The main building of the exposition of 1867, the first one held on the Champ de Mars, was designed on a plan that has not been repeated. It was a long building with semicircular ends, built around a narrow open court, the length of which was equal to that of its parallel sides. It was divided among the nations as a Yankee would divide a pie if baked in a dish of similar form, while the various classes of exhibits occupied, in the several nations, spaces equally distant from the central court. Thus, as assumed in the plan, the visitor passing through any radial avenue would see all the exhibits from one country, and passing through an avenue laid out around the central court would see all the exhibits of one class. The fine arts were at the center, much of the statuary in the open court, then decorative art, and so on, class after class, until that of machinery which surrounded the whole, except that outside of this were the restaurants of all nations. The plan was practically on many accounts a failure, first, from the exceedingly unequal lengths of floor spaces allotted to the different departments, the mean length of the machinery court, for example, being between two and three times that devoted to the fine arts, and, second, that it was utterly inadequate to accommodate the exhibits in many departments. There was no adaptability in the system. The consequence was the erection, in the ample outside area of the Champ de Mars, of an enormous number of separate buildings, by all nations, for particular classes of exhibits, some of which buildings were quite large. Although I exhibited in the British section, I sympathized deeply with the American exhibitors, who were having lots of trouble. Mr. Seward had appointed as the United States commissioner an American gentleman who had lived in France for twenty years, who was ignorant of America and Americans in a phenomenal degree, and was indifferent and despotic in his treatment of the helpless exhibitors, until their exasperation reached such a pitch that I heard it said every one of them would be glad to pull on a rope to hang him. I will give two illustrations. Mr. Corliss had been persuaded by Mr. Pickering to send over an engine to drive the United States machinery exhibit. When the engine arrived, it was found that the commissioner, although he had been advised of this arrangement, had paid no attention to it, but had purchased a French engine and installed it already for this purpose. The Corliss engine was set by the side of this one, and ran idle through the exhibition; never had a belt on. To make the matter worse, the French engine was run every Sunday, although the entire United States exhibit was covered up, and, as it could not run longer than a week without stopping for repairs, it was idle for this purpose every Monday, and this arrangement was sustained by the commissioner.