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 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.
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.