Lippincotts Magazine, March 1876 | Page 8

broadcloths of England and Prussia, and a
host of other such articles, could expect no rivalry here. The slender
contributions of statuary and paintings hardly sufficed to illustrate the
conceded superiority of the Old World in art. Crawford and Powers did
very well by the side of the other, disciples of the antique, their chief
opposition coming from some indifferent plaster-casts of
Thorwaldsen's Twelve Apostles. In point of popularity, Kiss's spirited
melodramatic group of the Amazon and Tiger threw them all into the
shade. Its triumph at London was almost as marked, and the

innumerable reductions of it met with everywhere show it to be one of
the few hits of modern sculpture.
The general result of the exhibition was to encourage our
manufacturers, without giving them a great deal of food for higher
ambition; while our artists and the taste of their patrons, actual and
possible, were disappointed of the instruction they had reason to expect,
and which the ateliers of Europe will supply in fuller measure this year.
The succeeding years present us with an epidemic of expositions, most
of them, often on the slenderest grounds, arrogating the title of
"international." The sprightly little city of Cork was one year ahead of
New York. Then came Dublin in '53, Munich in '54, Paris in '55,
Manchester in '57 (of art exclusively, and very brilliant), Florence in
'61, London again in '62, Amsterdam in '64; and in '65 the mania had
overspread the globe, that year witnessing exhibitions dubbed
"international" in Dublin, New Zealand, Oporto, Cologne and Stettin,
with perhaps some outliers we have missed. Then ensued a lull or a
mitigation till the moribund empire of France and the remodeled
empire of Austro-Hungary flared up into the magnificent
demonstrations of '67 and '73. To these last we shall devote the
remainder of this article, with but a glance at the second British of
1862.
[Illustration: MANCHESTER EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1857.]
This, held upon the same ground with its forerunner of eleven years
previous, affords a better measure of progress. It developed a manifest
advance in designs for ornamental manufactures. The schools of
decorative art were beginning to tell. Carpets, hangings, furniture,
stuffs for wear, encaustic tiles, etc. showed a sounder taste; and this in
the foreign as well as the British stalls. French porcelain was more fully
represented than before, and in finer designs. The Paris exhibition of
'55, more extensively planned, though less of a financial success, than
the London one it followed, was not without effect on the industry and
art-culture of France. The United States also showed that they had not
been idle. Our fabrics of vulcanized rubber and sewing-machines were
boons to Europe she has not been slow to seize. The latter are now sold
in England, with trifling modifications and new trademarks, at from
one-third to one-half the price our people have to pay.
The secret of making money out of these great fairs seemed to have

been lost. Although England's second took in much more than the first,
and four times as much as the first French, four hundred and sixty
thousand pounds having entered its treasury, it failed to leave any such
profitable memorials of profit.
By this time the spirit of French emulation was stirred to its inmost
depths. They had gone to London, argued the Gauls, under every
disadvantage. To prove that they had returned covered with glory, they
hunted every nook and corner of numerical analysis. Out of 18,000
exhibitors of all nations, they had had but 1747, and yet Paris had
received thirty-nine council medals, or honors of the first order, per
million of inhabitants, against fourteen per million accorded to London.
She had beaten the metropolis of fog not only in general, but in detail.
In every branch, from the most solid to the most sentimental, she was
victorious. For machinery a million of gamins beat a million of
Cockneys in the proportion of seven to six; in the economical and
chemical arts, four to one; in the geographical and geometrical, eight to
three; and in the fine arts, Waterloo was reversed to the tune of twenty
to four.
Nothing could be more conclusive; but to take a bond of fate it was
determined to imitate England in trying a second display, and
supplement '53 with '67 more effectively than Albion had '51 with '62.
In what gallant style this determination was carried out we all
remember. France did put forth her strength. She illustrated the Second
Empire with an outpouring of her own genius and energy the variety
and comprehensiveness of which no other nation could pretend to equal;
and she called together the nearest approach to a rally of the nations
that had yet been seen.
The casket of these assembled treasures was hardly worthy of them,