IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND IN THE
AUTUMN OF 1851.1

FROM THE LETTERS AND MEMORANDA OF
FREDERIKA BREMER.

As I saw the impossibility of my being able, during this week, with any degree of completeness, to make myself acquainted with the Exhibition in its separate parts, I satisfied myself with endeavouring to comprehend its great characteristic features, and the peculiarities in the life and manufactures of the various nations. I wandered therefore hour by hour, from the lands of the west to those of the east, and from the north to the south, from the Polar regions to the Equator, from North America to China, from Sweden to Russia, from Turkey to France, from Germany to England, and so on, thus allowing the force of contrast and the things themselves to operate upon my mind as they would.

The first impression in this manner made upon me, and which further acquaintance only the more increased, was:

should be gathered in a great palace there, which had been built for them, transparent, open to all the rays of light a palace of clear glass, erected in a garden. Here should the people from all the ends of the earth meet in a fraternal circle, become acquainted with each other's manners and manufactures, arts and ability. Here should their productions be viewed, their genius and art be compared and judged; there should human knowledge in this union comprehend itself, prove its work and say: "See! thus far have we advanced hitherto!" And after that a new career should begin, with new inspirations, and higher views. This should thus become a new beginning. Such was the design; and the call went forth from the noble Prince who felt himself called upon to stand at the head of this great undertaking.

And the people came from all the ends of the earth. It was a pleasure to see how joyfully and willingly they came, when they rightly understood the invitation. It was a pleasure and a gladness to see them assembled in the Crystal Palace, exhibiting what they had done with the riches of the earth-each in his place and according to his own way-to see their productions spread out here at the World's Fair!

That the civilized nations, they who dwelt nearest

How good mother earth is, after all, to every one of her children! From north to south, from east to west, everywhere upon the habitable earth, has she, in metals, in green plants and trees, in noble fruits, into the magical circle of the Island's Queen, should useful animals, in the whole wealth of nature's king- come with their goods and their treasures was to be doms, given to man a rich and, upon the whole, expected; that was quite natural. They anticipated a wonderfully equal measure. Merely in the higher therefrom their own certain gain. But that also the polar circle, in the realms of eternal frost, and beneath people who lay most remote, who dwelt, so to say, in the equator, in those of eternal heat, seems her kind- the corners of the earth, that they also should ness, or more properly speaking, her capability, to come, with the little they had to bring, that was have a limit for to her children there, the step- astonishing and delightful! It showed that the human children of nature, she still gives good things and glad- families in this great garden of the earth, spite of ness in sufficient abundance for them, who know distance, spite of difference in temperament and in nothing better. colour, had nevertheless begun to acknowledge each other as brethren, as children of the same heavenly Father, and the same earthly mother.

:

The second thought which struck me was, the use which mankind now makes of the gifts of the earth; "Replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth and behold I have given thee every herb bearing seed, and every tree!"

Between this beginning in the beginning of time, and this present moment of time, many thousand years later, in this year which we call 1851, and its so-called World's Fair, there was a difference, and yet -a similarity.

For then in the beginning, in that first year of the world, No. 1, the capital was given to work with, the capital which was placed in the stewardship of man.

And now, in 1851 had a message gone forth through one of God's stewards, and an invitation to all people on the face of the earth, to come and show what they had done with the capital which they had received in the beginning. They should come-each with his portion, his pound-and show the use they had made of it.

They should come and assemble in an island in the world's sea, over which a young Queen reigned, and (1) Continued from p. 136.

VOL. XV.

And if the Esquimaux indicated their presence in this great assembly of the nations, merely by some rough hewn timber, it was evident they were as yet too much of Esquimaux-or rather, not suffici ently so, in the higher sense; and showed in that which was rare to them, the wood and the artistic skill, something more valuable than what they might have exhibited from the great treasure-chamber which God gave them: that great sea with the fish, and the mighty whale that goes therein. With better comprehension had the Ashantees, from the Gold Coast of Africa, sent cloth which they had woven of grass and cotton. And the deadly enemy of the White man from the Cape had, symbolically enough, sent his bow and his arrows. Many a wild race from Asia and Africa sent their cloth, musical instruments, ornaments, weapons, all made from the vegetable kingdom. The North American Indian had sent his ornamental light canoe, made from a hollow tree-trunk; the naturalized Negroes from tropical America their utensils and their drums made from. the Calabash, their ornamentally woven baskets; and most beautiful of all these simple creations, were those which had been

sent from the islands of the South Sea, which Queen | markable is it that the extremest west, North America Pomare, the Queen of the Society Isles, had sent, mats now in California, comes face to face, and touching of Pandanus, small crowns of Tacca, and garments upon this extremest east, and that the Pacific Ocean woven from the fibre of the bread-fruit tree. seems calculated to unite them, as far at least as such dis-opposites can unite! Their tea is still prepared in the same way; their porcelain is equally fine and has the same form, and the painting upon it is equally without perspective; their Chinese figures are alike uncouth at this very day as they were six hundred years ago. Nevertheless, one must confess that among these later ones may be seen some countenances with more physiognomy in them, more human soul than we have been accustomed to see in Chinese portraiture of the human form. This Celestial Empire, to judge by its artistic skill and its immovability, in contrast with the people of the Western continent, is as a castle of crystal to a living growing tree, as a chrysalis to a butterfly.

In contemplating the productions of these similar people, it was wonderful to see how the people of kindred races had applied the gifts of the earth to similar uses. The Christian people, of the so-called Circassian descent, had everywhere on the face of the earth, in Asia as well as in America, in Siberia and Hindostan, in Canada and Chili, in Egypt and at the Cape, in Iceland and Australia, in Sweden and in Italy, developed the same artistic skill, and for the same objects. When they came together here, the various peoples, but of the same race, from their different places, and exhibited the raw materials which nature had given them in metals, plants, etc., and the uses to which they had converted them, they were found to be wonderfully similar! The same in mechanical inventions and the fine arts. It was observed with some surprise that Cairo, Constantinople, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, New York, had none of them anything essentially new to teach each other, or to learn the one from the other, either in manufactures or art. The development of the race had, at these widely different points of the earth, progressed in the same proportion and simultaneously, although the differences in genius and character were unmistakable. But in no instance had any one people outgone others in anything new.

This involuntarily leads to the thought of a development in the human race based upon profounder laws, more profound natural powers than the empirical reality, than that which is produced by means of merely outward circumstances, however much these may contribute to it.

In the same way it was observable that the so-called wild races of the earth bore the same relative resemblance to each other. The Indian and the Negro, the Samoyed and the Caribee have probably the same turn of mind, the same object in life, the same method of constructing their dwellings, their weapons, their garments, of holding their feasts, and making their ornaments. In mechanism and art they give themselves as little trouble as possible; that which comes nearest to hand in the vegetable or animal kingdom, furnishes them with clothing, dwellings and ornament; they wish only to eat, sleep, and amuse themselves; they take life easily, that is plain. Their ideas of life are few, and not elevated. They appear always to have been the same, with the exception of occasional individuals who stand as the geniuses of the race, but who hitherto have not been able to inspire the race. They pass through these dark races as prophets indicative of a possibly approaching and higher transformation. These races appear here like stray children in the family of the earth.

The Chinese stand among the people of the earth, precisely as they stood several hundred years ago. They represent the ultra-conservative element in the assembly of the earth's people: the extremest east. Re

Another comparison which involuntarily presented itself to the spectator of the mechanical Exhibition, was, the relation betwixt the first raw materials given by nature, and their change in the hands of man, or rather through human art and knowledge. What a distance, for example, and what a development between the first formation of glass, as an accidental fusion of sand and ashes, which some thousands of years ago led some Phoenician merchants by the river Belus, to the discovery; what a distance between this bit of glass, melted together under the boiling pot in the sand of the desert, and the glass Palace in HydePark and the Crystal Fountain in its midst, blending and refracting the streams of light and water in a thousand harmoniously glittering rays!

And again. See these lumps of green malachite as they are found in the Burra-Burra mine of Australia, or in Russian earth, and the brilliant doors, vases and tables, fitting ornaments of imperial halls.

And again:-There is the Swedish iron just as it is brought from the mines of Dannemora, the best iron in the world, say unanimously the critical judges of the Exhibition, and there, near its dull, shapeless masses, the Ericson iron-engine, which shall put the whole world into a more rapid motion than hitherto.

And still further:-Here is the flax, a little plant that in the North, at the feet of the fir-trees, nods in the wind, with its flowers of tender and delicate hue. Along the belt of great pine-woods which encircle the earth at the polar boundaries, stands in Sweden the flax in its finest condition, "for most lovely is the flax in the North." And between the flax and the pine-trees there is a relationship worthy of being illustrated in a legend of Hans Christian Andersen.

The

The tender flax is cherished under the protection of the pine-woods, and grows humbly at their feet. It is reaped by the hand of man, carried away from the pine-woods, is prepared, spun, and woven. proud pines fall before the axe into the rushing mountain streams; and are floated by them out to the sea. Here they raise themselves again, but naked, without branch or leaf. On the sea they meet with the flax again; but changed. The flax has become

canvass, and clothes the pine to its very top with a foliage of white sails playing in the wind. The little modest plant has become the ruler of the tree, and carries it away with it out into the wide world, to sail the ocean, to convey the productions of the earth from one nation to another, to live and die together far from their native soil. Thus they have come to the Crystal Palace with the earth's treasures from distant lands! and they appear together, the tree and the plant, even in the Exhibition in the Swedish spinning-wheel with the tow on the distaff. Similar comparisons, and still more remarkable as it regards the change from the production of nature to the production of art, might be instituted in general, and demonstrated in everything in the Exhibition. Electricity could not indeed be displayed here in its first form to the human imagination, namely in the thunderbolt of Jupiter; but here was shown the use which the spirit of Prometheus in man has made of the dreaded fire in the clouds over his head, and the mysterious strength which he felt without knowing it under the name of Electricity. We saw this destroying fire taken out of the clouds and employed by man for the benefit of earth; we saw human hands play with Jupiter's thunderbolt. We saw in a variety of electrical operations, the result of deep inquiry and daring attempt, and in these the progressive development of science. We saw finally in the Electrical Telegraph, the earth, as it were, woven over with a nervous system, and bearing, like the veins in the human body, the message of thoughts and feelings, with the rapidity of lightning from one point to the other. We saw through these airy lines peoples and nations drawn together; saw the lightning become the messenger of man; speak with the human tongue (in electrotypes); and the earth become as it were, a man! The electrical machinery in the northwest gallery in the Exhibition, had a world-embracing importance.

The western part of the Crystal Palace, extending from the transept, belonged almost entirely to Great Britain, and its colonies; the eastern half was occupied by the foreign powers.

In the oriental rooms were seen costly furniture and ornamental articles, in every precious material; but a want of beauty and taste in form, excepting in some costume. Comfort, enjoyable still life appeared to be the leading principle of dwellings, furniture and dress. You saw much cloth of gold, rich, heavy drapery; everything soft, easy, adapted to the physical feeling and grateful to the eye; no glaring colours, no sharp forms. They exhibited fine shawls and cloths from Hindostan, distinguished for their subdued and blending colours. You here noticed the excellent systematic arrangement of the articles in the Turkish department, and the riches of the natural productions of all the countries over which the Sultan rules. The Turk, who at the present time shows himself to be a better Christian than many of Europe's Christian kings, displayed a great perfection in traditional art, but a want of higher knowledge.

Greece sent her honey from Hymettus, and beautiful blocks of marble; of that marble from which its celebrated statues of the gods were hewn. Marble blocks are still found in Greece; but the statues of the gods!.....

Egypt, Persia, Arabia, sent precious natural productions in stone and earths. Their manufactures are pretty much the same as those of Turkey. They are in the industrial arts and science far behind the western nations. But in certain things, it seems to me, the oriental stands as the eldest son, as the heir by entail in the world's house. He has palms, he has coffee, which we all must purchase from him, he has rich spices, he has tea, without which we cannot well live; he has fragrant oils, beautiful colours which must have had their origin in Paradise: he has the elephant and the ostrich; he has much in the living life, and much in the ancient mysterious arts; in architecture, in painting and in writing, which the more modern, which the European people have not, and cannot acquire, let them spin and weave, and try and invent and perfect as much as they please. And he knows it, and, therefore, he sits comfortably with his legs crossed upon his soft mat, and drinks his Mocha, and smokes his pipe, and looks with a calm smile upon the restless exertions of his younger brother, and-is far behind him in the career of emulation, at least in the mechanical Exhibition.

And now that younger brother, but in order that we may see him in the form which presents the strongest contrast to that of the east, we will see him first in the extreme west, in the United States of North America. But-the United States cannot be said to have been fully represented at the congress of the nations in the Crystal Palace. Brother Jonathan had too much to look after at home to have time to come forth in his full pomp to brother John. He contented himself with freighting a ship of war with such trophies of peace as came readiest to hand. In many species of minerals he sent proofs of his great affluence in that kingdom of nature; in some enor mous machines he gave proof of the activity of the spirit of invention on his side the Ocean; he sent his light carriages, his golden Indian corn, upon the whole more indicative of a great, increasingly growing people, with unlimited capabilities in the regions of nature and human intelligence, than any decided representation of a people who fully know and are in possession of themselves and their resources. It could not indeed be otherwise. Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that the new world has exhibited on this occasion the best plough, and the most beautiful female figure in marble, Hiram Power's Greek Slave. I see in this a prophetic symbol of a development of the highest material, and the highest ideal reality, which—this is not the place further to touch upon. But one thing I know: the sun is warm in the land of the Hesperides, and powerful enough to ripen all its fruit.

This so-called Greek Slave, this captive woman, with her fettered hands, I had seen many times on the other side of the Atlantic, in copies of the original,

England had also much sculpture, noble, full of deep thought, natural and true-as for instance, statues of Hampden and Fairfax, expressive of powerful character, actuality, and a will firm as the rock, but they possessed not that German poesy, not that nameless bortom bergen, (beyond the mountain,) which extends the boundaries of the visible world, and opens the mind to the invisible, unknown worlds, at the same time to be and not to be as yet.

cold, weak copies of that original which I saw here for | with a horrible reality belonging to the satanic class. the first time. The copies had left a cold impression on my mind. The original seized upon me with an unusual power, as no other statue in marble had done. This noble woman with her bound-down hands, who so quietly turned her head with its unspeakably deep expression of sorrow and indignation-scorn is not a sufficiently noble word—against the power which bound her; that lip which is silent, but which seems to quiver with the tumult of wounded feeling, with the throbbing of her heart. I wonder whether Power himself comprehended the whole of its significance !

A service of gold from California was a very befitting representative from that Western Gold Coast, "Old California," which as yet has nothing more valuable to show. I here saw once more that beautiful moss "Tillandsia Nouvidis," from the Southern States, but quite unlike it as I had seen it hanging in long draperied masses from the branches of the enormous live oaks, forming with these the most glorious natural gothic churches which any one can conceive.

An American eagle displayed aloft above an organ, also from the other side of the Atlantic, governed with its star-spangled banner the lower or eastern portion of the nave, and glanced towards the western or British side.

Let us now pass over to Europe.

France must be acknowledged as the queen of taste. In the departments which were devoted to its silver wares, its embroidery, carpets, flowers, costly woven goods, and works of various kinds, a delicate perfume was diffused around. It was as if there breathed around all those exquisite and tasteful creations a something of their own life, or of that which gave them existence. There was a peculiar, a nameless delight diffused through these departments, an indescribable grace in form, in colour, in delineation, a refined, etherial art in the greatest as well as in the smallest thing. This was particularly striking when we came into this portion of the Exhibition from the English or the German departments.

Nothing struck me as so characteristic, as so peculiarly German, in the German department, as its statues. Those figures from the Niebelungen Lied, with their depth of will and carnestness; those immortal youths and maidens, in whose romantic beauty a half wild mystical power charms and commands, powerfully and pleasantly as the might of nature itself—they testify to the spirit of Germany, to powers of nature and of mind, such as no science is able to fathom, no exhibition fully to become the exponent of. That ancient, profound depth of life, from which the noblest spirits of Germany, its warriors, deep-thinkers and poets came forth, Hermann and Gottfried, Schiller and Goethe, Shelling and Hegel and Baader, spoke from these noble works of art by German artists, and bore witness that the creative power of Germany lives still fresh and young to inspire new spheres of life.

ZOLLVEREIN was the simple prosaic inscription over many noble German works of art from various Ger man States. The poetic meaning of that prosaic word seemed to me to be, a union which would consider the various works from various states, as the offspring of one common mind, one common life, as a common mother-land, and not, as belonging to different states, princes and people. "ZOLLVEREIN " seemed to be a prelude to "UNITED GERMANY."

Spain and Portugal came forward in the Crystal Palace with rich treasures out of the vegetable and mineral kingdom. Botanists and mineralogists found here much to interest them. The Queen of Spain sent hither her jewels for the people to gaze upona collection which reminded me of the story-world of the Arabian Nights, that world of diamonds and jewels and pearls, which enchanted not only mine, but many another youthful imagination. Here too I saw, but without being enchanted, the largest diamond in the world, Koh-i-noor, as it is called, and which being here contemplated within its little glass palace, appeared to my profane eyes as a mere bit of glass without brilliancy. In other circumstances, placed upon a noble human breast, or on a beautiful, kingly brow, I might probably have seen it with other eyes.

Italy still appeared to me, among the people of the earth, as the old master in fine art. But some figures with veils of marble seem to testify of a veiled im potence.

Switzerland emulated France in industrial skill, art and finery. In great as well as in small, embroidery, woven goods-it was not possible to find anything more beautiful in work, or in taste and richness of design.

Belgium also testified by its productions to the existence of an industrious, affluent, and well developed people.

And what must I say about the crowds and masses of articles designed for the convenience or embellishment of life, for its benefit or its enjoyment, which England, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Swit zerland produced, alike in clothes, domestic utensils, furniture, carriages, ornaments, porcelain, glass, &c. &c. &c.? I must say nothing at all, because the subject is overpowering; and I wandered about the whole like a thankless one among this abundant affluence, both as regarded human wants and luxury.

When I wandered, therefore, among the English manufactured articles-through aisles upon aisles, halls France had exhibited some plastic works of art after halls, rooms after rooms-as one might say,