Lippincotts Magazine, March 1876 | Page 7

veiled heads, henceforth to be credited to
Lombardy; Prussia with Rauch; and Denmark with Thorwaldsen--all
pure form, copied without color from Nature, from convention and
from the antique. Then came design and color united in ceramics--in
the marvelously delicate flowers of Dresden, purified in the
porcelain-furnace as by fire; in the stately vases of Sèvres, just but
varied in proportion, unfathomable in the rich depths of their
ground-shadows, and exact and brilliant in the superimposed details;
the more raw but promising efforts of Berlin, marked, like the jewelry

from the same city, by faithful study of Nature; and, blending the
decorative with the economic, the works of the English Wedgwoods
and Mintons, infinite in variety of style and utility, and often pleasing
in design. Italy, though supplying from her ancient stores so many of
the models and so much of the inspiration of the countries named,
seems to have forgotten Faenza and Etruria, and to prefer solid stone as
a material to preparations of clay and flint. Her Venetian glass has
markedly declined, at the same time that glass elsewhere--notably, the
stained windows of Munich and the smaller objects of France and
Bohemia--shows a great advance in perfection of manufacture and
manageability for art purposes.
In that debatable land where the artistic and the convenient meet at the
fire-side and the tea-table, English invention, enterprise and solicitude
for the comfort and presentability of home shone conspicuous.
Domestic art finds in the island a congenial home, and helps to make
one for the islanders. English interiors, often incongruous and sombre
in their decorations, at least produce the always pleasant sensation of
physical comfort, the attainment of which the average Briton will class
among the fine arts. Lovely as the Graces are, they need a little editing
to harmonize them with a coal fire.
This halfway house of the nineteenth century, the house of glass in
which it boldly ensconced itself to throw stones at its benighted
relations, will ever be a landmark to the traveler over the somewhat arid
expanse of industrial and commercial history. Its humblest statistics
will be preserved, and coming generations will read with interest that
42,809 persons visited it, on an average, each day, that these rose on
one day to 109,915, and that there were at one time in the building
93,224, or six thousand more than Domitian's most tempting and
sanguinary bill of theatrical fare could have drawn into the Coliseum.
Its length, by the way, was exactly equal to the circumference of the
Flavian amphitheatre--1848 feet.
A new home (of progress)! who'll follow? "I," quoth New York. The
British empire had taken three years in preparation: New York was
ready with less than two. Not quite ready, either, we are apt to say now,
but most creditably so for the time and the means of a few enterprising
private men bestowed upon it. And up to this time the display of '53
under the Karnak-like shadow of the Croton Reservoir has not been

equaled on our soil.
Architecturally, the building was superior to that of London, and
showed itself less cramped by the peculiarities of the novel material.
The form was that of a Greek cross, with a central dome a hundred and
forty-eight feet high, and eight towers at the salients of seventy feet.
The space, including galleries, did not reach a third of that afforded by
its prototype, but proved equal to the demand.
Considering the absence of any formal public character in the
movement and the brief notice, foreign exhibitors came forward in
tolerable force. They could not expect to address through this display
each other's commercial constituencies, as very few visitors would
traverse the Atlantic: they could reach only the people of the United
States. This difficulty must interfere--though much less now than
twenty years ago, when the means of ocean-travel were but a fraction
of what they are at present--with the strictly international complexion
of any exposition in this country. If, however--as we are already
assured beyond peradventure will be the case with the Centennial--our
neighbors over the way send us a full representation of their products,
and a delegation of visitors from their most intelligent classes, not
inferior in numbers, for example, to the Germans who went to London,
and the English who repaired in '73 to Vienna, we shall claim a
cosmopolitan character for our exposition, and hold that it well fills its
place in the line of progress.
What Europe did send to New York sufficed to prove the superiority of
our own artisans in such labor-saving contrivances as suited the
conditions of the country. The foreign implements and machines were
more cumbrous in both complexity and weight of parts than ours. In the
finer departments of manufacture, the Gobelin tapestry, the French
glass, porcelain and silks, the