ION BUILDING, 1861

PARIS EXPOSITION BUILDING AND GROUNDS, 1867.

GRAND VESTIBULE OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION BUILDING, 1867.

VIENNA EXPOSITION BUILDING AND GROUNDS, 1873.

ROTUNDA OF THE VIENNA EXPOSITION BUILDING, 1873.

MUSSULMAN WOMAN OF BHOPAL.

A NAUTCH-GIRL (OR BAYADERE) OF ULWUR.

A NAUTCHNI (OR BAYADERE) OF BARODA.

THE CATHACKS (OR DANCING MEN) OF BHOPAL.

BURIAL PLACE OF THE RAJAHS OF JHANSI.

TOMB OF ALLUM SAYED.

PEASANTS OF THE DOUAB.

HINDU BANKERS OF DELHI.

THE GRAND HALL OF THE DEWANI KHAS IN THE PALACE OF DELHI.

THE JAMMAH MASJID AT DELHI.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._

MARCH, 1876.

Vol. XVII, No. 99.

THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.

III.--PAST EXPOSITIONS.

[Illustration: THE GREAT ANNUAL FAIR AT NIZHNEE-NOVGOROD.]

We have presented a feeble sketch of a century that stands out from
its fellows, not as a mere continuation, or even intensification, of
them--a hundred annual circuits of the earth in its orbit as little
distinguished by intellectual or material achievement as those
repetitions of the old beaten track through space are by astronomical
incident--but as an epoch _sui generis_, a century _d'elite_, picked
out from the long ranks of time for special service, charged by
Fate with an extraordinary duty, and decorated for its successful
performance. Those of its historic comrades even partially so honored
are few indeed. They will not make a platoon--scarce a corporal's
guard. We should seek them, for instance, in the Periclean age,
when eternal beauty, and something very like eternal truth, gained
a habitation upon earth through the chisel and the pen; in the first
years of the Roman empire, when the whole temperate zone west of China
found itself politically and socially a unit, at rest but for the
labors of peace; and in the sixteenth century, when the area fit for
the support of man was suddenly doubled, when the nominal value of his
possessions was additionally doubled by the mines of Mexico and
Peru, and when his mental implements were in a far greater proportion
multiplied by the press.

[Illustration: CRYSTAL PALACE--LONDON EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1851.]

The last of these periods comes nearest to our standard. The first had
undying brilliance in certain fields, but the scope of its influence
was geographically narrow, and its excessively active thought was not
what we are