Characteristics of the International Fair

III.

THERE is no department in which so much artistic pretension is to be observed as in the British. Their china, much of it, affects the old styles of other countries and periods; their furniture is a distinct, resolute return to fashions of from seventy-five to a hundred and fifty years ago, with a view to expression; their wall - papers, carpets, and other matters of upholstery are controlled by the authority of South Kensington or the establishment of Messrs. Morris, Rossetti, and other artist-poets in Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury. To criticise these tendencies would be to enter upon a discussion of the present condition of taste and even art in England, — a vexed question.

A careful examination of the results has brought me to the conclusion that there is an immense outward effort now in Great Britain towards æsthetic progress, without the smallest impulse or inspiration from within. There is a struggle, a strain, which it would seem must produce distortion and unnatural development. There is no simplicity, no originality; oddity and exaggeration are almost universal. With regard to the forms of the furniture, the people who pride themselves — and justly — on their special comprehension of comfort, have been laughing for a long time at the straight-backed, spindle-shanked chairs and sofas of their forefathers, which seemed to refuse themselves to

an average rotundity. Having spent a great deal of pains in getting the shortest legs, deepest seats, widest arms, and softest padding which could bring the art of lolling to perfection, they suddenly revert to semi-classic shapes of genteel inconvenience and elegant constraint. To accommodate themselves to such chairs and couches there must be a marked reform in their manners and bearing. But in truth it is an absurdity, and its causes are nearly all to be found in false æsthetic notions. In the higher branches, too, we find nothing but imitations, adaptations, and affectations, even where the pre-Raphaelite school indulges its quaintest conceits. The Lambeth pottery, of the Doulton works, is an exception, but it struck me in its more ambitious examples, such as the great terra-cotta pulpit and font, as only fit to fill a place in some of the attempts to modernize Gothic architecture. To appreciate the absence of artistic merit in them it is only necessary to compare their figures and faces with the red clay groups of Norman fishermen and fisherwomen by M. Blot, in the French department. The Elkington ware attracts a great deal of admiration, and it is sumptuous in richness of both material and work: steel and bronze inlaid with precious metals, or the most elaborate repoussé work in silver and gold, hammered out by hand to an extreme point of relief and finish. It is splendid, it is superb, and yet — and yet — if we wish for a clew to our dissatisfaction let us turn from the Helicon vase, or the Paradise Lost shield, to the case in which are exhibited fac-simile duplicates of classic, or Renaissance, or ancient Oriental models. There is upon all the modern productions that industrial, mechanical stamp destructive to the rarity and costliness which properly belong to works of art that are also objects of luxury. None of them looks unique. But these are free from the vicious quality which pervades whole fields of manufacture and invention, and which is condensed, so to speak, in the pavilion of the South Kensington School of Needlework. That it is effective cannot be denied, but after all how bad it is! Such flowers and fruit grow only in the gardens of the Night Hag; they remind us of the blossom in Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter, or the pomegranate in the Arabian Nights which was an afrite, and the seeds of which changed into fish. It makes Mr. Walter Crane’s forlorn and foolish virgins the more pitiable that one can count the stitches in their noses. The worst of this school is the undeniable fascination which it exercises over the judgment and faculties; one ends by expecting to walk abroad and see the meadowflowers with heads askew and leaves akimbo emblazoned on a heraldic green field.

But in spite of these aberrations, the English are immensely in advance of us in all that makes a dwelling comfortable and attractive to the eye. Their little specimen rooms, papered, painted, carpeted, and crowded with furniture by Shoolbred, or some other wholesale dealer at whom the initiated would sniff, have a coziness and charm which the handsomest of our American houses do not attain. There is in the present fashion everywhere too great a breaking up of surfaces and planes, too little breadth and repose for the body or glance; and the English are a great way ahead of us on a wrong track. But if we could find their starting-point, get at the secret which underlies all the rubbish, and learn how to give our houses the homelike air which belongs to all their abodes (above those of poverty), we should have gained enough to repay us for whatever our Exhibition may cost.

All this has not been seen in a day. Meanwhile the Centennial has gradually gained possession of Philadelphia; it is the focus of existence here, the paramount interest and occupation. The formula by which a lady is excused to a visitor is no longer “Not at home,” or “ Engaged and begs to be excused,” but “ At the Centennial,” or, with the scrupulous, “ Has been at the Centennial all day, and is very tired.” The influx of strangers increases, and Philadelphia, which at this season is usually bagging up furniture in linen and closing her window shutters, is now opening her doors and lighting her halls in honor of her guests. The new University buildings and the Academy of Fine Arts have given opportunity for receptions to the commissioners and judges. The long suites, large and lofty rooms, and great staircases, where may be a multitude without a crowd, and the presence of so many men of distinction and mark, gave these entertainments a peculiar dignity and ease. The fine gallery which overhangs the stairway in the Academy, brilliantly lighted, with rows of handsome women beautifully dressed leaning over the balustrade, recalled to those coming up the steps some of Titian’s and Tintoretto’s festal scenes, minus the color. But that element (“ the noblest gift of God to man,” as Mr. Ruskin calls it somewhere) has been flooding our palehued thoroughfares lately; processions of soldiers are as common a feature as if we were a military people, and the grand parade of the Knights Templars, to the number of seven hundred, mounted and caparisoned with due regard to the splendid suggestions of their name, was a very gorgeous spectacle, even if to the mind it smacked of the ridiculous. A foreigner with the artistic temperament, and long acquaintance with this and many other countries, predicts that we are to excel in this particular line of picturesque show and effect, and says that our attempts are far superior to those of the English, — the sun and sky also helping much. Public-spirited citizens with long purses and fine houses have emulated the hospitality of the institutions. Dom Pedro has been rather the hero of these festivities. The plant which hedges an emperor does not grow in this country. Fortunately he has been much more concerned to see and hear everything than to protect his majesty, and he moves about among his republican hosts, the most active and inquiring of foreigners. There has been some reciprocity of civilities, giving us further opportunity of studying men and manners. The Brazilians, who have been great favorites in Philadelphia society all winter, have a frigate in the Delaware, on which, before the great heat began, they gave a gay ball. They celebrate mass on deck with military music every Sunday, which has attracted some visitors: if the proposal of the officers to follow up their devotions with dancing, after good Catholic custom, was heard on shore, the Quaker city must have asked herself, like the old woman in the song and story, “ If this be really I.” The British commissioners gave a kettledrum at their pretty head-quarters, St. George’s House, as they call their crosstimbered cottage. But the event of the foreign society has been a wedding at the Exhibition. A hundred years hence it will be correct to give all the gossip and detail which can be gathered about this pretty incident. Now a mere picture of the scene is all that is permissible. To begin with, the evening was extraordinarily beautiful. Sunset in the west and a storm in the east mingled their hues mysteriously, and filled the atmosphere with a suffused light of magic richness in which the landscape gleamed like an enchanted region, and the hardfaced Philadelphia houses glowed with the soft intensity of Venetian palacefronts; the mid-sky was like a strange, pure cerulean lake bordered by rippled sands of amber, over which hung a rainbow bridge ; the western horizon was roseate, barred with heavy purple, fused and reflected below in the Schuylkill in a darker, ruddier mass of color, across which rolled black smoke with flashes of crimson, from earth-born uses, producing the most magnificent combination,

like one of Turner’s great canvases. The cityward side of the Exhibition grounds has a fell glare, by night, from rows of gas-lit saloons of fanciful exterior ; a pious pilgrim might deem it a street in Vanity Fair — not Thackeray’s, but Bunyan’s. But inside the gates it was fairyland: lamps sparkling among the foliage up and down the soft knolls and dells, the vast dark outlines of the empty buildings defined by the subdued light within. Agricultural Hall, silent and deserted, with its cathedral-like roof and towers, all its windows aglow with mellow radiance, looked like a great church awaiting some mystic midnight rites. The marriage took place in the Judges’ Pavilion. The body of the building is taken up by a great hall of fine proportions, with an arched and frescoed roof; an open-work gallery, handsome but not heavy, runs round three sides; at the upper end an arrangement of shrubbery, flowers, and flags improvised a sort of chapel or chancel, and the door at the lower end was draped with the American colors. The company divided into two lines on opposite sides of the room, leaving a wide space open down its entire length; and the light summer dresses of the women, the prevalence of uniforms, the stately, bland bearing of the foreigners of Latin race (which neither we stiff yet nervous American Angles, nor our British brethren, nor our cousins German ever wholly acquire) combined to give great elegance and distinction to the general aspect of the assemblage. It looked official, diplomatic. The absence of drawing-room details, which are generally conspicuous in all except church weddings, conferred a grande air on the occasion; seldom is a simple maiden so royally married. Mendelssohn’s Wedding-March burst forth from an invisible band, and the bridal party entered the hall under the folds of the starspangled banner, and swept up between the ranks of friends to where the clergyman was waiting for them. It was a pretty group: the minister in his Geneva gown and ruff; the graceful, girlish bride, pale and tremulous, but calm, with her crown of myrtle, a little queen’s crown, according to her national custom; the bridegroom in his uniform; a little withdrawn, the circle of the parents, the freshfaced and white-robed bridesmaids, and more uniforms. The service, pronounced in Swedish, had a hearty, homely sound which gave a pleasant sense of remote familiarity even to those who understood not a word; the minister’s hands laid each on the head of the newly married pair during the Lord’s Prayer, which concluded the ceremony, added pathos and solemnity to his benediction. Then followed kisses between the bride and her parents and young friends, and a few embraces between the men, which looked strangely only to our eyes and those of the English, and which indeed struck me as very fitting at the moment. A little poem in Swedish, Greeting to the Bride and Bridegroom, written for the occasion, was distributed among the guests; tumblers of a sweet Swedish punch, made with arrack and most insidious in its potency, were offered for our undoing; and then it broke up into a mere wedding reception of unusual brilliancy. There was some talk of carrying out a lively Norse custom at the end of the evening: the bride, blindfold, plays at blindman’s-buff with the bridesmaids; the one caught is to be the next to wear the myrtle crown. But the emotions of the day had been too much for the young girl; though wedded under the parental wing, and surrounded by friendly faces, she was too far from home, and her future lay too sundered from it, for her happiness to be perfectly joyous; so she declined the blind-man’s buff, and the evening closed with a little dancing, to which the wide, smooth floor, cool, spacious hall, and charming music invited irresistibly. When we emerged from the pavilion with uncomfortable recollections of the ominous clouds, heavy as London fog, through which the lightning was playing two hours before, the summer moon was shining down from the most serene heaven and silvering the transparent vapors which hung lightly above the river. The drive back through the park was one of those simple things which stamp themselves on the memory for a life-time. The alternations of moonlight and shadow on the embowered roads, the calm masses of woodland mirrored in the water, the steady points of light on the shore reflected in long trembling lines, the quiet and loneliness, the sweet scent of new-mown hay mingling with the heavier perfume of catalpa and elder blossoms which gleamed white from the dark boskage, all joined in a silent epithalamium. One could fancy Cupid and Psyche hovering in the air to breathe their blessing on the nuptials.

The national anniversary, this year of jubilee, was not confined to the Fourth of July. Like the great sacred classic and Oriental festivals, it lasted for several days. The whole previous week rose towards it as to a climax; by Saturday it seemed as if system and sanity had come to an end. All the roads leading toward Philadelphia should have been marked by sign-posts, “ That way madness lies.” The railroad companies changed their hours from day to day, so that nobody could keep the run of them, and the ticket-agents resolutely refused the passengers time-tables, saying that they were printed exclusively for the use of conductors; besides which, the trains were all behind time, and rushed without stopping past platforms crowded with blank faces. The river steamboats, sunk deep in the water almost to a level with the lower deck by their loads, declined to touch at their appointed landings, where more crowds were waiting to come on board, the utmost concession being to near the wharf and allow adventurous passengers to jump ashore. In compensation, there was another train or boat the next minute. The express companies became for once objects of commiseration. Luggage was not delivered for thirty-six or forty-eight hours after the arrival of the hapless owners. Yet they could not complain when it was brought at last by haggard, spectral men, who had been up for two nights, with their magnificent horses reduced to subjects for the S. P. C. A. Hotels and private houses were so filled with distinguished people that one could not but speculate as to where the obscure lodged; celebrities began to be cheap. Hackmen threw off the last semblance of restraint, and, defying tariffs, statutes, and ordinances, demanded their own prices, and got them. On Saturday the Fourth began. The principal ceremony of that day was held at Independence Hall by the Committee of Restoration. The object of these gentlemen has been to reclaim the old “ State House ” from the disfigurements and defilements which it had gradually incurred during its long occupation by the courts. They have restored it as nearly as possible to the appearance it presented when it was the theatre of that great act which announced the birth of a new nation, the child of freedom. The moving spirit in the undertaking was Mr. F. M. Etting,¹ one of those antiquaries who concentrate themselves upon a single epoch or point of the past, as some naturalists do upon a single species. His study is the early history of this country. The Committee of Restoration three years ago appointed a board for the foundation of a National Museum, to preserve the relics of our past from the casualties to which they are liable in private keeping, that they may form an open chronicle to be seen and understood by the whole country. There was peculiar fitness in the choice of Independence Hall as the receptacle for such a collection, being, as it is, the patriotic possession of the nation rather than of any one State or section. But it has been a heavy, and has seemed at times a hopeless task to carry out the project. The board began by trying to wake an interest in the subject throughout the country, and by appointing ladies as representatives in every State. If it be hard to find the right man, how much harder to find the right woman! Yet in most of the States she has been found. Others would have it believed that neither man nor woman in all their borders had any sympathy in the enterprise. Other difficulties followed; three years ago and less, many people were violently opposed to an international celebration, and would have nothing to do with an association which, notwithstanding all explanations to the contrary, they persisted in considering a branch of the Centennial Commission; others were ardent partisans of the latter, and would not encourage an independent body, however friendly. Some thought that there ought to be such a collection in every State, instead of one for the country at large; some thought there should be but one, and that Washington was the proper site for it. There was a general disposition to call it the Philadelphia Museum, and build objections upon the misnomer. There was a general indisposition to part with family pictures, plate, arms, papers, etc., which was not found to be less obstinate even when these treasures were not inheritances, but purchases or windfalls. Some who demurred at parting permanently with their relics were not more ready to do so on learning that the museum was designed to be in great measure a loan collection. It is the history of most beginnings.

Mr. Etting’s first achievement was to restore Independence Hall to the aspect which it wore during the first Congress. The speaker’s chair and table were replaced, and many of the members’ chairs recovered, with no little pains, from the honor or neglect which had been their later portion; the walls were hung with portraits of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and of revolutionary army officers, many of them originals of great merit. Lately, too, that precious document itself, whose words and names are fading from sight while they are coming out stronger and brighter to reverence and remembrance, has been placed in the east chamber, framed and raised upon a stand, where thousands daily come to look upon it. The west chamber, now the National Museum, looks like an old curiosity shop; furniture, weapons, raiment, trinkets, silver, china, pictures, embroidery, parchments, are displayed there, with fragments and remnants such as find place in all similar collections. Each article has its legend, its link with notable people, places, or events. There are some fine pictures, others not so good; a number of lovely miniatures, and the greater part of that interesting and charming gallery of likenesses called the Sharpless crayons. There are beautiful specimens of old lace and porcelain; also household stuff, wearing apparel, visiting-cards and cards of invitation bearing distinguished names; in short, material from which to reconstruct the domestic and social manners of the successive periods of our existence for two hundred years. There is an immense amount of personal interest and romance lingering about many of these tarnished and time-stained objects. Paul Jones’s alemug, General Wayne’s field-glass, the original pine-tree banner, with its thirteen mailed arms grasping the welded links, stir something beyond mere curiosity: far more do Faith Trumbull’s biblical tapestry, and the tiny baby-clothes of John Quincy Adams, stitched with exquisite and patient fineness by his mother’s hand, which could wield a pen not less ably.

The museum has been slowly gaining in public knowledge and favor, and even during the first meagre twelvemonth it drew hundreds of visitors daily. This year has given it a great impetus; the most generous gifts and loans have come from all parts of the country, in such quantities that the Academy of Fine Arts offered a room as an annex to the exhibition at Independence Hall, which overflowed with its treasures; while the rush of people thither has been too great to allow of much being seen by anybody. Here, on Saturday, the first of July (the real anniversary, falling on Sunday, being unavailable), was commemorated the day when the first signature was affixed to the Declaration of Independence, and when Washington issued a general order to the troops to prepare for immediate action; of which John Adams wrote on the morrow to his wife: “ The second day of July will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America.” The Committee of Restoration and the ladies of the National Museum board received the American authors and antiquarians who were in town, many of whom came from their own distant cities expressly to be present. One of Mr. Etting’s desires has been to secure material for a history of Independence Hall, to which end he has endeavored to obtain, from those best qualified to prepare them, short biographical notices of the men prominent in the great measures enacted there, many of whom are forgotten in all but name. This was fixed upon as an appropriate occasion for presenting the manuscripts. Accordingly the guests assembled in the west chamber, “ like the patriots of a hundred years ago,” said Judge B—— of Philadelphia,

“ each with his life in his hand.” Thence they passed into the east chamber, into the presence of that imposing circle of empty chairs, and stood under the gaze of the men who once filled them, — men who bequeathed liberty to their country, and in the fullness of time to the world. Mr. Etting, in a short, spirited address, which rang with the eloquence of enthusiasm, set forth the occasion of the meeting, the object of the National Museum, and what had already been accomplished. The regular ceremonies followed, beginning with a prayer by the Rev. W. W. Bronson, a descendant of the saintly Bishop White, the first Protestant Episcopal bishop of this country, long rector of Christ Church and St. Peter’s, of Philadelphia, who presided at the convention which ratified the American Book of Common Prayer in 1789. Then the gentlemen and ladies who had brought the biographical notices were called up, and the subjects of their memoirs announced as the manuscripts were handed in. There was crowd, confusion, conversation, and an excitement so inseparable from the time, place, and moral condition of the audience, that description must fail to renew the impression. Yet imagination can easily guess the thrill with which bystanders heard the names of Ethan Allen, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and many more such, called aloud, and saw living men go forward in answer. From Independence Hall the meeting adjourned to a vast platform over the south door, projeeting into Independence Square, where several thousand people were assembled, while twice or thrice the number had gathered under the trees to listen to the speeches and the music. Little of either was audible to the majority of the spectators, yet nobody seemed dissatisfied; there was an accumulating fervor in the air, and people found their own emotions enough for them.

Of all the music which the Centennial commemoration has called forth, the most absolutely, completely successful composition is Paine’s Hymn. It is a large, serious melody, in the best style of sacred music; connoisseurs cannot find fault with it, while its strain, at once elevated and popular, is easily comprehended and caught by the mass; it has some of the grandeur of Old Hundred, with more depth of meaning, better expressing the introspective bent of the modern mind even in prayer and thanksgiving: it nobly answers to Whittier’s noble words. It is already a fixed fact; everybody understands, knows, sings it; it is recognized at the first bar, and accepted with Hail Columbia and The Star-Spangled Banner. On these great national days it has been disappointing, and to some degree painful, to listen vainly for those familiar tunes, which seem to be superseded by a nonsensical adaptation of an Irish patriotic air, and a still more absurd one of God save the Queen. But if our national anthems are to lose the place they have so long held in our hearts and on our lips, we are doubly fortunate in having this fine hymn in the very hour of their decline, possessing, moreover, the advantage of being wholly American, in both words and music. Next to the triumphs of patriot-heroes and statesmen, we can fancy no higher, purer joy for a man who loves his country than the consecration of his inspirations to her service and glory by the universal voice of his countrymen. Whittier has spoken the best feelings of Americans so often and so well that his last lofty and beautiful verses are like the Nunc Dimittis of his serene old age. To a man like Mr. Paine, who hitherto had won the suffrages of the initiated principally, this sudden unanimous recognition, so early in his career, should fill his soul with a high, exultant happiness not often vouchsafed to mortals save in some supreme culminating moment.

All Sunday the bright summer sky echoed with salvos, and flags waved and fluttered like the floating over of clouds, the flutter of leaves, the flight of birds; they were everywhere. For many people now living the first days of July will always revive one recollection above all others. There must be few Pennsylvanians of the present generation to whom they do not recall the beginning of July. 1863, when the battle of Gettysburgh held the country in suspense for three mortal days and nights, while the hours were counted by telegrams. The issue was momentous to the whole North, to this State and city it was vital; when the morning of the fourth brought the decisive news, it was not victory which Philadelphia celebrated, but deliverance. Many of the churches were open for early prayer on those terrible days, when ordinary existence had come to a standstill and living was limited to hope and fear; the few men who had remained behind were there with the women; it was on coming out from service on the morning of the fourth that the tidings of Meade’s victory met us in the street. On Monday, July 3, 1876, there was a very interesting and solemn service at Christ Church, the oldest Episcopalian church in the State. It was founded in 1695, and American independence was recognized on the day of its proclamation, by the rector (then chaplain of Congress) and vestry; it was the church attended by the president as long as Philadelphia continued the seat of government. The absence of an established church, and still more the lack of a great consecrated building capable of containing masses of people, will always interfere with general religious celebrations; those held in the open air want the impressiveness of sacred limits. The high, old-fashioned pews of Christ Church were packed close, and the staircases leading to the galleries served as tiers of seats, yet the assemblage did not exceed by many hundreds the usual congregation. Still, it was very different from an every-Sunday audience; at the sight of the open doors and sound of the chimes, people poured in from the streets eager to join in what was going forward; this had been foreseen, and the regular places had been long occupied; there was an interval of expectation the very opposite in effect to the ordinary quarter of an hour before service. The wellknown contagion of excitement is almost invariably promoted in a crowd by movements, shouts, cheers, slight incidents, sayings struck from an electric mind which flash hither and thither and become watch-words: in Christ Church it was a congregation, not a crowd, and it was silent and stationary; yet waves of magnetic sympathy passed over the meeting; thoughts of the century fulfilled and memories of thirteeen years ago mingled in a flood of meditation and thanksgiving which rose higher and higher as the bells pealed and the worshipers flocked in, until at last, when the long procession of bishops and clergy swept up the aisle, and the organ and choir broke out with —

the tide had reached its height, and turning spread in swift currents of emotion over the hearers.

Parades had begun at an early hour; the railway trains were bringing regiments from every direction, the streets were blocked to see them pass, the air resounded with the strident music of military bands. They were all greeted with hearty welcome and applause, and fine new banners with garlands and streamers gleamed over the heads of the crowd; but whenever a continuous huzza followed the line of march down the sidewalks, rising into a roar as it drew near, it heralded certain torn and faded colors, memorials of the men who had brought it to pass that the nation was keeping its feast as one. Receptions, ceremonies, festivities, were going on all day long and throughout the evening. Night came with illuminations and a torchlight procession; the whole population sat on the roofs, or at windows, or on door-steps, or thronged the sidewalks, until hours after the bell of Independence Hall boomed midnight, thus merging the third in the fourth.

The heat had been increasing for a week, and the morning fairly blazed, although great white clouds now and then cast compassionate shadows, and a fresh breeze flapped the bunting and canvas of the awnings; but I do not believe that it kept a single person at home; nothing was counted a drawback on that day, and not only were all the inhabitants of Philadelphia in the streets, but hosts from elsewhere. In spite of this prodigious concourse there was no disorder; and those who had invitations to the ceremonies at Independence Hall — for it was decided to hold them there, and not at the Exhibition — reached it without difficulty. The platform and square presented the same spectacle as on Saturday, with numbers indefinitely multiplied and a more intense enthusiasm. Again the music and speaking were lost to everybody except a few score on the reporters’ benches, but again they were felt to be a subordinate part of the occasion; the fact of being there, the sight of the multitude, the sense of what it meant, were the chief sources of enjoyment. So there is no need to speak of Dr. Holmes’s hymn, nor of Mr. Dexter Smith’s chorus, nor of the vice-president’s address. The president’s absence put the finishing stroke to the sum of his offenses; it was the most condensed yet crudest statement of his estimation of the dignity of the country, the occasion, and his office. The credit of the day and nation could only gain by his absence; his own suffered as far as he has left room for it to lose. We will not dwell upon it. One must be thoroughly ungrateful and ungenerous not to feel that the course of President Grant gives cause for sorrow far deeper than any anger or disgust it may excite.

Very few words of anybody’s were heard that day. Mr. Bayard Taylor’s clear, agreeable delivery now and then sent a couplet of his ode chiming through the remoter circles of his audience; but most of us forebore to strain our ears, and waited to see it in print, as well as Mr. Evarts’s oration, the force and grasp of which could only be guessed from the pale, powerful face he turned from time to time upon the thousands pressing on every side to catch a sentence. The climax of the rites was when Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, standing where Leverett Saltonstall had stood on Saturday and told us about his Puritan ancestors, read the Declaration of Independence from the original manuscript. At the sight of that creased and discolored paper the shouts of the vast assembly burst forth. It was held up towards the square, and the people shouted again and again with a mighty acclamation. “Turn it round!” rang from the platform : it was turned towards them, and the shouts went up anew. It was a great sight, a great sound, the heartfelt reverence and rejoicing of a nation.

The rest of the day was spent in company with two hundred thousand fellowbeings at the Exhibition, where it was cooler than anywhere else. The great halls wore a more varied and animated aspect than usual; the uniforms of the military and religious associations, some of which were very pretty and effective, scattered color and costume thickly through the crowd, and made up for the want of foreign picturesqueness which has been so often lamented. A strong desire for a fancy dress combined with remarkable readiness to be satisfied was to be observed. I saw one old man apparently quite complacent with the effect of a green feather in addition to a common black felt hat and his every-day clothes. The standard-bearers of different companies walked about through the crowd, with their flags wrapped round the long lance - headed pole, as unconcernedly as if it were as convenient for themselves, and others, as carrying an umbrella.

Being strongly drawn that day to whatever was especially American, Machinery Hall was my chosen field of inspection. The place makes an extraordinary impression upon everybody, and probably those who understand nothing of

what they see are more imaginatively affected than those who know all about valves and pistons. The predominating impression is that of manifold movement. One is amazed to see how many sorts of motion there are, and how they can be expressed by those soulless, senseless machines. Besides the slow and swift, the tremendous and insidious, there are others which do not convey the idea of powers and properties, but of emotions; persons unfamiliar with the varieties of machinery think of its action as regular and steady, but here one sees it not only quivering and tremulous, but startled, spasmodic, convulsive. Some of them in discharging their functions seem to be guided by an infallible instinct, like intelligent brutes; others, by reason and reflection: they pause, they ponder, then they do. The action of some is facetious and jocose, like a broad grin in iron or steel; some members of the meat-choppers look as if they were executing a double - shuffle out of sheer hilarity. There are bands which glide and coil as noiselessly as serpents, and in other directions one sees a wild grace inconsistent with the laws and purposes of machinery: above one of the agricultural implements a, long strip or scarf of tricolor waved and flickered like flame, while below, through a small square of glass set like a window in the side of the wooden case, could be seen a handful of little particolored ribbons, slim as leeches standing on their tails, dancing a weird dance by themselves, like daylight will-o’-thewisps. Nowhere else are the triumphs of ingenuity, the marvels of skill, so displayed and demonstrated; there is something at once sublime and infernal in the spectacle. Machines claim nothing for themselves, they make no boast, but silently perform their task before your eyes; the mode in which it is effected is a mystery; the spools, shuttles, spindles, are there, so is the raw material; one sees the means and the result, but the process is invisible and inscrutable as are those of Nature; even where it lies bared before you there is a point, the turning-point, where it eludes observation. Surely here, and not in literature, science, or art, is the true evidence of man’s creative power; here is Prometheus unbound.

Long contemplation of the machinery induces an oppression which must weigh heavily on the more sensitive operators. The huge swing of the Corliss engine, the heavy fall of the watery sheet which closes the south transept, the ceaseless, multifarious motion from which the eye cannot escape, the pursuing thought of so much intricacy, complexity, and above all brain-toil, beget at last overwhelming weariness. A young girl among the assistants was apparently overcome by it; she sat succumbing, a red bow in her hair being evidently the final touch, the feather which broke the camel’s back.

As the long day drew to a close, the Schuylkill became a crowded highway. The river was covered with little steamers no bigger than punts; long, slender, club racing-boats, with their crews in scarlet, blue, or cream - colored shirts; little row - boats, often manned but by two, one of whom wore white muslin and was crowned with ferns or flowers; and low, heavy barges, on whose decks reclined pleasure - seekers bare-headed to the evening breeze. Many of them were shaded by striped awnings, and every rope and spar was alive with flags and pennons, as if myriads of bright birds had alighted on them. The sunset was gorgeous and ominous, and the water gave back the splendor of the sky in deep geranium dyes. A display of fireworks was to be given at Fairmount, the extremity of the vast park which touches the town. In approaching it from the west bank, the slopes were seen to be covered with an innumerable crowd; no huddling flocks, or serried battalions, or even close growth of bushes over wide campaign or moorland, ever gave me such a sense of countless hosts. They came streaming out of all the streets by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, each avenue pouring forth its human torrent, to which as far as eye could reach there was neither break nor end. It looked as if the population, not of the city or State, but of the entire continent, were gathering together. And what a muster of well-dressed, well-behaved, good-humored, happy people! That peaceable, prosperous burgher multitude might well stand for our whole folk in its best aspect. It was unlike anything I ever beheld in this country or any other. Legions of police could not have restrained them if there had been the least disposition to riot or panic; but in the thirteen hours we passed in the streets, squares, park, on steamboats, railway trains, and horse-cars, none of our large party witnessed one disorderly act, heard a coarse or angry word, or saw a single tipsy person. It was a grand and memorable spectacle. The solemn import of the day had penetrated the masses. There was no excitement, no exuberance of spirits or merriment, but a universal expression of gladness and rejoicing. This, and the tenor of the public speeches, and the temper in which these were received, were the pleasantest and most hopeful signs an anxious American could have asked. The lessons of the last few years have not been thrown away upon the national conscience. There was no self-glorification or arrogance; our great blessings, our prosperity, our good fortune, our high promise were remembered joyfully and gratefully, but no one said: “ By the strength of my hand have I done it, and by my wisdom. ”