The extraordinary steps made within five years in the arts of destruction were illustrated by the twelve-inch Armstrong rifles of England and the Essen gun, throwing a 1212-pound shot. In 1862 the heaviest projectile shown did not exceed one hundred pounds. For field-service the limit of practice in weight seems long ago to have been reached: for forts and ships it cannot be far off. Armor and projectiles must soon bring each other to a standstill; as when, in the Italian wars of the fifteenth century, offence and defence reached the reductio ad absurdum of the incapacity of men-at-arms to inflict serious injury upon each other, or even to pick themselves up when the weight of their armor, with some aid from the clumsy blows of an antagonist, had overthrown them. Assailant and assailed were in equilibrio, and personal equilibrium could not be restored. Some such inane result may be witnessed when a pair of hostile iron-clads, out of sight of their nursing convoys, shall meet alone upon the deep; with the disagreeable difference that they will, if they go down, have a great deal farther to fall than the cuirassiers of the land.
Since 1851 a new commercial cement had come into operation in the adoption by neighboring powers of the French metrical system. England and America still hold out against the mètre and the gramme; and the press of both occasionally levels at it the old jokes of making the spheres weigh a pound of butter and the polar axis measure a yard of calico. With the innovation, however, our merchants have become perforce familiar, a large share of their imported commodities being invoiced in accordance with it. Its immense superiority to our complicated and arbitrary weights and measures, in the tables whereof the same word often has half a dozen meanings, is beyond argument. In the United States it has earned a quasi-official adoption, but the force of habit among the people has yet to be overcome.
We may here give, in evidence of the increasing hold these expositions have upon the popular mind, the gradual multiplication of the numbers exhibiting. At London, in '51, the exhibitors were 13,937; at Paris, '55, 23,954; at London, '62, 28,653; and at Paris, '67, 50,226.
Austria, with admirable spirit, determined to anticipate her turn to enter the lists of peace. Undismayed by Solferino and Sadowa, she had found her Antaeus in Andrassy. Her capital city was advancing with immense strides in beauty and extent. Geographically and ethnically it was, like the empire itself, a meeting-ground of north and south, east and west. Isolated from the sea, it offered for the transport of heavy articles a system of railways proved by the event to be sufficiently effective. It was decided that the march of progress should be more than kept up, and that the building, with its appendages, should be an improvement on all its predecessors in extent, in architectural effect and in solidity of material. The dimensions are so variously stated, owing largely to difference of opinion as to what should be embraced within the admeasurement, that we are at a loss how to give them. To the main building, however, was assigned a capacity of seventy-three thousand five hundred and ninety-three square mètres. Sixty-three hundred and eighty of these were awarded to France, ten mètres less to England; and thirteen hundred and sixty to the United States. The marquee-like rotunda rose to a height of two hundred and fifty feet, with a diameter at base of three hundred and fifty-four. The principal entrance, with piers and arches of cut stone profusely decorated with statues and reliefs, was in highly satisfactory contrast to the fragile shells of glass and cast iron that sheltered the earlier exhibitions.
Perhaps in all this solid work the demands of time had not been duly considered. Certainly, the display was not punctual to the appointed period of opening. Exceptionally bad weather was another drawback, and the greed of the Viennese hotel-keepers a third. For such, among other reasons, the enterprise was financially a failure—a fact which little concerns those who went to study and learn, and those who three years later have to describe. If the darkening of the imperial exchequer prove more than a passing shadow, and an ultimate loss on the speculation cease to be matter of question, the few millions it cost may be recovered by the disbanding of a regiment or two. For one brigade, out of half a million soldiers, to bring the world and its wealth to the seat of government, is doing better than the usual work of the bayonet.
The country and the city themselves were a study to foreigners in many of the modes of life. The extent to which the utilization, as stationary and locomotive machines, of pigs, cows, women and dogs was carried elicited constant remark from the Western tourists, with sundry moral conclusions perhaps too hastily arrived at. This outside feature of the exposition may serve as an admonition to put our own surroundings in order. They are not apt to expose us to such comments as naturally occur to those who have never seen dogs and damsels in harness together; but other vulnerable points may peradventure be descried. We must demonstrate our civilization to be complete at all points, and not simply a coddled exotic under glass. What if our Viennese guests, physically a stouter race than we, should pronounce our women too obviously not hod-carriers, and painfully unaccustomed to wheeling anything heavier than an arm-chair or a piano-stool?
In that land of music concerts could not fail to be a leading feature. The Boston improvement of emphasizing the bass with discharges of distant artillery, or its equivalent, the slamming of cellar-doors nearer by, was not attained. Noise and harmony were kept at arm's length apart.