THE FESTIVAL OF PEACE AND THE _COUP D’ÉTAT_. The World’s Fair--Carping Critics--Churlish Ambassadors Rebuked by the Queen--Opening of the Great Exhibition--A Touching Sight--The Queen’s Comments on “_soi-disant_ Fashionables”--The Duke of Wellington’s Nosegay--Prince Albert among the Missionaries--The Queen’s Letter to Lord John Russell--Her Pride in her Husband--The London Season--The Duke of Brunswick’s Balloon “Victoria”--Bloomerism--The Queen at Macready’s Farewell Benefit--The Queen’s Costume Ball--The Spanish Beauty--An Ugly “Lion”--The Queen at the Guildhall Ball--Grotesque Civic Festivities--Royal Visits to Liverpool and Manchester--A Well-Dressed Mayor--The Queen on the “Sommerophone”--The _Coup d’État_--The Assassins of Liberty--The Appeal to France--The Queen’s Last Quarrel with Palmerston--Palmerston’s Fall--Outcry against the Queen--A “Presuming” Muscovite--The Queen’s Vindication. During the greater part of the Session of 1851 the English people, to use a phrase of Mr. Disraeli’s, “were not up to politics.” It was the year of the marvellous World’s Fair, or Great International Exhibition, and the keen interest which it aroused diverted public attention from Ministerial blundering. But though the interest of the country in the Exhibition was strong, it was feeble compared with that which the Queen and Prince Albert took in it. In spring, when the Court returned to London, the Prince concentrated all his energies on the labour of organising the arrangements for the opening of the Crystal Palace. All through March and April he worked night and day, undaunted by the carping criticisms of those who predicted that the direst calamities would spring from the Exhibition. These foolish persons asserted that the Exhibition Commissioners were simply organising a foreign invasion of London. To attract to the capital dense crowds of foreigners, they declared, would lead to riot, to the spread of revolutionary doctrines, to the introduction of pestilence and of foreign forms of immorality, and to the ruin of British trade, the secrets of which would be revealed to our competitors in the markets of the world. Colonel Sibthorp, in the Debate on the Address, actually implored Heaven to destroy the Crystal Palace by hail or lightning, and others declared that the Queen would most surely be assassinated by some foreign conspirators, on the opening day of the great show.