The Arcades Project - Operi

1851. These precautions included continuous police surveillance of the dormitories,
the presence of a chaplain, and a regular morning visit by a doctor. [GlO,l)
Walpole describes the Crystal Palace, with the glass fountain at its center and the
old elms-the latter 'looking almost like the lions of the forest caught in a net of
glass" (p. 307). FIe describes the booths decorated with expensive carpets, and
ahove all the machines. "There were in the machine-room the 'self-acting mules,'
the Jacquard lace machines, the envelope machines, the power looms, the model
locomotives, centrifugal pumps, the vertical steam-engines, all of these working
like mad, while the thousands nearby, in their high hats and bonnets, sat patiently
waiting, passive, unwitting that the Age of Man on this Planet was doomed." FIugh
Walpole, The Fortress (Hamburg, Paris, and Bologna