This is a wonder-teeming age, very great and very glorious. Science and art take giant strides. Improvements and discoveries are brought forth in such quick succession that yesterday's marvel is consigned to oblivion by to-day's more wonderful exploit, or rare invention, or work of surpassing interest.

The world was once borne down a slow and turbid stream; it passed along like a huge barge upon a stagnant river; but now it is carried forward upon a resistless tide, and with full-spread sail it meets the wind and wave and surge. We leave the ancient landmarks far behind us, and for this new era time must invent some new method of chronicling its annals, for the old ones are not sufficient guides as to the novelty and antiquity of our works. The Crystal Palace that rose into life and beauty, as by a magician's wand, and disappeared like a phantom, was a symbol of the age. It contained within its precincts the works of science, art, and humanity, that are the glory of the age. The vast edifice, its long aisles, its crowded galleries, were hung with the trophies won by genius and industry, won in hard-fought battles by the veterans whose hair had grown gray and bodies feeble in the service of their liege masters; and there, in proud array, those trophies rose one above another, and, glittering in the sun of a bright May morning, they smiled a welcome on each passer-by, on peasant, peer, and prince.