“It was a thing to be seen once in a lifetime. As we grow in wealth and strength we may build a much greater Crystal Palace, and accumulate more imperial-like treasures than we could now afford to purchase, but it cannot have the effect of this one. This has been the first love of its kind. The second cannot bring the exhilaration and glory of the first, though exhausting the wealth of genius in its production. In this we behold the first decided stand of America among the industrial and artistic nations of the earth. In this we see a recognition of her progress, power, and possibilities. In this we find a yearning after Peace--Peace which shall dimple the face of the earth with the smiles of plenty, which shall join the hearts of nations, which shall abolish poverty and servitude. God’s earth loves Man to her innermost depths; treat her well with Peace, and she will reward him as a generous mother: abuse her with War and she will drive him from her presence. Such history has proved; but we may fairly believe that the historical vicissitudes of the past may be avoided in traveling the peaceful and generous path pointed out by the Crystal Palace.” The comments and eulogiums of orators and press upon this first American World’s Fair were, of course, largely pitched in a tone that to-day is interesting only in contrast. It is archaic, primitive, embryonic, though not devoid of what has aptly been termed spread-eagleism. One writer, however, discussed the theme with memorable eloquence, and in a spirit of broad-minded philosophy that makes his almost every word as appropriate to the great fair of 1893 as to that of forty years before. “The exhibition,” he said, “must be particularly instructive to Americans, because it will furnish them with evidences of a skill in many branches of creation beyond their own, and of models of workmanship which are superior precisely in those points in which their own are most deficient. No one, we presume, will push his national predilections so far as to deny that, in the finer characteristics of manufacture and art, we have yet a vast deal to learn. Stupendous as our advances have been in railroads, steamboats, canals, printing presses, hotels, and agricultural implements--rapidly as we are growing in excellence in a thousand departments of design and handicraft--astonishing as may be our achievements, under all the difficulties of an adverse national policy--adroit, ingenious, and energetic as we have shown ourselves in those labors which have been demanded by the existing conditions of our society, we have yet few fabrics equal to those of Manchester, few wares equal to those of Birmingham and Sheffield, no silks like those of Lyons, no jewelry like that of Geneva, no shawls like those of the East, no mosaics like those of Italy. But, in our rapid physical improvements--growing, as we are, in prosperity, in population, in wealth, in luxuries of all kinds--these are the articles that we ought