Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/179

Rh and explained to us; and drives were arranged to show us not only the towns but all the country round. Carriages were placed at our disposal all the day long; and policemen waited at the doors of the places which we were to visit, to move the crowd, open the carriage-doors and show us in. The entire reception-business was arranged with a thoroughness, and with a degree of hearty hospitality which must have created a deep impression on the mind of every visitor, from whatever colony or dependency he may have come.

In fact, these receptions were in furtherance of the great idea which underlay the exhibition itself. England is great,—not as a military power in Europe,—but in her colonies. To display in a focus as it were the vast resources of her various colonies, to display to Europe and to the world the strength which she derives from her connection with various nations to the ends of the world, and to draw closer the bonds of sympathy and fellow-feeling which bind these colonies to her,—this was the idea of the Exhibition,—and of the reception of the Indian and Colonial visitors. England desired that these visitors should go back to their countries full of sympathy and affection for her, and every English town, I may say every alderman and mayor in every corporation, worked nobly towards this common end. Hence the almost princely hospitality with which the visitors were treated.

The idea of a sort of federation of all these colonies and dependencies with England was in the heart of hosts and guests alike, and was expressed forcibly in