THE FIGHTING FIFTIES 117

of free trade and the peaceful products of man's hand and in-
genuity. Since the days of Noah's Ark nothing so compendious
had ever been assembled. There were four Sections. In the first
were Raw Materials and Produce. In the second were the various
kinds of Machinery, arranged in six groups; machines for
direct use such as railways and carriages, manufacturing machines
and tools, mechanical, engineering, architectural and building
contrivances, naval and military ordinance and accoutrements,
agricultural and horticultural machines and implements, and
philosophical and scientific instruments. In the third Section
were the various Manufactures divided into nineteen groups,
and in the fourth the Fine Arts. Some of the exhibits in the last
being contributed by artists and foreigners caused a certain
amount of misgiving: a marble statue of a "startled nymph,"
who from her lack of clothing seemed no better than she ought
to be, caused at least one family—a motherly-looking woman
and two apple-cheeked daughters in flounced skirts-4:o come to
a sudden pause and then, blushing furiously, to vanish into the
silk department.

In the weeks that followed the humblest in the land came
to view the Great Exhibition. Throughout the summer the daily
attendance at times exceeded 60,000. After the third week the
admission fee to the building was reduced to a shilling on four
days a week. The shilling days proved the wonder of the season.
Instead of the brutal behaviour and rioting which many had
expected, an endless stream of orderly, good-humoured working-
class folk, gaping and admiring, passed under the crystal dome.
No Communist broke the glass or seized the Koh-i-Noor. "There
is a smock-faced rustic considering among other matters rural
a Canadian plough," wrote Punch) "that quiet, self-instructing
peasant is—one shilling. There is a fustian jacket with a quick
critical eye examining machines: that jacket is one shilling."1
The workman's square cap, the decent finery, the gaping ragged
children, the humble picnic bag, the babies, the ginger beer
gave an unexpected thrill to the well-to-do and respectable. The
sight caused undemonstrative Englishmen to shake hands in
the streets and even to shed tears in public. Here were the dreaded
working-class people of England and theyTbtad come as friends.
"The great event brought to London thousands who perhaps
had never seen a train before, people speaking the strange

E£.