" the 6pectator." October 11th. 1851
The doors are finally shut upon the crowds, still eagerly desiring to gain admittance [to the Great Industrial Exhibition]. The success of this bold experiment has indeed exceeded the most sanguine expectation. It were all too late to expatiate now on the exquisite and peculiar fitness of the building, or the gorgeous magnificence of some of its contents, the solid utility of others, the wondrous character of the whole spectacle. Millions have enjoyed a cheap pleasure of a stirring and un- precedented kind. All the arrangements have been conducted in a liberal spirit, and the managers have in hand a surplus of receipts amounting to several hundred thousand pounds. . Not the least wonderful piece of good fortune that has attended the Exhibition is the almost total absence' of fatal casualties. Within the building there have been no more than might have happened in any private house in town... One narrow escape, it is true, we seem to have had, this last week, from an accident that would have dimmed all this gayety. The inauguration of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was saddened by the sacrifice of Huskisson's life ; the closing of the Great Exhibition had almost been overcast by that of the Duke of Wellington. It would have been an unbecoming termination to his glorious career, after escaping without wound from so many battles, to have been squeezed to death by the unreflecting love or curiosity of his admirers in the hour of amusement.
[The Duke of Wellington had been mobbed by the crowds in the Crystal Palace when he attended the closing ceremony at the Great Exhibition.]
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