A Paris Exposition in Dishabille

I THINK I had come abroad a little Exposition - proof. I have established myself near this one, it is true, but that is rather for the thoroughly French quarter, the open space and good air, and especially for the noble gilded dome of the Invalides, which manages to shine into my windows with a perpetual hint of sunshine even when the weather is bad, — and Heaven knows Paris winter weather is bad enough. I was here at the Exposition of 1878. and my printed impressions of it must still survive somewhere in the back file of The Atlantic. What with that and some other experiences, and having no more than the usual fondness for crowds, I assure the reader that if this very latest Paris Exposition and I find ourselves together, it is pure coincidence, and through no collusion of ours.

But it is impossible to keep one’s attention withdrawn from it. The great thing, in the first place, is to see how very seriously the French nation takes it. It is no affair of a clique, no mere ephemeral mammoth show got up by a few enterprising individuals apart, but it is the hobby of the people, the parties of all shades. They look upon it with veneration ; it. is sacred ; it is an explosion of patriotism and the national pride in a direction in which France knows it can excel, though it has been so sorely humiliated elsewhere. Naturally, all the journals are full of it, and full too of everything connected with the centenary of the Revolution which its date commemorates. The eighteenth century is getting a very thorough revival. The Matin, for instance, a journal which adopts some of the best features of the American plan without adopting the worst also, gives every day a résumé of events on the corresponding day in 1789. I was amused to find there, lately. as a detail among others, the alleged origin of a familiar expression which has seen hard service, it appears, in more languages than ours. A romance which made some stir in its time, called the Memoirs of a Young Girl, contained the statement that the young girl was born of poor but honest parents: “Cette jeune fille, née de parents honnêtes mais pauvres, est élevée,” etc. The Matin desired to salute the birth and the centennial of this time-honored form of description ; but I think it over-sanguine in being content to carry its researches no further back, just as I think M. de Goneourt and some others over-sanguine in the appeal they make, with their handsome illustrated books on the Revolution, to a public which seems more than half inclined to retrograde from republican institutions.

Politics turn upon the Exposition, or rather turn around it; for it is put forward between the combatants as the women and children sometimes used to be in old days, to keep them from falling upon each other at once. The most damaging statement against General Boulanger by his enemies is to say that he has designs upon the Exposition ; while his proudest reply is that the industrial interests of France are inexpressibly dear to him, that “ Boulanger is peace,” and that nothing in the world would induce him to harm the enterprise.

There are those who think, since the late overwhelming demonstration in his favor, that Boulanger himself, as President or mayhap as dictator, will open the Exposition, though President Carnot’s term does not expire till 1892. There are even those who think it will not open at all, but that some ruthless bombshell will drop into it, and shatter its dainty array of the arts of peace to flinders. Fancy, in that case, the exceptional position of one who has been almost the only witness of an international Exposition prepared for millions ! I by no means covet the distinction, nor indeed do I expect to have it. While there is little reluctance to considering the possibility of establishing a dictatorship, a monarchy, or what not, of plunging into domestic or foreign wars, and of sacrificing all that makes life dear, yet there is a general agreement that these calamities ought to be put off for the present ; let them not be entered upon till the Exposition is over. This is a trifle finical, to be sure, and somewhat like the qualms of the condemned who are particular about their breakfast just before being led out to execution; but if the Exposition can serve as a bond for keeping the peace for even six months, its promoters will have builded better than they knew. In the interval calmer counsels will have time to prevail, and our French brethren may conclude to put up with the ennui which is so hard for them to bear, to recognize that all men and rulers are imperfect, and to jog along with a popular republic, — never the most brilliant form of government, —after the American fashion.

Some of the heavy material for the Exposition, hauled by strong teams of Norman and Breton horses, was passing our way all the autumn and winter. The driver of one of the teams used to have a pet bull-dog standing upright on the back of his leading steed. There was a good deal of human nature among these drivers. They were as delighted to block a busy tramway line as if they had been operating in the narrowest street of New York or Boston. Down by Louis XY.’s Military School, at the corner below us, where various tramways and omnibuses concentrate, are always to be seen some of the confused features of the great Vanity Fair, rising above the high palisade behind which it is being prepared ; especially an immense glass edifice, the Palais des Machines, which is to be its principal triumph. Paris gains something tangible from each of its Expositions, and has something to show for its money. Just as we find scattered about the country various boulders, which, since they have no connection with the ordinary strata of the place, we know to have been left there by former geological periods, so Paris has many very notable edifices which remain to her as the heritage from past Expositions. Thus the Palais de l’lndustrie, where the annual Salon is held; the Pavilion de Paris alongside it. convenient for such smaller exhibitions as the late black-and-white display; and the remarkable massive palace, with sweeping wings, which crowns the slope of the Trocadero, all trace their origin to such a source. Now, finally, it is said that this Palace of Machines is to be left over by this one, to make the most magnificent of covered exercise grounds for the military institution across the way. My interest persists in attaching itself most to the long Military School, however, its serious facade now dingy with age. One day, as I looked, a stirring cavalcade came pouring out of its barrack-gates. There was regiment after regiment of heavy cuirassiers in their brass helmets, a costume not unlike that they wore at Waterloo; the officers riding in their midst draped in their cloaks, and the colors nodding nonchalantly this way and that, like some baleful, sagacious sort of divinities. Behind them, in another dress, familiar since Sebastopol and Solferino, came drumming long regiments of infantry. All looked very deft and business-like, in this year of grace and the peaceful Exposition.

Perhaps the difficulty of getting into the Military School has something to do with its attraction. I am told — for I have not tried personally — that you have first to apply to your minister, he to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and he to the Minister of War, and then — you are refused. There is no telling, in these times, who may or may not be a German spy, and everything connected with military life is guarded with the most jealous care. There is going to he a special exhibition of the material of the art of war, among the thick settlement of buildings devoted to the French colonies, on the esplanade of the Invalides; but one may judge, partly from the mediæval gateway, with portcullis and drawbridge, set up before it, that it is likely to be largely retrospective, and neither the pattern of the Lebel rifle nor any other important, state secret will be betrayed.

I was coming home from a reception of the President of the republic, an occasion provocative of speculation as to change in the government, and the possible doings of Boulanger should he find himself installed in those comfortable parlors and the long, palm-bordered conservatory of the Palace of the Elysée.

It was late at night, and our street was quiet and deserted, when I saw suddenly loom up before me a procession of large trees, leafless, nodding, and moving onwards. They were going to adorn the grounds of the Exposition. “If Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,” I was obliged to mutter, then indeed it is time to take an interest in this irrepressible Exposition, which will not be overlooked. I went into the sacred inclosure, therefore, in the latter days of January, and I can truthfully say that I had no cause to regret my change of heart, but that it proved the occasion of a very novel and enjoyable experience. There was something peculiarly attractive in witnessing it in its formative state, and in having it nearly all to myself. Few other visitors came, either because they did not care to, or that, now as the end approaches, it is made increasingly difficult to get in. It was peaceful there in spite of all the work in progress, and, as it chanced, the weather was mild. The ground was spaded up for the coming gardens, and dug deep for the fountains, lake, and costly drainage and water supply. Long lines of magnolias stood protected by tents of coarse bagging, open to the south. Much of the shrubbery had been planted a year before, and was in a flourishing condition. There was some of my Birnam wood. I gossiped with the gardeners about it and various other matters. A brighteyed, vivacious old man, with a skin like leather, confided to me that capable men on these government jobs were paid only the same wages as the quite incapable. It was something like seven cents an hour. The chiefs of gangs got more, say from eleven to fourteen cents an hour, but they were chiefs only in virtue of favoritism, and not of superior capacity. Further on, the inventor of a new decorative process complained that his architect did not put it forward enough, because he had not bribed him sufficiently. I chanced to have heard not a little of this kind of discontent from persons who seemed glad of an opportunity to pour out their grievances to a stranger ; and though the fault in some cases was no doubt their own, it was evident that self-seeking and favoritism were not confined to any one side of the water.

I could only assure my glittering-eyed old gardener that things are apt to go that way in the public service. If I had not heard of it at home, I could have been more severe with it here. He went on to say that he had learned his business from an author, a man who had run through three editions ; and then he stood off a little, to receive my admiration. But. further than that, he himself was an author. Yes, he had written a treatise on horticulture, and had taken it to a publisher. He had simply wished the publisher to pay him some ten or twelve hundred francs down and his royalty on the sales, leaving to the publisher all the rest of the large profits that might accrue, no matter through how many editions the work should run. “ But what do you think that publisher did ? ” he asked. " Il ne voulait pas,” — He did not wish to. And he drew off again, affording ample time to receive my natural astonishment and disgust at such conduct.

I could not give him any great comfort even here, for there are publishers in America who will act the same way. I had been looking over his shoulder, as we talked, for he stood in the forefront of the plaza. The first great difference, in the Champ de Mars, between this Exposition and the last is that whereas there was then one enormous rectangular edifice that contained almost everything in itself, and presented a long straight facade, now the central facade is less, but five wings sweep out from it and project far forward. On the centre is a fine dome, and on each of the twin Palaces of the Fine Arts and the Liberal Arts, which form the grander portions of the wings, is another. The whole is set upon a stately terrace, reached by grand flights of steps and bordered by a balustrade.

Each successive universal Exposition naturally desires to have a plan of its own, and we do not ask it why it did not retain that of the last. This one, it appears, is to cover a much larger number of square feet of ground than any before it. and it has the best of rights to adopt whatever arrangement of wings, or no wings, that may seem most favorable to its new conditions. Yet having looked over these arrangements, I cannot help going back again to my conclusions of 1878. In my article of that date, referred to, I made a rough diagram showing in contrast the arrangements at Philadelphia, Vienna, and the Paris Expositions of ’67 and ’78. Adding this new one to the list, I can still say that I have seen nothing else so good, for the logical and convenient display of all the multifarious contents of a universal Exposition, as the ellipse adopted at Paris in ’67. It had concentric as well as converging aisles, the respective nations were placed in segments, and you had thus not only each nation side by side, but also what there was of the same class in each nation side by side.

At present the nations are not to be so placed. They are in the two wings, some in one wing and some in the other. Austria and Russia alone back up from the wings into the main building, the bulk of which is properly reserved for France, as the exhibiting country. Perhaps it is not undesirable, on the whole, to have a little break in the transition, and not to go too suddenly from one clime to another, in this kind of condensed traveling. In going from Great Britain to Italy, it is no great hardship to cross a lovely garden, or stroll five or ten minutes around by lovely corridors, to be filled with all that is fascinating in the way of refreshment booths. But it takes time, if one has much traveling to do in a day ; and the system is not uniform, for you go from Italy to Switzerland or from Italy to the United States by simply passing an ornamental wooden portal.

The general view is best from under the arches of the Eiffel tower, the great curiosity built by the engineer Eiffel, who constructed the framework of the Bartholdi statue and the locks of the Panama Canal. Each Exposition should have some one novelty, at least, some distinctive feature to separate it from all the rest, and this one has gone far beyond all others in finding a veritable new thing under the sun. The tower is a light, open framework of iron trussing, and, as all the world knows, is to be a thousand feet in height. Its very pedestal rises above nearly all the other architectural flights of men. It is a gratifying source of patriotic pride to Americans, of course, to know that our Washington monument is the next tallest thing in the world to the Eiffel tower, but even that rises only a little more than half its prodigious altitude. Babel was the merest trifle to it. In the illustrated papers and colored lithographs, and from the open galleries of the Trocadero, whence you have the whole gay pleasure spot of the Exposition spread out before you, the tower is like a candlestick of Brobdignag set down in Lilliput. But close to, it has real sublimity. The smallness of detail gives a proper scale, and lets us realize its vastness, yet without dwarfing the surrounding objects. The endless criss-cross lattice work of the construction ; the innumerable struts, braces. tie-rods, and girders; the airy crocheting, whose stitches are iron beams often a foot across, fall into impressive bundles like ship’s cordage, which always has a noble effect against the sky ; and in the midst are platforms that recall the fore and mizzen tops and the top-gallant cross-trees. Elevators will run up the four wide-spreading supports, following their slope ; and from the first platform, their stopping - place, others will go on to the top, making the complete journey in fifteen minutes, and carrying up some four hundred persons in an hour. It was a captive balloon, held by a rope in the garden of the Tuileries, to which people who wanted to make such daring ascensions into the air had recourse during the last Exposition.

Stairways, too, zigzag interminably along the beams, which at a little distance present no peculiarity distinguishable from the rest. When one sees the workmen, in their baggy corduroy trousers, red caps, and red sashes, climbing up and down them, though these men are by no means angels, as they showed in their repeated strikes in the air against Engineer Eiffel, one has perforce to recall that staircase in Jacob’s dream, upon which the angels were ascending and descending between heaven and earth. By no other work of man have heaven and earth been so closely connected. Along both the first and second platforms of the tower, the latter as high as the top of the dome of St. Peter’s at Rome, is a row of pavilions, each like a large hall in itself; and each, side even of the second platform has apparently a stretch as great as that of a long New York city block. The eye is continually baffled, and continually returns in renewed wonderment at these vast dimensions ; and I speak of the tower when it has yet two hundred feet to rise. Certain patterns interwoven among the trusses for ornament are pleasing ; and though, when it is painted and gilded, the structure may look from a distance more like a candlestick than ever, nothing can keep it, at close quarters, from being a most dignified monument.

They say the tower is to have valuable uses in a scientific way. Meteorologic experiments can be conducted there under much more favorable conditions than on any mountain slope. The lower strata of the atmosphere, the formation of rain, fog, mist, and dew, variations in humidity, and electric tension will be studied by many sets of registering instruments at various heights and capable of being consulted at the same moment. Even the astronomers expect to find their profit in the clearer air about the lantern that is to crown its top. When the electric light is placed there to shine like a new sun, and the electric fountain is playing below among the gardens, cafés, and promenading thousands, the republic will have given us an Exposition that the fabled brilliancy of that of the Third Empire could not equal. For the first time on record, the inclosure is to remain open in the evening, till eleven o’clock. This is a new departure indeed, doubling its possibilities for both usefulness and gayety. How well I recall. at the last Exposition, the way the drummer and his assistants used to approach. towards sunset, and, forming a cordon, “shoo” us out of the place!

Only a military nation could give such an Exposition as this in the heart of its capital, immediately accessible from everywhere. Paris has a great paradeground, the Champ de Mars, with one end bordering on the Seine ; and a smaller one, the Esplanade des Invalides, at some distance, forming an angle with the first, and also bordering the river ; and then, connected with the Champ de Mars by the bridge of Jena, the small park of the Trocadero. These provide most convenient sites for the installations. And furthermore, if need be, these can be carried along the right bank from the Trocadero to the Champs Elysées, just as the exhibition of Agriculture, on the left bank, already connects the Champ de Mars with the Esplanade des Invalides. The ground is dug up and remodeled each time in the most remorseless manner ; nor is it restored to its normal condition for some years after the event. The nation plays there for its industrial purposes, just as the engineers whom I watched on their exercise-ground at Versailles last summer played at making bastions and rifle-pits, and as children play with pail and shovel on the seashore. The military have to suffer in default of their paradeground. The regiments in the barracks near us, on the Rue de Babylone, for instance, have been drilling for months past on our boulevards instead of on the Champ de Mars. Civilians suffer, too, in having their right of way on certain streets and bridges cut off for long periods. There is always more or less sentiment, after each Exposition is over, in favor of keeping things in their reformed and beautified condition, and not restoring the parade-ground to its military uses. If the troops can get along without it for so considerable a time, why can they not altogether ? The general government ceded the city a strip off the lower end for a park, — the site now occupied by M. Garnier’s historic exhibition of the habitations of men, — and as the Palace of Machines is to take another liberal strip off the upper end, this view, it is quite likely, may yet prevail.

The Eiffel tower stands four-square across the main avenue that extends throughout the Exposition, its grand arches, something like a hundred and thirty feet high, frame in, according to the way you look, either the hill of the Trocadero, beyond the river, or the whole nearer field of view. The arches in no way interfere with the vision; they seem rather to belong to heaven itself, I had expected to have to construct the Exposition for myself, at this early stage, from fragments and indications, as certain scientists find a rib and tooth or so of a mastodon in a swamp, and put together the whole skeleton for us in the Smithsonian Institution. But in fact no great effort of the imagination was necessary to conceive it already under a pretty complete and wholly charming aspect. Yonder, as I looked over the little gardener’s shoulder, was a veritable domain of fairy palaces on a great scale. It was seeing an Exposition in dishabille, it is true, but it was like being privileged to assist at the petit lever of one of the grandes dames of the eighteenth century, who received a select few while still dressing, and who were only the more beautiful for not yet having put on the complete war-paint and feathers of the day. Plenty of scaffoldings were still up. but through them the buildings could be perfectly well seen. “ The earth hath bubbles as the water hath, and these are of them.” Not that the shapes are especially bubble-like; the prevailing lines are horizontal. The material is chiefly iron, glass, terra cotta, and glazed tiles. The iron is painted soft blue instead of the conventional ugly red; the terra cotta is pink ; the tiles are richly colored or gilded; the sky shows delicate azure through the glass ; and bold grandiose sculpture begins to embellish the whole. The construction is exceedingly light and graceful, yet free from any air of ephemeralness, of pasteboard and trumpery makeshift. There is no need of bunting drapery or the arrival of commercial exhibits to cover up rude framing or unsightliness of any kind. Everything is beautifully finished, complete, perfect in itself. If the Exposition never went a step further than to give us these lovely buildings, even then it would have deserved no small measure of our gratitude.

The three domes are the three leading features and salient points of departure for the eye. They are elaborately framed up in iron, and faced with colored encaustic tiles, I acquired a taste for domes colored in encaustic tiles in Mexico, where they are a fine old Spanish tradition, and hardly expect now to get over it. All round the front of the Palais des Groupes Divers, or, as we should say, the main building, runs a two-storied arcade, abutting against the two high transverse galleries, the Galerie Rapp and the Galerie Dessaix, which form a division between the wings of the main building and the Palaces of the Fine Arts and the Liberal Arts respectively. Its upper story is formed into a frieze, some fifteen feet high, in the Renaissance manner, which is of the richest and most original description. It is fretted in very high relief with a tossing foam of leafage, scrolls, and cherubim supporting escutcheons. The figures are of more than life-size. The work is simply in plaster, to which a general tone of old ivory has been given, while portions, such as the borders and the shields, were being picked out with gold and colors. The part where this mingled sculpture and mosaic was already complete, serving as a specimen of the whole, was like a dashing, lovely sketch, which you would like to keep in its present condition. Plaster is naturally not the most durable of materials, but, treated as this is with something to harden its surface, it can easily last its six months’ exposure outof-doors during the pleasant season. It will be a great pity if. after that, some means be not found for reproducing this remarkable frieze in stone or terra cotta.

Like the bizarre details of a dream which begins to lose its vagueness, I saw here and there a monumental stork set upon the angles of the unfinished domes, indicating all the sculpture that is yet to follow. I went into a shop, standing temporarily in the lofty nave of the Palace of Fine Arts, and was amazed to see there the lightness of these figures which seemed so substantial, and the great ingenuity with which they were put together. The heads, claws, and the like were cast, but the chief portion of the huge bodies was built up simply on iron framework, joined together in sections. This was helped out by bits of wood and bent twigs, coming still closer to the modeling, and then wire netting was stretched over the whole. Upon this men with large bowls of plaster dashed handfuls of their material, and completed the work just about as a lath-and-plaster partition is made. The plaster being tinted with yellow ochre, and the surface left with its rough treatment, at a little distance precisely the effect of boldly finished terra cotta was attained. The wings alone of the figures must have been eight or ten feet high. There is no cheapness in the design, at least, of this plaster sculpture; it is the work of the very best talent of the day. It is to play a notable part in giving the facades their final grand appearance; but meantime I kept running across portions of it in a very quaint incompleteness. A procession of colossal legs, for instance, all of the same pattern, were to be seen marching, as it were, in vigorous military lock-step ; a few carrying their loose heads and arms on top. Again, a sturdy young woman, with a camera under one arm, representing Photography (as an amateur myself, I felt especially interested in her case), looked on, with a rather pert air, I thought, at, some workmen who were completing the lower part of her figure at a distance.

The classification of goods and general contents in this Exposition remains the same as at the last one. There are nine groups, into which everything must be distributed. Beginning with the raw materials in the usual way, they go on up to the highest products of man’s intelligence, — a plan which, as I have elsewhere maintained, would be excellent as a basis for education. I may here mention in condensed form these nine groups in their order: I. the Fine Arts ; II. the Liberal Arts; III. Furniture ; IV. Clothing; V. Raw Materials; VI. Machinery : VII. Food ; VIII. Agriculture ; IX. Horticulture. They are subdivided, of course, into numerous minor classes. Thus, for an example, you have Group II. extending from Class 6 (Education of the Infant, Primary and Adult Instruction) through Class 9 (the Printing and Manufacture of Books) and Class 14 (Medicine and Surgery) to Class 16, which comprises maps, geographical, cosmographical, and topographical apparatus. Group IV. comprises cotton, linen, wool, and silk goods; laces; accessories for the toilet; dress for both sexes ; arms ; articles for traveling and camping out; and more, each with a class to itself.

It was desirable to have a neat plan of everything contained in the heaven, the earth, and the sea all ready made to one’s hand, and easy to ask the nations to conform to it, but the difficulty of finding the best places for everything still remained. The problem has been settled in the present instance by giving Groups I., II., and VI. each a building to themselves; placing Groups III.. IV., and V. together in the Palais des Groupes Divers ; and making an entire department each of Groups VII., VIII., and IX. The former two are accommodated in a series of pavilions extending by the half mile, in a double row, along the winding Quai d’Orsay (which the very framing of the buildings deftly follows), and connecting the Champ de Mars with the Esplanade des Invalides. Group IX.. which includes also the important domain of forestry, will ornament and be ornamented by the pretty park of the Trocadero.

The strongest feeling, on first entering the yet unfurnished buildings, was that of new admiration for the beauty of simplicity. Who will make that doctrine prevail, especially in America? Who will convince us that the first condition of lasting, noble, and pleasant effect is rather large, plain shapes, smooth and temperate in the matter of ornament ? The multifarious undergrowth of lesser details had not yet sprung up, either outside or within. The plentiful breadth, the long vistas, the imposing height, still undisturbed by the “ exhibits ” of the coming human beehive, and the neatness of the untrodden flooring, were very grateful. In the main palace, the light dividing screens were being put up, each space opening into the next through a graceful portal, and the smell of the new pine filled the air. The British section had in progress an uncommonly good screen of Renaissance arches, with carved heraldic animals on top. In this edifice no large general effect is intended ; it is simply a succession of long, glazed galleries, not very high, and to be cut up into booths, like a vast bazaar. The foreign nations, as I have said, are chiefly in the wings. One is gratified to find the United States entitled to a smooth strip in the right wing, which contains over three thousand square metres of space. At present it is a pure tabula rasa ; it might furnish the theatre for an exhibition of any sort; and one can only hope we shall come out with as much credit as the last time, which was very well indeed. The strip terminates upon two of the characteristic long transverse galleries, where its decorative entrances will be arranged. We have more space allotted us here than any other exhibiting foreign nation except Great Britain and Belgium ; commensurate room also in the machinery department ; and when it comes to the fine arts, more room than any other foreign nation. I trust there is no error about this latter allotment, and that we may be able to fill it worthily; for in 1878 we exhibited only 165 pictures as against 726 from England, 644 from Italy, and so on; France herself showing 2071. The appropriation of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is not exorbitant, in view of the fact that Mexico, for instance, has contributed a million dollars.

The republican countries are perhaps receiving especial consideration from this Exposition, given by so very republican a government, and intended to fête at the same time the fierce revolt against monarchy in 1789. The South and Central American republics have chosen the plan of erecting separate pavilions for themselves, and these are scattered about the Eiffel tower in a settlement which will rank, like that of the French colonies in Algeria, Tunis, and the Indies, as one of the most attractive features of the exhibit. Their pavilions are as white and tropicallooking as plenty of lime-wash can make them, and the architecture is coquettish and dainty, with a touch of that Byzantine feeling which had been infused into Spanish Renaissance at the time when Spain conquered her vast American possessions. The enterprising Argentine Republic, which has lately made so much of a stir here in offering its loans at attractive interest, on all the dead-walls and bill-boards of the metropolis, will hardly fail to improve in good style such an occasion, to produce a further favorable impression on the French people. With characteristic thrift, its pavilion is so constructed as to be easily taken down and transported across the ocean, for use at home when the display is over.

It was really a risky thing in the French to ask the monarchies of Europe to take part in an Exposition having so distinctly for its object a jubilee in honor of that famous French Revolution which did so much to overthrow them. M. Jules Ferry, the distinguished minister and statesman, who had not fallen to his present degree of unpopularity, thought of this at the time the proposition was submitted to him by its promoters. He saw nothing weighty in the scruple, however. For, said he, " there is a distinction to be made between the principles of ’89 and those of the wild period of '93. During the century that has elapsed, the former have found general acceptance, and become the basis of the constitutional forms of government now actually prevailing in Europe. I do not see, therefore, where the monarchies can find any serious reason for declining. The more so,” he added, “ because France by the Exposition offers the most sincere guarantee for the peace of Europe.”

But it so happened, in fact, whether out of hostility to the principles of ’89 or not, that the monarchies did decline. The Orient did not bother with fine scruples, but of all those in Europe only the comparatively small kingdoms of Norway, Greece, and Servia have agreed to take an official representation.

In this condition of affairs, the republics might well be treated with the more favor. It need not he fancied, however, that the Exposition is going to suffer in its importance or dimensions from such apparent neglect. These are only sentimental questions, after all, and the success of the exhibits rests, as usual, with the people of the respective countries, who find their commercial profit in making them as full as possible. Committees were therefore organized, and in most of the great states the governments, being perfectly willing to aid the cause, once the sentimental scruple was got rid of, have dealt liberally with these private committees, voting handsome subsidies, which will be used pretty much in the usual way. Even in Russia, Austria. Italy, the Low Countries, and Great Britain, where the government has aided neither directly nor indirectly, the private initiative has taken hold with plenty of vigor and efficiency, and the results are expected to be not less striking than on previous occasions.

Most of the greater palaces, with their system of high and wide cross-galleries which serve as spacious lobbies for them, are built upon a general plan; to wit, a central nave covered by a skylight, and flanked by aisles two stories in height. The upper story makes a fine gallery, from the bays of which an excellent view is afforded of the large nave, and the lower is often an open arcade. It is satisfactory here to speak of palaces : the name is no misnomer: the structures to which it is applied are worthy of the name. Yes, it is good to be here. At present I do not regret being converted back again from the view that Expositions are tame, crowded, stuffy, uncomfortable to a degree, and carefully to be avoided by all sensible persons. Over yonder is the department of the fine arts, a thing of delicious grace and color, a magnified piece of jewelry, as it were, in opal and gold, a lovely creation in itself ; and presently this is to be filled with the finest pictures and statues in the world. And then the ceramics, and then — But it would only be to repeat a good part of the groups, from I. to IX., with their various classes, to enumerate all the possibilities that arise upon a little closer inspection of so great a storehouse of interest. Yes, it is really a grand and delightful thing, such a vast massing together of achievements of the arts of peace; and these spike-helmeted Germans, these red-trousered Frenchmen, this all-pervading militarism of Europe, — how wretched and petty in comparison are all the interests about which they contend or stand ready to contend!

The Palais des Machines appears worthy of its name even beyond the rest. What an improvement upon our “ Machinery Hall ” ! And the name seems to give the contents a human interest, as if the machines were a kind of genii who were coming to inhabit it. It is a grand, bright hall, some fourteen hundred feet by three hundred and eighty, raised upon pivot trusses, which sustain the framed glass-work. That is a riding-school indeed for a military academy. Perhaps some fortunate people in future days will have railway stations like this. You seem to breathe almost freer within the inclosure than without, since the sensation of great space is the more enjoyed for being a little bounded. Science and beauty are combined in a rare fashion in the pivot trusses. They meet in pairs overhead, making a curve of noble sweep. They weigh tons upon tons, and yet rest upon such a small point that only the most trifling space is occupied, and the palace is practically all in the air. The tall blocks of Paris houses round about it look in through its glass sides, and are much dwarfed in the process. Men of about the size of flies, suspended on swinging platforms, are painting its fardistant. interminable ridge-pole. Rows of stout iron supports are being set up to sustain all the array of shafts and belting. An elevated railway is to run along the top of one of these lines of support, to furnish visitors a favorable continuous view. The machines will soon be humming and clattering here, and their palace will have begun its best uses; but then what will have become of the charm of simplicity! I fear I am going to be perverse enough not to like it then half as well as I do now.

William Henry Bishop.