, who loyally rejoice to elevate their constitutional
sovereign on their implements as the Frankish proletaries did upon
their shields.

The family of expositions with which we are directly concerned is,
like others of plebeian origin, at some loss as to the roots of its
ancestral tree. We may venture to locate them in the middle of the
eighteenth century. In 1756-57 the London Society of Arts offered
prizes for specimens of decorative manufactures, such as tapestry,
carpets and porcelain. This was part of the same movement with that
which brought into being the Royal Academy, with infinitely less
success in the promotion of high art than has attended the development
of taste, ingenuity and economy in the wider if less pretentious
field.

France's first exhibition of industry took place in 1798. It was
followed by others under the Consulate and Empire in 1801, 1802, 1806.
In 1819 the French expositions became regular. Each year attested an
advance, and drew more and more the attention of adjacent countries.
The international idea had not yet suggested itself. The tendency
was rather to the less than the more comprehensive, geographically
speaking. Cities took the cue from the central power, and got up each
its own show, of course inviting outside competition. The nearest
resemblance to the grand displays of the past quarter of a century
was perhaps that of Birmingham in 1849, which had yet no government
recognition; but the French exposition of five years earlier had a
leading influence in bringing on the London Fair of 1851, which
had its inception as early as 1848--one year before the Birmingham
display.

The getting up of a World's Fair was an afterthought; the original
design having been simply an illustration of British industrial
advancement, in friendly rivalry with that which was becoming,
across the Channel, too brilliant to be ignored. The government's
contribution, in the first instance, was meagre enough--merely the use
of a site. Rough discipline in youth is England's system with all her
bantlings. She is but a frosty parent if at bottom kindly, and, when
she has a shadow of justification, proud. In the present instance
she stands excused by the sore shock caused her conservatism by the
conceit of a building of glass and iron four times as long as St.
Paul's, high enough to accommodate comfortably one of her ancestral
elms, and capacious enough to sustain a general invitation to all
mankind to exhibit