The World's Fair: Or, Children's prize gift book of the Great Exhibition of 1851 : describing the beautiful inventions and manufactures exhibited therein : with pretty stories about the people who have made and sent them : and how they live when at home.Anonymous
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The World's Fair: Or, Children's prize gift book of the Great Exhibition of 1851 : describing the beautiful inventions and manufactures exhibited therein : with pretty stories about the people who have made and sent them : and how they live when at home.
Anonymous
Great Exhibition (1851 : London, England) -- Juvenile literature
Ah! talking of glass, what think you of an enormous French decanter,
in which three persons, having gotten inside by a ladder, can sit and
dine off a table a yard in circumference? This is quite an exhibition
in itself, I think. In another part of the building, we have a
looking-glass, from Germany, which is the largest that ever was made,
and is encased in a splendid frame of Dresden china. But here is a
darling little English steam-engine, so small that you could, after
wrapping it up in paper, lay it very comfortably inside an
ordinary-sized walnut-shell, while the plate on which it stands is not
bigger than a sixpence!
In the very centre of the building, a gigantic crystal fountain
diffuses a delicious coolness around, its bright clear waters
sparkling, leaping, and playing, as if in delight and astonishment at
the splendid and wonderful articles surrounding it. And there are two
immense statues just beside it, looking mightily pleased with the
agreeable coolness of the water. But here are two large bronze
lions;--how terrible they look: they seem almost as if they were going
to jump at us. There are animals of various kinds in different parts
of the Exhibition; stags, horses, foxes, birds, cats, and even a
ferocious-looking tiger.
There is a bundle of nails so diminutive you can hardly see
them--another bundle of three thousand nails, one thousand gold,
another silver, and the third iron; so light that the whole weighs
only three grains,--a French watch, smaller than a fourpenny
piece,--Hindoo stuffs, so thin you can scarcely feel them, yet are
made from rejected cotton-husks,--a highly-finished model of a palace,
from Italy; and a handsome carriage, from Prussia.
But among the curious articles we must notice this imitation of a
camelia japonica tree in china, with buds, leaves, and blossoms, all
perfect, which came from Germany;--and that painted oil-cloth from
Manchester, covered with the most extraordinary mathematical
ornaments, and which took eleven years to complete, and is worth 500
guineas. And that table, made of 38,000 pieces of wood, of
twenty-eight different colours, looking like mosaic, which was sent
from Switzerland. Nor must we forget to look at this piece of gold, on
which is engraved "The Lord's Prayer," and is yet so small that a
common pin-head covers it: that came from Portsmouth. And here is a
German bed, which being wound up, like a clock, to a certain hour,
throws the sleeper out on the ground, when the time comes; no lazy
lie-a-beds with that, I fancy!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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