Manila has been quite outdoing herself lately, and the gayeties have been numerous. The opening of the Royal Exposition of the Philippines took place last week, and was quite as elaborate as the name itself. The Exposition buildings were grouped along the raised ground filled in on the paddy-fields, by the side of the broad avenue that divides our suburb of Malate from that of Ermita, and runs straight back inland from the sea. The architecture is good, the buildings numerous, and with grounds tastefully decorated with plants and fountains, it is, in a way, like a pocket edition of the Chicago Exposition. Everybody in town was invited to attend the opening ceremonies by a gorgeously gotten-up invitation, and interesting catalogues of the purpose of the exhibition and its exhibits were issued in both Spanish and English. To be sure, the language in the catalogue translated from the Spanish was often ridiculous, and announcements were made of such exhibits as "Collections of living animals of laboring class," and "tabulated prices of transport terrestrial and submarine." But all of the élite of Manila were on hand at the ceremonies, from the Archbishop and Governor-General down to my coachman's wife, and bands played, flags waved in the fresh breeze, tongues wagged, guns fired, and whistles blew. General Blanco opened the fair with a well-worded speech on the importance of the Philippines, of the debt that the inhabitants owed to the protection of the mother-country, and of the great future predestined for the Archipelago. And just as the speaker had finished and the closing hours of the day arrived, the new electric lights were turned on for the first time. Then all Manila, hitherto illuminated by the dull and dangerous petroleum lamps, shone forth under the radiance of several hundred arc-lights and a couple of thousand incandescent ones. The improvement is tremendous, and the streets, which have always been dim from an excess of real tropical, visible, feelable, darkness, are now respectably illuminated.