loths of England and Prussia,
and a host of other such articles, could expect no rivalry here. The
slender contributions of statuary and paintings hardly sufficed to
illustrate the conceded superiority of the Old World in art. Crawford
and Powers did very well by the side of the other, disciples of
the antique, their chief opposition coming from some indifferent
plaster-casts of Thorwaldsen's _Twelve Apostles_. In point of
popularity, Kiss's spirited melodramatic group of the _Amazon and
Tiger_ threw them all into the shade. Its triumph at London was almost
as marked, and the innumerable reductions of it met with everywhere
show it to be one of the few hits of modern sculpture.

The general result of the exhibition was to encourage our
manufacturers, without giving them a great deal of food for higher
ambition; while our artists and the taste of their patrons, actual
and possible, were disappointed of the instruction they had reason to
expect, and which the ateliers of Europe will supply in fuller measure
this year.

The succeeding years present us with an epidemic of expositions, most
of them, often on the slenderest grounds, arrogating the title of
"international." The sprightly little city of Cork was one year ahead
of New York. Then came Dublin in '53, Munich in '54, Paris in '55,
Manchester in '57 (of art exclusively, and very brilliant), Florence
in '61, London again in '62, Amsterdam in '64; and in '65 the mania
had overspread the globe, that year witnessing exhibitions dubbed
"international" in Dublin, New Zealand, Oporto, Cologne and Stettin,
with perhaps some outliers we have missed. Then ensued a lull or a
mitigation till the moribund empire of France and the remodeled empire
of Austro-Hungary flared up into the magnificent demonstrations of '67
and '73. To these last we shall devote the remainder of this article,
with but a glance at the second British of 1862.

[Illustration: MANCHESTER EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1857.]

This, held upon the same ground with its forerunner of eleven years
previous, affords a better measure of progress. It developed a
manifest advance in designs for ornamental manufactures. The
schools of decorative art were beginning to tell. Carpets, hangings,
furniture, stuffs for wear, encaustic tiles, etc. showed a sounder
taste; and this in the foreign as well as the British stalls. French
porcelain was more fully represented than before, and in finer
designs. The Paris exhibition of '55