Characteristics of the International Fair

IV.

PUBLIC education holds the next place to machinery among the evidences of American progress. A detailed investigation and report of this department belongs to specialists, but a visit to the little state cells in the southern gallery of the Main Building is instructive and amusing even to an idler. A few patent facts abide by me after a careless and cursory survey, such as the absence of representation from the Southern States, — below Virginia there is nota name, though this will not surprise anybody who has some acquaintance with the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida; likewise the pretention of Massachusetts, which takes three times the space of any other State, with by no means thrice as much to show; also the intelligence and ambition of the West, — Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. In these and some other States there is an immense advance within twenty years in the number of pupils, teachers, and school-houses, in the length of the school term, and in the salaries, as shown by statistical charts; the census-tables must be consulted, however, before conclusions can be drawn as to the improvement indicated by these figures. Much attention seems to be paid to natural history, to judge by cases of birds, insects, shells, minerals, and herbariums, all carefully classified; and these were particularly good in the above-mentioned Western States. There is a fine set of plates or photographs for astronomical study, where the sun is shown in every stage of sickness, including a horrible scorbutic bleeding at the edges while in eclipse; and the “groups of sun-spots in full activity ” look like demoniac Crustacea tearing each other. I wish as much could be said for the prospects of drawing. In many places it has been admitted as part of the public-school system only within a few years and after a struggle which still goes on, the parents

often objecting on the ground of inutility and loss of time. The truth is that unless a better method of teaching be introduced, it does lose time. The condition of drawing is deplorable everywhere except in Massachusetts, where the work of the Boston Industrial School’s free evening classes is the best, and in the city of New York at the Cooper Institute. These specimens are not remarkable, but they are respectable, and if they truly represent the average accomplishment of the pupils, they are all that can be asked. Next come some crayon-studies from casts, in the Ohio department, but as far as we could learn they are only from the Cincinnati School of Design, and therefore the work of art - students exclusively. This is not the place to discuss whether drawing be desirable as a part of public education; where it has been adopted, we may infer that it is judged to be so; but most people will agree that nothing can be gained by its being ill - taught. It is evident that the greater portion of the examples are copied from flat surfaces, and that there are extremely few drawn from nature; there are cases full of water-color flowers, exact in every detail, but as much like real ones as the flowers on chintz or tin-lacquer. There are other cases filled by small landscapes done with leadpencil and stump on paper having readytinted skies, like the worst style of titlepage vignette, —and designs of fanciful impossibilities fit only for cheap valentines. The execution is worthy of the conception. Now the pupils are not to blame for this, nor the teachers either, if they know no better, but somebody ought to make it his business to tell both parties how bad it is. The pity of it lies in the grace and sentiment expended on many of these wretched productions, the accuracy with which the flowers are copied, the ingenuity and taste shown in the adaptation of simple given forms, like a bell, a star, a square, a scalloped line, into designs for wall-paper, oilcloth, etc. There is unmistakably great natural facility and capacity for development in this direction, and it is most desirable that those of them whose talent and inclination point to these vocations should not have their earliest instruction of a sort to put them on the wrong track or extinguish every spark of artistic discernment. As to others, for whom the chief result would be cultivation of the perceptive powers, it is equally important that they should be taught to see right and not wrong.

Indiana sends some very pretty, delicate black lace and embroidery on white muslin from the high schools at Fort Wayne, a little entangled in pattern, like the work of those unused to combining the elements of decoration, but promising well; however, the conditions for establishing lace-making as a branch of industry are wanting in this country, and at the West more than anywhere else; and long may it be so. Among the designs for pottery from the same place there are a few good ones for cups and saucers, simple, effective, and agreeable, having the true idea of decorative treatment. They were not startling, but sound, and equally removed from the affectation and exaggeration of much English work of the same order, and the dead imitation of nature which is the weak side of ours, an extreme instance of which is to be seen in the graceful and elegant wood - carving from Cincinnati in the Women’s Pavilion, and also in the tile and china painting from the same place.

Pennsylvania education occupies a separate pavilion near the Art Annex, and outdoes the Massachusetts exhibit; but Pennsylvania is well entitled to the lion’s share in show and space, considering what her share has been of the toil and cost of the Exhibition. Her publicschool system has always stood high, and is here fully illustrated; the central compartment of the building is chiefly appropriated to a fine collection of scientific apparatuses. The surrounding alcoves represent for the most part the colleges of the State, which are too numerous, as is known to everybody interested in American universities. The alcoves of the Sunday-School Union offer a curious subject for examination and reflection; the tendency of their teaching, as far as it bears on secular information, which to a certain degree it frequently must, especially on history and science, is to contradict what the pupils are learning six days of the week. A melancholy though meritorious cause, “ school ornamentation ” as it is called by its advocates, is illustrated by a poor little muddy fountain, some sickly plants, a couple or so of paltry plaster-casts, and a good many poor engravings, lithographs, etc., though fortunately Rogers’s groups are there also, and a very few fine old plates by Woollett and French engravers, as well as some good popular ones, such as Landseer’s. The drawings and etchings from the Philadelphia School of Design and Girard College were very fair, but not original, and almost without exception copied from the flat.

One consequence of the bad method in drawing is the absence of handsome maps, although there are plenty of very creditable ones. Among the best is a large and careful one of Maine, exhibiting its principal resources, — lumber and fisheries,— by Masters Fogg and Frost, of Lewiston, Maine, whose names suggest the notion that the genii of the State have turned themselves into imps and gone to school. In the compartment of the same State there are a score or more of little slates hooked in a frame, every one inscribed, “ Of making of books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” as if a whole class of small souls had grown desperate simultaneously. Funny things may be seen by peeping into the copy-books, but to repeat them would be telling tales out of school. Ohio gives proof of praiseworthy energy and enterprise in all that relates to mental and artistic improvement. Our native inventiveness is shown in the educational department by many contrivances for keeping order and saving room, among which is the simple, efficient device of photographing blackboard-work, which otherwise could not be exhibited, on cards the usual size of a stereoscopic view. A survey of this field makes one realize with peculiar force the many-sided intelligence of our people, their versatility, their intellectual ambition, their strong æsthetic propensities. From one point of view their position is pathetic, for they are as sheep wanting a shepherd. No doubt, in time worthy ones will be found; meanwhile the danger to the flock is in believing that they can dispense with them.

It is somewhat depressing to descend from these higher regions to the floor of the Main Building, and begin a round of indigenous shops and factories. I have noticed that people grow cross in the Main Building more easily than in other parts of the Exhibition; the want of homogeneousness in the array at once distracts and fatigues the attention. Perhaps this general fact, and the sensitiveness of patriotism, may account for a degree of irritability which a prolonged examination of our national industries produced in me. If there was not actually more vulgarity than in the British department, it was more annoying. The furnished rooms look like the bridal chambers of our hotels or the saloons of our great river steamboats: there are huge mirrors in hideous frames; elaborate chimney -pieces over closed fire-places where no cheerful glow can ever brighten the hearth; handsome, heavy, tasteless carpets and curtains. A few are not so bad; among others, a library and dining-room by Moore and Campion, of Philadelphia; but the chairs and sofas looked stiff and hard. The fault of our furniture is that it is not comfortable, though almost always too fine for use. We do best in what appertains to summer use; the bamboo, willow, and wickerware, which the Delaware Cane and Wakefield (Massachusetts) Rattan companies, notably the latter, have carried to such a point of prettiness and convenience, could hardly be excelled for uniting comfort and coolness; a room furnished entirely with them, with India matting and muslin curtains, would have been a refreshing sight during the month of July. Henkel, of Philadelphia, has a very pretty set of bed-room furniture for a country-house, in what he calls “ style of 1776,” made of a maple-tree from Independence Square supposed to have been over two hundred years old; there could not be many sets equally venerable, but the same articles in maple of younger growth, would replace very happily the so-called cottage furniture, which has gone out of favor. There is a display of furniture all made of looking-glass, by a New York house, of course, which might have been useful to the Inquisition for subjects who could not be quelled by the rack. Our mirrors are entirely inferior to the French, for ornamental purposes. It would be worth while to try to fathom the source of the vulgarity which spoils so many of our productions. Why are our terra-cotta garden-figures so ugly and common-looking. even when they reproduce the Diana of the Louvre, the Apollo Belvedere, or the vase of the Villa Albani? The specimens in the Italian department are coarse, about as bad as possible for Italy, in fact; but how superior to ours! Compare, too, Rogers’s groups, the talent and spirit of which are undisputed, with Eugène Blot’s figurines in the French department. The latter have the advantage of being in clay, not plaster, and of being modeled by the artist’s hand, instead of being turned out wholesale from a mold; but the difference lies deeper: the French groups represent every phase of the shore-life of Norman fisher-folk, and every type of the class; these people are not handsomer, more intelligent, nor more interesting objects than American soldiers, village divines, country doctors, and Mr. Rogers’s other subjects, and they are simply occupied about their homely calling, with none of the sentiment and pathos of Mr. Rogers’s “situations;” yet M. Blot’s works have a stamp of distinction which, apart from any question of talent, raises them far above our countryman’s pleasing compositions. No one who has seen a French burying-ground will be over-severe on our own bad taste in the memento mori line, yet did any foreign international exposition ever present such a funereal show as the necropolis in the Main Building, with its mortuary columns and vases and inconsolable females, its monument with the names of a dead wife and child, its shiny pillar and urn, ready for immediate use, and sold to a Western senator?

The question whether we are, or are to become, a musical nation seems to meet a favorable answer in the number of manufacturers who send their pianofortes, melodeons, and organs from all the principal cities of the Union, from the valley of the Ohio and green hills of Vermont. Some of the pianos, the Chickering and Steinway certainly, take rank with the best foreign ones, and I know by experience that Erard, Pleyel, and Broadwood do not stand our climate so well as the former. The finest American piano I ever heard was one of Chickering’s, last, winter, in New York. It was so powerful, sweet, brilliant, yet full-toned and even, that its mere sound was delightful, like the notes of a beautiful human voice, independent of the performer or what he played. There was great satisfaction in knowing it to be a native American instrument, and not merely naturalized, like Stein way’s and so many others.

The ferocious, unrelenting heat of July caused the saddest falling off in the dressing of the ladies at the Exhibition. What we suffered, which was much aggravated by our clothes, suggested to men and women all sorts of vain hopes for a real dress-reform, something which should approximate to the Chinese fashion, in both shape and material: it was trying to behold the coolness of those barbarians in their light, loose attire. Nevertheless it is hard that the ordinary dressing of American women, who come next to the French in that accomplishment, should be traduced by Madame Demorest’s paper patterns, with horrible wax-figures bedizened like scarecrows to show her perfect work. The remarkable improvement in our dressgoods brings good dressing within the reach of every class of our countrywomen, without laying them open to the reproach of extravagance, which they have incurred from revolutionary times until this day. The cotton prints are as pretty as possible, neat, fresh, elegant, and of endless variety. They look just as they ought to do. The Lowell and Fall River manufactures are the best, where all are good; they are really as pretty as French linens, and incredibly cheap. There are also very nice alpacas from the Manchester mills. Some brocaded pieces in Quaker colors are as handsome as Irish poplins, to the sight. Of course in all textile fabrics the final test is touch, which cannot be applied here, but they look soft and rich. The silks are not so beautiful, relatively, as the prints, but are in very good taste as to both color and pattern; of those I noticed the best came from Mr. Stearns, of New York, and the Passaic Mills, Paterson, New Jersey, Our woolen goods, blanket shawls, and rough cloth stuffs for men’s winter wear are also very nice-looking, though generically uninteresting to a dilettante.

In going through the department of home - manufacture I was constantly struck by the better provision made for the million than for the few, and with this observation came the distressing doubt whether with all our aptitude and versatility we should ever attain to the more splendid and refined branches of luxury and taste, the fruits of which few only covet and fewer still can command. Some objects of domestic use may be either necessaries or luxuries according to their beauty and costliness, and the position of these in our manufactures confirms my fears. For instance, our wall-papers are not pretty and our carpets are mostly hideous, but they improve in inverse ratio to the price; the cheapest are the prettiest; it does not imply that the classes that can afford only an ingrain carpet have truer taste than those that buy velvet ones, but that more thought and talent are given to designing the former than the latter. The only remedy for this which occurs to me at present is, that those who purchase the more expensive kinds should refuse to pay for vulgarity and ugliness. By furnishing bedrooms, halls, stair-ways, with pretty, cheap, home-made carpets, enough would be saved to buy in India one for the drawing-room or the library.

Though much of the American exhibition is exceedingly good, that alone which struck me as thoroughly complete and perfect was the section of the signal-service, coast-survey, military engineers, and exploring expeditions, in the United States Government Building. These are so fully and explicitly illustrated, so systematically and simply arranged, that with a little attention the most complex contrivances become intelligible to the least scientific comprehension. The models of light-houses and break-waters, and of the submarine excavations at Hellgate, would he delightful playthings if they were not most interesting demonstrations. There are more of these reduced copies in the naval department than in any other, but they are larger and less enticing. Among them, however, is a most beautiful miniature reproduction of a French line-ofbattle ship, the Dante, built in 1600, a three-decker, carrying seventy-four guns. The uniforms of our army and navy are worn by a set of life-size manikins, of such absurd figure and physiognomy that some wag must surely have had a hand in constructing them.

The Government Building gives the most realizing sense of the immense size and resources of the country, which seems to unroll before us as we advance, revealing unsuspected wealth in the familiar fields around our daily paths, until we penetrate those marvelous mid-regions where everything is as strange as the landscape of another planet. There is a section devoted to native arborology, where the little streets are lined with tree-trunks, above which, like mural decorations, are assorted the pressed leaves and blossoms of each species. Pomology makes a magnificent display, reassuring after the frequent fears and predictions that our apples were gradually failing. Then follow enormous pumpkins and squashes, as at a state fair. Our fisheries are represented in every form and branch, from the admirable and beautiful collection of fac-similes of our native fish sent by the Smithsonian Institution, to

“ The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann “

in miniature, with all their implements and appliances; and those who look for the first time on a lobster-pot or a basket eel-pot will find new subjects of surprise. The hunter’s life is not forgotten, with the paraphernalia of the chase and its cunning traps and springs. Akin to this is the department of the American Indians, containing a full collection of weapons, costumes, and handiwork, baskets and bead - work and rude embroidery on cloth and buckskin. An effigy of Red Cloud in full warrior’s panoply makes a centre for this zone of wild life. With the tragic fate of General Custer and his brave troops so fresh in mind, not many of us are inclined to sentimentalize over the Indian just now: yet there is matter for melancholy and remorse too in the position of things. The contrast between this enormous exhibition of what we have achieved since our forefathers came from the other hemisphere, our rapid prosperity, and our incalculable future, with the fate of the true children and masters of the soil, cries shame upon us. It is false to say that the wrong is not of our day and doing, that it is too late to mend and useless to bemoan it; the wrong is repeated every day, and its correction is a problem with which those to whom it, is set as a lesson do not concern themselves. The futility of some of the proposed solutions may be seen in the show-cases of the Indian schools: drawings of the same grade as were made on birch-bark two hundred years ago, and a patch-work quilt which is about as poor a sample of needle-work as one can see, the performance of nine Modoc girls after two years’ tuition. One is glad to turn away from the miserable and helpless pathos of the sight to the more distant tribes of the northwestern coast, with whom we have neither wars nor treaties. I do not know whether ethnology has detected any relationship between them and their Mongolian neighbors of the steppes, but they seem to differ distinctively in many respects from the red men of our plains. They live not in tents or wigwams but in small, spuare, wooden houses, whose fronts are daubed with the most grotesque and barbarous devices, among which a lidless, browless eye recurs with disquieting frequency. The entrance is in the centre, through an opening in a projecting post rudely carved into a series of hideous monsters one on top of the other, painted in crude colors; some of these figures have a distant, deformed resemblance to man, others to the lower animals; one of these was a monster unlike anything on earth or in the water under the earth, on the head of which sat a monster like a seal, on which again sat a monster like a man in a peaked hat. This was a simple one, for there were others in which birds alternated with beasts surmounted by human prodigies, ten deep, the mankind having huge noses projecting like pumphandles. But the real mystery begins when we get among the remains of the mound-builders, and of the cave-cities so far more wonderful than the lake-villages of Europe. The stone utensils are like those of most early communities; the little leering and mowing stone images are as ugly and malign as Chinese joshes and other Eastern idols; hut the pottery presents some riddles: on several fragments there is the Doric fret, archaic in its proportions, but variously treated, evidently a familiar decoration. There are also small jars with human heads and bodies uneouthly indicated, showing the anthropologic tendency which has of late been the subject of speculation as found in the ancient Greek vases, and of which instances are given in M. Schliemann’s book on the antiquities of Troy. Among the old Mexican earthenware are horrible little half-formed faces not bigger than a gold-eagle piece, recalling, nevertheless, the perfectly executed little Japanese masks, which look as if intended for a Liliputian carnival. No doubt the day will come, as it has come for Egypt and Nineveh, when scholarship will disclose the secrets of these civilizations, but at present they are locked very close.

On reaching the end of the building, we confront a large window whose panes are beautiful photographs, on glass, of our wild, far Western scenery. There are the tremendous heights, depths, fiats, and contortions of Colorado and Arizona ; the plains, ravines, ridges, and peaks amid which nature has indulged in so many Titanic freaks that the phenomena of all lands seem to meet together there. The geological specimens, besides the riches they disclose, give one glimpses into a realm of unfathomed metallic and mineral beauty; there are amethystine and amber-colored masses of quartz-like formation; fragments of coral red; blocks of translucent sapphirelike rock. The geological outlines are formidable, redoubtable, in their fantastic forms; there are horrible crags which look like fossil fungi or groups of petrified penguins of gigantic size. As we examine the photographs and plans in relief which give the natural features of these scarcely - explored tracts, we become conscious of a semi-mythical character which belongs to them, and a sort of preternatural influence which breathes from them. They explain some of the singularity and excess of Joaquin Miller’s poetry, which bears their impress, as by Buckle’s theory the mind of man always corresponds in one way or another to the nature amid which he is born. There is wonderful beauty too, as in the lakes of Santa Maria and San Cristoval, and their lovely setting of woodland, hill, and vale; but beauty is overpowered by more stupendous forces, which make it a relief to return to the machines and maps to see what man can do.

There is a grand series of charts showing the vegetable conditions and resources of the country, the proportion of forest and arable land, of sugar and textile crops, and the price of farm labor. A very curious and sinister study is offered by a table which hangs beside those of the United States census, showing by means of colored parallelograms the positive and relative degrees of homicide and suicide in different parts of the country. In the eastern portion suicide appears to be six times as frequent as murder. (I had no means of measuring but by the eye, so that these statements are only approximate, but they are not very far wrong, I think.) In the western there is a rather larger proportion of the latter, and about two thirds less of the former. The South presents a broad field of homicide, nearly twice as large as that of all the rest of the country, with a very narrow strip of self-destruction. In New York and New Jersey suicide is as about three to one of murder; in Pennsylvania about two to one; in Delaware and Maryland just the reverse of these, murder exceeding suicide by one third and one half. Homicide in the District of Columbia is appalling, compared with its population; there appears to be little disposition to felo de se. In Virginia the suicide is about a quarter of the homicide; in West Virginia the two crimes are nearly equal, suicide preponderating slightly. In the Carolinas murder is to suicide as three to one; in Florida the number of both is much larger in proportion to the population, but the excess of homicide over suicide remains as three to one. In Texas the area of murder is something awful, unless one can pitch one’s mood to the key of De Quincey’s famous essay; it is ten times as great as suicide. In Nevada the proportion of the latter is about one fifth of the former. In California there is a vast amount of both, suicide preponderating; can it be because of the homesick Chinese? With regard to murder, the distribution is not difficult to understand, but it seems impossible to get at any general laws respecting suicide. The proportion of female suicides (indicated by a delicate pink tint) varies very much in the different States, but generally falls far short of the male suicides. In Delaware, the District, and Oregon there are no female suicides; in Minnesota and North Carolina the number nearly equals that of the other sex; in South Carolina it is considerably in excess; in Florida it is very small. There is a ghastly fascination in these statistics and the speculations which they suggest. As I was making my notes from the chart, I heard two men behind me commenting: “Humph! going to add one more to the list.” Which list they charitably refrained from specifying. Presently came a party of girls, whose curiosity about my occupation quickly transferred itself to the chart: “ My! look at Texas! ” “ Yes, they believe in killing in

Texas,” replied one of the others, in a tone of complacency which made me desire to know which State set her age down in its census. The manners and opinions of the visitors to the Exhibition furnish a good deal of interest in themselves. The occupants of rolling-chairs are unmistakably the objects of a slight scorn to those on foot, akin to the superciliousness of early risers. And, notwithstanding hundreds of daily instances to the contrary, the pedestrians are evidently persuaded that everybody in a chair is the victim of some strange maiming or malady, about which they cannot conceal their curiosity. The interest taken in any purchase by the by-standers is so intense as to be painful to the purchaser; a ring forms immediately round the latter and the vendor, which increases momentarily until the transaction is over, all hanging speechless on the dialogue between the two; when this is carried on in a foreign language the audience looks discomfited and displeased, as if balked of its rights. A lady acquaintance told me that just as her purchase was concluded and the article replaced in the case, so that it became indistinguishable among its fellows, a stranger of her own sex arrived on the scene, and, seeing that it was too late, dogged her until they reached a secluded spot in one of the less frequented departments; then she accosted her in a low voice: “ You bought something just now.” “ Yes.” “ What was it? ” But this inquisitiveness is generally sympathetic. I witnessed the sale of an India shawl, at which the buyer was anxious to see it folded and tried on. A couple of good-natured young Englishmen, evidently novices in playing shopmen, were helplessly pulling it hither and thither, when a very nicelooking middle-aged woman with an ardent gaze stepped from the circle, took it from their hands, gave it in a trice the proper twist, and then turning about deftly threw it over her own shoulders and stood there on exhibition until everybody concerned or not concerned was satisfied. That sort of readiness to oblige is a characteristic of our country - folk, but both abroad and at home it renders us liable to be imposed upon by foreigners, which is to be observed at the Exhibition in the conduct of the attendants. A friend who has been at more than one of the European exhibitions recognized in several of the departments men whom he had seen at Paris or Vienna, where they had been civility itself; under the influence of our good-humored democracy they have become extremely impertinent. The same change has taken place in the manners of many of them since the opening of our Exhibition, notably in those of the waiters at the restaurants; but if spoken to in the right tone they come to heel at once, except the Germans, who are apt to be ill-trained curs everywhere. On the other band, the misconduct of one’s own country-people has a more pungent power of annoyance than that of any other, and it was almost intolerable to see them handling articles the most easily broken or soiled, with a total disregard of the placards, where one would suppose to the commonest consideration placards would be superfluous. I wish I could have felt certain that the person who rapped and shook every article in the Chinese annex was not a fellow-countryman: unfortunately there could be no doubt of the nationality of a pair, male and female, like the first sinners, who having broken down the protecting rope were spreading themselves in their dusty clothes on the Gobelin sofas in the French department. There is certainly something like possession by devils in the uncontrollable desire to point with one’s cane, against which we are so stringently adjured in the picture galleries; it seems to be an instinct of our fallen nature, which we should do well to defeat by leaving the provoking weapon at the check counter, bore as it is to go eighteen hundred and eighty feet to reclaim it.

Ilooked everywhere wistfully for signs and tokens from the Southern States, and strove to resist the depression begotten by the absence of so many old names. Rut one by one the names came into sight, with specimens of minerals, cereals, textiles, and rare, exquisite feathers and shells. Mississippi had a fine array of the first three, including some very fine wool, called cashmere, besides the collection of woods of which her beautiful little log-house is built. The Shelby Iron Company, of Alabama, holds its own beside the great Pennsylvania works, and South Carolina sends samples of the phosphorite beds on which her future prosperity may rest. North Carolina appears with credit in several departments, as those will be glad to know who remember General Ransom’s moving and spirited appeal in the Senate last winter: I observed particularly a fine botanical collection for medical purposes. Georgia does no justice to her special delicacies in the Southern Restaurant; it is a cool, clean, roomy resort, where large vases of fresh flowers on the principal tables cheer the eye blinded by the glare of the asphalt, and civil negroes come to wait on one instead of saucy Frenchmen or boorish Teutons; hut the bill of fare offers none of the famous Southern dishes, and vindicates its sectional character only by the poor quality of the milk, whose blue must he intended for local color, since it is excellent every where else in the grounds. Florida has in the Agricultural Building a pretty stock of curiosities, familiar to the thousands who have been to St, Augustine or the St. John’s River: alligators’ teeth, shining sea-beans, fans of brilliant - feathered birds, and other mementos of those woods and shores where the meeting of the tropic and temperate zones, the lingering traces of a civilization and a barbarism both extinct, bestow so strange a charm on the life and landscape. West Virginia has a fine state building, distinct from Old Virginia, containing her entire exhibition, principally, of course, natural products; among the manufactures is the wood paper-hanging, a beautiful substitute for leather or panels on library, hall, or dining-room walls.

The state buildings as a rule do not add to the beauty of the grounds, although some few of them are very pretty and original. But the idea was good. The visitors’ books, in which only the names of people from the State whose roof gives them shelter are registered, will become valuable statistical records at the end of the Exhibition. Several of the buildings — those of West Virginia, Kansas, Colorado, Arkansas, Missouri, and Maryland — contain either complete or partial exhibitions, the application for room in the Main Building probably not having been made in time. Of these little edifices the Western are for the most part far the prettiest, most suggestive and picturesque. Arkansas has hers arranged with extreme good taste as well as intelligence. Kansas and Colorado occupy a large rotunda in common, the theatrical appearance of which is altogether astounding for the first moment; but I think nobody can refuse hearty admiration to the ingenuity and fancifulness of the decorations. The most prominent feature is a mountain of rockwork covered with coniferous trees, mosses, and lichens, down which trickles a stream; it might be mistaken for a cliff of Ararat, since here Noah’s ark seems to have discharged its freight. There are eagles, doves, owls, opossums, hedgehogs, rabbits on their hind legs, squirrels, goats, bears, panthers, deer, and so on, all a good deal occupied in preying upon each other, or being preyed upon. The water falls into a pool full of fish, where a tortoise sits all day upon a stone; around we must fancy the plains, for there are its wild denizens, •— snakes, prairie-dogs, buffaloes. “ Six hundred animals, and all stuffed by one woman,” said a fair neighbor, breathlessly. “ Wall, —don’ b’lieve that!” said her fair companion after due deliberation. Disbelief in their own sex is much stronger in some women than in any man. Mrs. Maxwell, huntress and taxidermist, who not only stuffed, hut also shot these animals, Stands before her own zoölogical show, selling her own photograph; so she cannot object to a passing mention. She is a straight-featured, trim-built little figure-head, about middle height, rather tanned and weather-beaten. She was born in Pennsylvania, and more than half a life passed in Kansas has not taken away her sharp midland twang, so much stronger and shriller than the Yankee, nor taught her the mellow tones of the West; but it has given her the Western glance, that clear and steady eye which neither seeks nor shuns yours, and the ready reply, brief, prompt, to the point. “Do you go out into the wilds for your game?” asked a by-Slander who shared my own vague notions that in the Territories one might bag one’s bear or stag out of window. “ No, they come right into town to be shot,” was the instantaneous answer, given with perfect good - humor. Her small rifle, “ presented by her friends, ” hangs hard by. There is always a crowd here.

Michigan’s pavilion has an unprepossessing gingerbread-work exterior, but is one of the handsomest within; the reading-room is paneled entirely with native woods, alternating below the wainscot with marble; one end is taken up by a particularly good square projecting window directly facing the chimneyplace, over which is a large glass reflecting the window and view: the whole arrangement is worthy of an English country-house. Iowa greets each as he enters with “ Welcome to Iowa,” inscribed in large letters in the hall, which was a happy thought. The pleasant impression, however, is damped by a melancholy spectacle in the sitting-room: two huge wreaths, each composed of seven hundred and fifty flowers made of human hair, the result of eight months’ constant labor, as a label tells us. It is a depressing performance, such as belongs fitly only to solitary confinement for life. Tennessee spreads a big tent for her children, containing a deal table, a stove (it was in August, so I presumed the latter was for future use), and a placard to say that she exhibits in the Main Building, — which she does handsomely. Maryland has a large, rather bare mansion, in the principal apartment of which, a sort of hall, is a good demonstration of her fisheries and oystergardens; the walls are hung with historical portraits, which lend the place a certain air and an interest which none of the other state buildings possess. Connecticut set out bravely, but has broken down half-way. Her interior is very pretty, lined with wood and ceiled with beams and rafters; a little railed gallery runs around below the casementwindows underneath the roof, for there is no second story to the main room. The house looks like a Swiss châlet or a hunting-lodge; there is a fine, lofty, wooden mantel-piece with two shelves, on which stand old brass and crockery; there are handsome brass fire - irons, dogs, and fender; a spinning-wheel stands in the chimney-corner, an old clock opposite, old arms and relies adorn the walls, and there is some old furniture. Somebody, with an exquisite connection of ideas, has graced the chimney with a string of wooden nutmegs made from the Charter Oak. So far, so good; but conspicuous among these venerable objects are a modern melodeon and two glittering plated monuments of great size, one a filter, the other an ice-pitcher, which are the first and last things one sees. The New York building, with considerable external pretension, is on the whole in the worst taste within, and also the most cheaply and trashily got up. I heard a New Yorker say, uncontradieted by anybody, that it is a disgrace.

In order to pay every respect to my country, I ordered dinner for once at the Great American Restaurant, notwithstanding my prejudices and forebodings, and the grudge every one must bear it for having transformed a beautiful grove of old cedars into the semblance of a camp-meeting, with booths and benches; I have never dined anywhere else at the Exhibition, since. I found the piazza cooler and cleaner, the view more pleasing, the food better and cheaper, the arrangements altogether more comfortable, than at any of the other places, and the friends whom I have taken there agree with me; the bill of fare gives you capital American cooking instead of poor German or French. Reënforced by this meal I went to the shoe and leather exhibition, which has a building to itself. It is a very full exhibition, doubtless a very fine one, yet I found it impossible to take a deep Interest or pleasure in leather and prunella. There are large screens, English and Russian, covered with skins of the finest texture and colors, which raised visions of superb libraries; and the Russian show-case, with boots and slippers of barbaric splendor, brass-heeled, turned up in a peak at the toe, gilded, scalloped, and betasseled with the brightest hues, had its attractions. But while my brain was thronged like the great fair of NijniNovgorod by caftans: and furred pelisses, my eye was arrested by the cases of Messrs. How & Co., Haverhill, Massachusetts. Of course I had expected to see every sort of useful shoe from the numberless benches of Lynn, hut I did not expect to see in the Massachusetts department the prettiest, daintiest, and best - shaped shoes. They were all of leather or kid, but as delicate and elegant as satin. None others, not even the far-famed Philadelphia boots and shoes, compared with them; nearly all the rest were either common and ugly to deformity in shape, or fit to be worn only by ballet-dancers or circus-riders.

Of the Agricultural Building much has been and more might be said, for it is a most interesting and instructive department, and in many quarters a highly ornamental one. But I will say one thing only: where are the American bees? Not many years ago a row of straw or glass hives was a pretty and poetic feature in every kitchen garden; of late I have looked for them in vain in my own neighborhood. I may have overlooked them in the Agricultural Building: I certainly saw bees from many lands, but none of our own.