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The Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs waited on the Queen last Saturday, and received information of her pleasure as to the day on which she will accept a civic entertainment in honour of the Great Exhibition. It was intended at first that the day should be Wednesday the 2d of July ; but from respect to the memory of the late Sir Robert Peel, whose melan- choly death fell on that day, the entertainment is postponed by the Queen till Wednesday the 9th of July. The entertainment is announced as "an evening party."
The Merchant Tailors' Company celebrated St. Barnabas's Day, after the examination of the scholars in their school which is usually made on that day in the year, by a festival, at which the Duke of Cambridge, Lord Stanley, the Bishop of Oxford, with M. Charles Dupin and many other foreigners of distinction, were present. The speeches of the evening were those of Lord Stanley and M. Dupin, in acknowledgment of the toast of the Commissioners and Foreign Commissioners of the Great Ex- hibition of Industry. Lord Stanley referred to the "apprehensions" which last year prevailed—fears of pecuniary failure, fears of constant 'discomfort, and even fears that this country would be made the focus of internal sedition and external anarchy : he thanked God first, and the genius and spirit of his countrymen next, that all these apprehensions have vanished—melted into thin air ; and he now took pride in his original association with the subject, at a time when opinion was balanced between the chances and hopes of success and the fears and apprehensions of signal failure. M. Dupin referred with veneration to an institution which elected its first honorary member five hundred years ago, and gracefully connected the historic permanency of such an institution with the activity, probity, and genius which have produced the greatness of British commerce.
At the entertainment given on Saturday last by the East India Com- pany to Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Armstrong, on his appointment to the chief commandat Madras, the leading topic was also the Exhibition. Earl Granville lauded the East India Company for having by the ex- ertions of their civil and scientific servants collected together a magnifi- cent etude Oriental, showing the resources and capabilities of India, which as a school of industry and art must be invaluable to the whole world. One gentleman, who has shown so much knowledge of colour and effect in the decoration of the building itself, [Mr. Owen Jones,] as- sured Earl Granville that there are patterns in the Indian department which no European artist could either design or copy so as to preserve the same combinations of colour and form.
The flower-shows of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick on Saturday, and of the Royal Botanic Society in Regent's Park on Saturday and this week, have been powerful rivals even of the Great Exhibition. The show of rhododendrons and azaleas in each are beyond those of all former years for superlative beauty and choiceness ' • and the Regent's Park display has the additional fascination of a new floral wonder—the Chinese peony tree, which in its native habitat, near Shanghae, the Liverpool of Eastern Asia, grows to the height of a dozen feet, and is crowned with above five hun- dred colossal flowers. Upwards of ten thousand visitors were at Chiswick on Saturday ; and the Botanic Society has issued 30,500 of its season tickets.
This was to have been the gayest Whitsuntide that the working Lon- doners ever saw. The London artisans were all to forget the rural temptations which tempted them out of town in former years, and take themselves and their families for a day's or two days' sight of the Great Exhibition ; while the country crowds were to pour into London by the cheap trains, and crush with amicable pressure their pale-faced and slender-framed cousins of the London mob : Mr. Mayne, the Com- missioner of Police, was to stem the human flood at the entrances of the Park, and admit it in manageable rivulets through an embankment of constables; and if the -waters of life became disturbed, signals were to be placed at the top of the Crystal Palace, and fresh controlling powers evoked from the centres of municipal control. But Whitsuntide has dis- appointed these expectations. In the first place, it seems that such of the London populace as defied the elements pursued their wonted rural pleasures much in the manner they have done in former years : Greenwich fair, and its other suburban rivals, with all their concomitants of booths, shows, and rustic pleasures, would only be visible in Whitsuntide, whereas the " Kris- tial Pallis " could be entered for weeks to come, whenever the time and wages could be spared. Then it was a dismal time in point of weather, both .on Monday and Tuesday ; the rain was drenching and frequent on Monday, and on Tuesday it was a constant soaking drizzle from morning to night : this cause kept the sightseers at home, and equally robbed the Exhibition and the suburban fairs. Then the very apprehension of a frightful crush again operated as it did on the first of the cheap days to keep away multitudes of the middle classes : these classes, prevented, by the weather from making picnic parties to Hampton Court, Greenwich Park, and the other popular resorts, went in greater numbers to the less distant attractions of the Me- tropolis itself; the British Museum received its thirty thousand of visitors, the Vernon Gallery in Marlborough House its five-and-twenty thousand, the National Gallery (already eclipsed by Mr. Vernon's collec- tion) its twenty thousand, and the House of Lords its five thousand of genteeler examiners. From the country, both the obvious cause of the weather, and other causes not so obvious but perhaps quite as natural, kept down the cheap-train arrivals to a point below what was expected. Nevertheless, from the country there was an influx of roughly-garbed and ruddy-faced visitors, quite large enough to give the Exhibition crowd a marked aspect of country freshness. The great concourse both of London and country visitors had entered the building and left it before four o'clock : by six or seven o'clock the reflux of working men and their sweethearts was evidently that of the crowds who had gone farther West than the Crystal Palace—to the tea-gardens of Kensington, and the places of amusement along the river-bank from Cremorne to Richmond ; and later at night, in the region of Temple Bar, the main stream was in the other direction, and consisted of those stout pleasure-seekers who had spent the day at Greenwich, Woolwich, and Deptford. On Tuesday, when the cli- max of Whitsuntide was passed, and when the weather was even more wretched than on Monday, both Londoners and countrymen staid at home in still greater degree. So that Whitsuntide in London in the great year of 1851, was not that crowded and perfect holyday for the working classes that was expected.
Mr. Thackeray's third lecture, on Thursday, was delivered to the most crowded and " distinguished " audience that he has yet drawn around him. Willis's great room was filled in every part, so much so as to make new ar- rangements of the seats necessary. The subject was Sir Richard Steele— the gallant, the witty, the tasteful, the kindly ; and admirable was the man- ner in which Thackeray, repudiating "perfection" as inhuman, intro- duced the erring Dick Steele so as to make his audience incline to the mart as they might have done to the living Steele. This is the charm of Thackeray's lectures : they are not oral biographies, they are not sermons on monumental stones, they are not Ciceronian criticisms delivered ore rotundo instead of being printed; they are, as it were, conversations with a friend and comrade of the old wits, who introduces you to such know- ledge of the men as the keenest insight of head informed by heart might draw from their writings, or as a personal knowledge might have given to yourself—the sum and substance of what you would have thought of the men yourself, if you had had the honour, as he has had, of their per- sonal acquaintance. For geniuses have that faculty of personal acquaint- ance with their congeners, irrespectively of time and space : and after all, what arc time and space ? Nothing ; witness the way in which Thacke- ray turns the butt-end of Swift's lampoon on "polite conversation" in the eighteenth century against the politer conversation in the nineteenth. One hint the lecturer may take--in spite of that fastidious gentleman, a reader of twenty years' standing, who wrote to the editor of the Edin- burgh Review, that he should abandon that blue and yellow institution of our country if it persevered in using the German neologisms "objective" and "subjective" : in spite of that truly English conservatism, let us say that the audience manifested a relish for such objective portions of the lecture as were vouchsafed from the rostrum ; and the keen intellect there enthroned could scarcely fail to take the hint practical. His delivery has greatly improved since the beginning—it is manly, audible, full, expres- sive, tasteful, and ever gentlemanly.
A meeting of delegates from the great Metropolitan parishes has resolved to offer every opposition to the Government bill for consolidating the Water Companies of the Metropolis, and has appointed a Committee to carry the resolution into effect.
Sir James Sutherland Mackenzie, who has several times been in the hands of the Police for drunkenness and creating disturbances, has been sent to prison by the Westminster Magistrate, in default of bail to keep the peace towards Mr. Jackson, a tradesman with whom he formerly lodged, and to whom he applied most opprobrious epithets. His conduct at the Police- office was very extraordinary, and seemed to denote some unsoundness of mind.
Joseph Albert, a boy only ten years old, son of a charwoman, has stolen a small pistol from the armoury of the Great Exhibition. He was detected when he offered the pistol for sale at a shop : it was of peculiar workman- ship. The young culprit has been remanded by the Marlborough Street Magistrate, that inquiries may be made as to his character.
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