To Americans in London the Crystal Palace soon became a sore subject. We were the laughing-stock of nations; and I confess, when I first visited the vast desert at the American end of the show, in which many of the articles exhibited were even worse than the lack of others which ought to have been there, I felt myself disposed, for a minute, to blush for my country. It would have been the very poverty of patriotism to plead that a few items of our contribution were of very great merit; and self-respect would not permit me to multiply apologies, or even explanations. What was really good spoke for itself. What was bad, or indifferent, was simply inexcusable. The fact is, our progress in the arts of civilization was not at all represented; and after observing the things which attracted attention, from other countries, I felt sorry that nobody had thought of making similar exhibitions for us. It really pained me to reflect, that I had seen much more attractive exhibitions in our provincial towns; and I was quite sure that one day’s work, in each of our great cities, might have sufficed to collect a far better show of industrial produce out of the ordinary market. Fortunately, the yacht “America” came in at the last moment to “pluck up our drowning honour by the locks;” and if we could but stop bragging about it, that would be enough, until some future occasion may afford us an opportunity of showing what American mechanics and manufacturers are able to achieve in their various departments of skill and ingenuity. I was pained to observe the feeling engendered by the Exhibition between England and America, and by the highly-irritated recriminations of ill-bred representatives of both countries, on the spot. On the other hand, I was sometimes amused by the ludicrous attempts of some well-meaning Englishman to be complimentary. He would choke out something about the “Greek Slave,” and then pass rapidly to speak of his delight in meeting with a model of Niagara Falls: an execrable thing, which only served still further to confuse the unusually mudded ideas of that prodigy of Nature, entertained by the English generally. As it was simply an immense map of the Niagara, it of course represented the Falls on such a scale as entirely deprived them of sublimity and beauty: and so, when the speaker would enlarge upon the magnificence of this feature of our country, I usually took some satisfaction in confessing that the better half of the Falls is, after all, on the British side, and that I was sorry he could find nothing to praise that was entirely ours. The only instance in which I encountered rudeness upon this subject, was an absurd one, in a railway carriage, when a Paisley manufacturer, a little the worse for whiskey, and very rich in his brogue, after some impudent remarks, which led me to decline conversation, stuck his face into mine, with the startling announcement—“_ye can’t mak’ shawls in your country!_”