One of the great difficulties in exhibiting together samples of the produce and the industry of the world, must obviously be the magnitude and consequent expense of any building capable of containing such an exposition. In order to do this most effectively, and to secure the greatest amount of space for the primary object, it became necessary to lay down principles within the limits of which the objects exhibited should be confined. No real difficulty opposed the definition of this boundary, even if a liberal interpretation were admitted. The Fine arts and the Industrial arts, although of the highest importance each to the other, are separated by a sufficiently definite line of demarcation, even at the points at which they most nearly approach. The characteristic of the fine arts is, that each example is an individual—the production of individual taste, and executed by individual hands; the produce of the fine arts is therefore necessarily costly. The characteristic of the industrial arts is, that each example is but one of a multitude,—generated according to the same law, by tools or machines, (in the largest sense of those terms,) and moved with unerring precision by the application of physical force. Their produce is consequently cheap. The fine arts idealize nature by generalizing from its individual objects: the industrial arts realize identity by the unbounded use of the principle of copying. The union of the two, enlarging vastly the utility of both, enables art to be appreciated and genius to be admired by millions whom its single productions would never reach; whilst the producer in return, elevated by the continual presence of the multiplied reproductions of the highest beauty, acquires a new source of pleasure, and feels his own mechanical art raised in his estimation by such an alliance. § This distinction between the fine arts and those of industry, would appear to place some of the latter in a class to which they are not yet generally admitted. It might seem that all lace not produced by machinery, must according to this view be admitted amongst the fine arts. There are in the Exhibition some beautiful examples of such lace amongst the productions of other countries as well as of our own. They are made by the united labour of many women. The cost of a piece of lace will consist of— 1.—The remuneration to the artist who designs the pattern. 2.—The cost of the raw material. 3.—The cost of the labour of a large number of women working on it for many months. Let us compare this with the cost of a piece of statuary, which is undoubtedly of a much higher class of art; it will consist of:— 1.—The remuneration to the artist who makes the model. 2.—The cost of the raw material. 3.—The cost of labour by assistants in cutting the block to the pattern of the model. 4.—Finishing the statue by the artist himself.