On every side were mobs of spectators pressing close up to the rails, and standing on tiptoe, with their necks out-stretched, in the hope of getting a peep of what was going on within. All along the building were ladders, one beside each of the columns, with painters perched high upon them, busy colouring the iron-work against the opening day. On top of the huge glass arch that formed the roof of the transept, the tiny figures of workmen were to be seen, some walking along the crystal covering, and making one wonder how the fragile substance bore them. At the end of the building were steam-engines puffing out their white clouds of steam, and amid the _debris_ of a thousand packing-cases stood giant blocks of granite, mammoth lumps of coal, stupendous anchors, and such huge articles as were too bulky to be placed within the building itself. All was bustle, life, confusion, and amazement. Those who were not working, were wondering at those who were; and many, as they looked at what still remained to be done, shook their heads in doubt as to the possibility of completing it against the appointed time. Nor was it difficult to read disappointment in the countenances of the new-comers on their first beholding the building. To say the truth, the engravings and the imagination had failed to convey any adequate notion of the structure. The very name of the Crystal Palace had led people to conjure up in their minds a phantasm that could not be realized—a transparent edifice, pellucid as if built of blocks of ice instead of stone—a prismatic kind of fairy mansion, glittering in the sun, and breaking up and scattering the light all around in a thousand rainbow tints. But how different the scene on the earliest dawn of the morrow! Then to stand in the centre of the huge crystal pile, and cast the eye thence in any direction, was indeed to behold a sight that had no parallel in excellence. The exquisite lightness and tone of colour that pervaded the entire structure was a visual feast, and a rare delight of air, colour, and space. The vitrious material which outside was to be seen only in one point, here appeared really to form the sides and roof of the entire building, while the combined effect of the three “primary” colours of the decorations showed with what rare artistic skill and exquisite æsthetic appreciation they had been put together. It seemed more like one harmonious tone—a concert of mellifluous tints—than mere painting. A kind of coloured rainbowy air appeared to pervade the whole building, while, as the eye travelled down the long vista of galleries, and beheld the forms and tints at the end of the avenues, dimmed by the haze of distance, one was struck with a solemn sense of the majesty of the building.