[Anon.], ‘Thoughts on the Great Exhibition’, Monthly Christian Spectator (1851)

The Palace and the Exhibition of Industry, as a spectacle, is unique and magnificent. It is a new thing under the sun. The conception is perfectly novel to the mass of mankind. The edifice is utterly without parallel in the records and monuments of architecture. Agriculture bears the stalk and ear of all fields, and is surrounded with the newest implements of the primitive craft. Industry exhibits with delight the raw material, the curious processes, and the wonderful results of wedded ingenuity and strength. Art rejoices in the embodied grandeur and beauty of sculptured marble and painted glass. The cosmopolitan character of the Exhibition completes the circle of its glories.