Read it through once

The Exhibition was a great success in every way. Over five and a half million visitors were recorded and the Queen helped, personally, to maintain public interest in it by herself visiting the various Sections repeatedly. The final meeting of the Royal Commission was held at Marlborough House on April 30th, 1897 and the Prince of Wales submitted an elaborate and exhaustive Report which was afterwards published. In his own remarks the President pointed out that the project had served its main purpose in very largely promoting knowledge of the Empire's resources and products and that, incidentally, its success had given the management a surplus of £35,000. This sum, he suggested, should be largely devoted to the advancement of the project for a permanent Exhibition or Imperial Institute--"in the promotion of which the Queen and I both take so warm an interest." Later in the evening the Prince expressed the hope that as the late Exhibition had been, allegorically, burnt that day, "the Imperial Institute may be a Phoenix rising out of its ashes. I trust that it may be a lasting memorial not only of that but of the Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen." Of the sum mentioned, £25,000 was accordingly voted to the new project.