress to be entirely passed over.

It appears that England doubles its
population in fifty-two years; France, in one
hundred and twenty-five years; Russia, in
forty-two years; the United States of America,
in twenty-two and-a-half years; Sweden
doubles its population in one hundred years;
and all Europe in fifty-seven years. What are
we to say of China? We believe the figures
are not known; and, even if they were, the
practice of infanticide would in a great
measure perplex, if not defeat, our judgment and
deductions. Here, however, we find all other
countries doubling their populations in a
comparatively short period of years, and England,
Russia, and the United States of America, in
alarmingly short periods of years the—latter,
more especially.

Are there any corresponding means of
increasing the power of producing food, so as
to meet this constantly progressive demand
for it? The great number of ploughs, and
the exercise of so much thought and mechanical
ingenuity in their varieties of invention,
has been the subject of some good-natured
merriment among other nations; but, when
we look forward twenty-two years, and
behold the American States with double their
present population, the contemplation of these
ploughs and other agricultural implements,
must induce very serious reflections—reflections
which do not end with the thought of
America. It is not our present business to
consider the causes of this extraordinary
difference in the numerical advances of our
species in different countries, curious and
intricately interesting as that examination
would be; but to look at such means of meeting
the increase as now present themselves
before us. In England, we may regard our
machinery and workshops as so many means
of obtaining corn, and other food-productions
of the earth. Our machinery and engines
are our ploughs, by an indirect process, since
we manufacture for those countries whose
agricultural produce is far more abundant
than our own.

This brings us to the second division of
Porter's examination of the "Progress of the
Nation," namely, agricultural and manufacturing
production. Under this head, we
have to point, first, to the great quantity
and variety of raw materials—mining and
mineral products—chemical and pharmaceutical
products—substances used as food—
and vegetable and animal substances used in
manufactures; and secondly, to the extraordinary
display of enginery and machinery.
Under this latter head are to be included
all the improvements in railway travelling,
no less than in farming and in
manufacturing.

As it is impossible in any allowable space to
"go through" the whole Exhibition, or touch
upon a tithe of its Catalogue, let us suggest
as curious subjects of comparison, those two
countries which display (on the whole) the
greatest degree of progress, and the least—say
England and China. England, maintaining
commercial intercourse with the whole world;
China, shutting itself up, as far as possible,
within itself. The true Tory spirit would
have made a China of England, if it could.
Behold its results in the curious little
Exhibition now established close beside the great
one. It is very curious to have the Exhibition
of a people who came to a dead stop, Heaven
knows how many hundred years ago, side by
side with the Exhibition of the moving world.
It points the moral in a surprising manner.

Consider our English raw materials, and
our engines and machinery. We do not pause
to particularise; there they are, and may be