railways. But here, again, we are
overstepping our century.

[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRANSEPT OF CRYSTAL PALACE.]

To us it seems odd that in the days when an autocratic decree could
summarily call up "all the world" to be taxed, and when, in prompt
obedience to it, the people of all the regions gathered to a thousand
cities, the idea of numbering and comparing, side by side, goods,
handicrafts, arts, skill, faculties and energies, as well as heads,
never occurred to rulers or their counselors. If it did, it was never
put in practice. The difficulties to which we have before adverted
stood in the way of that combination of individual effort to which the
great displays of our day are mainly indebted for their success; but
what the government might have accomplished toward overcoming distance
and defective means of transport is evidenced by the mighty current
of objects of art, luxury and curiosity which flowed toward the
metropolis. Obelisks, colossal statues, and elephants and giraffes by
the score are articles of traffic not particularly easy to handle even
now.

[Illustration: NEW YORK EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.]

At the annual exposition of the Olympic games we have the feature of a
distribution of prizes. They were conferred, however, only on horses,
poets and athletes--a conjunction certainly in advance of the asses
and savants that constituted the especial care of the French army in
Egypt, but not up to the modern idea of the comprehensiveness of human
effort. While our artists confess it almost a vain hope to rival
the cameo brooch that fastened the scanty garment of the Argive
charioteer, or the statue spattered with the foam of his horses and
shrouded in the dust of his furious wheel--while they are content to
be teachable, moreover, by the exquisite embroidery and lacework
in gold and cotton thread displayed at another semi-religious and
similarly ancient reunion at Benares,--they claim the alliance and
support of many classes of craftsmen unrepresented on the Ganges or
Ilissus. These were, in the old days, ranked with slaves, many of whom
were merchants and tradesmen; and they labor yet in some countries
under the social ban of courts, no British merchant or cotton-lord,
though the master of millions, being presentable at Buckingham Palace,
itself the product of the counting-room and the loom. Little, however,
does this slight appear to affect the sensibilities of the noble army
of producers