“Albert! spare those trees, Mind where you fix your show; For mercy’s sake, don’t, please, Go spoiling Rotten Row.” The Exhibition was opened by the Queen on May 1st. The enthusiasm it created in all sections of the population has known no parallel, and in the success and excitement the few small elm trees were soon forgotten by the delighted people, who raised cheers and shouted-- “Huzza for the Crystal Palace, And the world’s great National Fair.” Hyde Park never saw more people than during the time it was open from the 1st of May to the 11th of October, as 6,063,986 persons visited the Exhibition, an average of 43,000 daily. Its success was phenomenal also from a financial point of view, as after all expenses were deducted there was a surplus of £150,000, with which the land from the Park to South Kensington was purchased, on which the Albert Hall and museums have been built. It seems to have been the complete originality of the whole structure that captivated all beholders. In his memoirs the eighth Duke of Argyll refers to the opening as the most beautiful spectacle he had ever seen. “Merely,” he writes, “as a spectacle of joy and of supreme beauty, the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851 stands in my memory as a thing unapproachable and alone. This supreme beauty was mainly in the building, not in its contents, nor even in the brilliant and happy throng that filled it. The sight was a new sensation, as if Fancy had been suddenly unveiled. Nothing like it had ever been seen before--its light-someness, its loftiness, its interminable vistas, its aisles and domes of shining and brilliant colouring.” It was with the recollection of this world-famous Exhibition fresh in men’s minds that the site for the Albert Memorial was chosen. The idea conceived by Sir Gilbert Scott was the reproduction on a large scale of a mediæval shrine or reliquary. When it was erected an alteration was made in some of the avenues in Kensington Gardens, so as to bring one into line with the Memorial. A fresh avenue of elms and planes straight to the monument was planted, which joined into the original one, and a few trees were dotted about to break the old line. As first planned, the avenue must have commanded a view of Paddington Church steeple in the vista.