[Illustration: _H. C. Selaus._} {_From an Engraving._ THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851. The Queen, Prince Consort, Duchess of Kent, and the Royal Children on the Dais; members of the Ministry on the left; Foreign Ambassadors on the right.] [Sidenote: Opening of the Great Exhibition.] While this agitation and these debates were in progress, it may be believed that many people were far from hospitably disposed towards the crowds of foreigners which the Great Exhibition was designed to draw to London. But all hostile criticism was reduced, first to whispers, by the marvellous success of the structure itself, and then to silence, by the splendour of the opening ceremony and of the display within the building. It is the poet's gift to store the essence of events in very small phials, and Thackeray's _May Day Ode_ vividly reflects the feelings of the nation on that far-off spring morning: "But yesterday a naked sod, The dandies sneered from Rotten Row, And cantered o'er it to and fro; And see, 'tis done! As though 'twere by a wizard's rod, A blazing arch of lucid glass Leaps like a fountain from the grass To meet the sun!" A generation has sprung up since that day, satiated with marvels and surprised by no achievement of hand and brain. But no such visible, tangible accomplishment in the arts of peace had ever been manifested up to that time; if Prince Albert's idea had been one of startling novelty, the celerity of its realisation was still more startling. [Illustration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_From the Royal Collection._ HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE CONSORT. From the Portrait painted in 1859.] "God bless my dearest Albert!" wrote the Queen with no feigned emotion, "God bless my dearest country, which has shown itself so great to-day! One felt so grateful to the great God, who seemed to pervade all and bless all." More than mere womanly emotion, this, in presence of an exciting scene. The May Day poet put on it the same interpretation: "Swell, organ, swell your trumpet blast! March, Queen and Royal pageant, march By splendid aisle and springing arch Of this fair Hall! And see! above the fabric vast God's boundless heaven is bending blue, God's peaceful sun is beaming through, And shining over all."