ive industry; all have welcomed and been
instructed by them. And so ours would have been treated had they been in
fact the wretched affairs which the London Commercial press has
represented them. It is precisely because they are quite otherwise that
it has been deemed advisable systematically to disparage them--to
declare our Pianos "gouty" structures--"mere wood and iron;" our
Calicoes beneath the acceptance of a British servant-girl; our Farming
Tools half a century behind their British rivals; our Hats "shocking
bad," &c., &c.,--all this, in the first months of the Exhibition, while
the Jurors appointed to judge and report upon the merits of rival
fabrics were making the requisite investigations. Their verdict is thus
substantially forestalled, and the millions who visit the Exhibition are
invited to look at the American department merely to note the bad taste
and incapacity therein displayed, and learn to avoid them.

But the self-constituted arbiters who thus tell the American people that
Art is not their province--that they should be content to grow Corn and
Cotton, looking to Europe for the satisfaction of their less urgent
necessities, their secondary wants--are they impartial advisers? Are
they not palpably speaking in the interest of the rival producers of
Europe, alarmed by the rapid growth and extension of American Art? Would
they have taken so much trouble with us if American taste and skill were
really the miserable abortions they represent them?

These indications of paternal care for American Industry, in danger of
being warped and misdirected, are not quite novel. An English friend
lately invited me to visit him at his house in the neighborhood of
Birmingham, holding out as an inducement the opportunity of inspecting
the great Iron and Hardware manufactories in that neighborhood. A moment
afterward he recollected himself and said, "I am not quite sure that I
could procure you admittance to them, because the rule has been that
_Americans were not to be admitted_. Gentlemen taking their friends to
visit these works were asked, at the door, 'Is your friend an American?'
and if the answer was affirmative, he was not allowed to enter--but I
think this restriction has been generally abrogated." Here you see, was
a compassionate regard for American Industry, in danger of being misled
and deluded into unprofitable employments, which neither The Times nor
any of its co-laborers has been able to more than humbly