LETTER XXXIV. WALKS IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE. Nature of the articles exhibited, show the connections of freedom or servility of different Nations-Fossils-Guano-China clay-Alabaster -Prince Albert's dog Eos-Silver ore. Ir will not be possible for us to visit every National Department, and note the important things in all. This would require weeks and volumes. And this, perhaps, may be as good a place as any for me to say that the articles exhibited in the several National Departments, afford a pretty good index of the freedom and independence of the people of the various Kingdoms and States represented in the Great Exhibition. The Turkish, the East Indian, the Italian, the Austrian, and the Russian Departments, show little or nothing adapted to the support and comfort of the masses, but only those things which present the largest hiatus between the raw material and the finished fabric, thereby exhibiting the greatest amount of labor for the production of what can be procured, and used only by the rich and aristocratic. The genius of these nations appears to be altogether subservient to the monarchs and nobles, and is never employed for the benefit of the people. Utility and cheapness, therefore constitute no merit in the mind of a Russian or an Algerine. But those nations which are more free have proportionably more articles on exhibition that are of service to the common people; this is considerably true of France and the Zollveiren States. In England the free principle preponderates; there has evidently been more effort in the English mind to meet the wants of the greatest number, and thereby to command the most extensive market, than in any other of the European nations. She is the most free; and yet mixed up with utility, there is much that is useless and costly, adapted only to the means of the aristocratic few. But go into the American Department, and there mere fancy matters are so few that, at first, even the English sneered at Uncle Sam for the plainness and simplicity of his appearance. He was too republican for his place amongst the nations; but republican as he was, he happened to have the strongest legs, and in due time threw even John Bull fairly upon the Crystal Palace floor. All his articles were adapted to cheapness of production, greatest durability, and most general usefulness. It is all because Brother Jonathan is the freest boy on earth. As I have said, the articles in the different National Departments, showed at once which was the most despotic and which the most free. The Emperor Nicholas had groups of human figures in solid silver as large as life, representing some of his victorious battles, which are of no use to any body but as toys for despots;-Jonathan had his Reaper and his Meat Biscuit, which feed the people. In our last we had passed from under the gallery upon the south side of the west end of the Palace, across the nave to the machinery rooms under the gallery on the north side. - contains the fishes - once Let us now pass into the next Saloon that collection of minerals. Here are fossil alive, now imbedded in stone and constituting a part of it; fossil wood like the forms that we have seen in the stones of Piscataquis county and Moose Head Lake; white topaz from Van Dieman's Land; Normal guano, a manure prepared from the refuse of fishes, an excellent fertilizer; pink colored table salt, a handsome article and pure; a specimen of silver sand, exceedingly white; china clay from which porcelain ware is made, — it is derived from the decomposition of felspar; green granite, more ornamental than our Maine granite; black Irish marble that receives an excellent polish; pure stalagmite, or oriental alabaster, veined in colors from Grenada; a specimen of the magnesian limestone of which the New Parliament House is made it was brought from Yorkshire where the greenest Englishmen reside; a slate, cabinet exhibiting the various applications of slate, such as table-tops, work-boxes &c.; peat charcoal, and charcoal made by the burning of refuse tan, which makes an artifical fuel; stone coal, or anthracite, of which we have millions in Pennsylvania; a collection of all the iron ores of Great Britain, some of which is no better than the native iron in various parts of Maine; improved cast iron, called the toughened cast iron, and new bell metal; a zinc cast of Prince Albert's dog Eos; a mass of copper dug from a mine in Cornwall, Wales, weighing 1,500 lbs; a specimen of silver lead ore from the great Cowarch silver lead mine; a pick for dressing granite, without the labor of human elbows; a fac simile of the largest piece of gold found in California-its weight is not given; a specimen weighing twelve cwt. containing cubes of lead and zinc ore; wood impregnated with block tin and making beautiful articles of closet ware; lots of sulphur ore, of zinc ore, and of manganese ore, cobalt ore, iron pyrites, hornblende, antimony, and cinnibar from California, and 5,160 grains of mercury distilled from 7,560 grains of the cinnabar. Indeed, here are specimens of almost all the minerals of the earth, from gold and platina to lead and common salt-such as the Liverpool mineral salt is prepared from. LETTER XXXV. WALKS N THE CRYSTAL PALACE. Naval Department-Sailing-Vessel with Screw Propeller-Life Boats and Buoys A Boat-Trench-Yachts-Victory of the "America "-BellBuoy-Dead-reckoning-Cook's Quadrant-Signal Lamp-Models. NAVAL MATTERS. Our ship-owners and seamen must not be neglected in the Great Exhibition. They are a class of men in whose welfare Maine cannot but be highly interested. Ship-building and navigation are the greatest business of the State. Let us ascend this flight of steps into the first gallery, being yet in the English Department, and visit the saloons in the south-western corner of the Palace. England claims to be mistress of the Ocean, and to have made greater progress in the science of naval architecture than any other nation. It may be interesting for us to see some of the matters she has sent there on exhibition. We cannot here describe all the apparatus we saw; but can mention some things that struck our attention which may be suggestive of some ideas to the inventive genius of Yankee minds. Here is the model of a sailing vessel, that also has a screw propeller which does not require a steam engine to put it in motion. It may be worked by hand as easily as a ship's pump, and under certain circumstances may be of |