[Illustration: THE ROYAL APARTMENTS, HOLYROOD PALACE. 1, Throne Room; 2, Breakfast Parlour; 3, Evening Drawing-room; 4, Grand Staircase; 5, Morning Drawing-room.] than usual zeal, and in most towns effigies of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were paraded through hooting crowds, and burnt in bonfires amidst the derision of the populace. The Universities and the Corporation of London in December sent deputations in great state to Windsor to present addresses to the Queen, protesting against insidious attacks on the authority, prerogatives, and exclusive jurisdiction of the Crown. The Queen’s replies to these addresses were spirited but calm, and absolutely free from intolerance. “I would never have consented,” she tells her “aunt Gloucester” in a letter written after the deputations had been received, “to say anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sincerely Protestant as I always have been and always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves Protestants, while they are in fact quite the contrary,[28] I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at the public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many good and innocent Roman Catholics.”[29] On the last day of December, 1850, the Queen was gratified to hear that one of her husband’s cherished designs had been carried out. The building for the International Exhibition had risen from the ground in Hyde Park with the magical rapidity of a fairy palace. The design which had been chosen was that of a French artist, and Londoners had looked on with amazement at the erection of the great central dome of crystal, which dwarfed even that of St. Paul’s into insignificance. The plan for carrying out the design was suggested by Mr. Paxton, chief superintendent of the Duke of Devonshire’s gardens, and it was but an expansion of the grand conservatory which he had built for his Grace at Chatsworth. Iron and glass were the materials used for its construction. The cast-iron columns and girders were all alike--four columns and four girders being placed in relative positions forming a square of 24 feet, which could be raised to any height, or expanded laterally in any required direction, merely by joining other columns and girders to them. The building, therefore, grew up in multiples of twenty-four, and it could be taken to pieces just as readily as if it had been a doll’s house, and put up on any other site in exactly the same form. As a matter of fact, after the Exhibition was held in 1851, this wonderful Palace of Crystal was removed to Sydenham, where it has long been one of the raree-shows of London. The building covered 18 acres of ground, and gave an exhibiting surface of 21 acres; in truth, it was, within ten feet, twice the width of St. Paul’s, and four times as long. The contractors, Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., accepted the order for the