o their transient purpose is the great thing to be
considered; and their merit in that regard is amply established.
Mr. P. Cunliffe Owen, familiar with all the minutiae of previous
expositions, declares them supreme "in thoroughness of plan and energy
of construction"--a judgment designed to coyer the whole conception
and administration of the exhibition, and one which, coming from a
disinterested and competent foreign observer, may be cited as an
amply expressive tribute to the zeal and fidelity of those in control.
Ex-Governor Hawley of Connecticut, president of the commission, is
a native of North Carolina, and brings to the cause a combination
of Southern ardor with Northern tenacity. The secretary of the
commission, Mr. John L. Campbell of Indiana, was a good second in
that bureaucratic branch of the management. The trying charge
of supervising the work generally, conducting negotiations and
correspondence, and leading as one harmonious body to the objective
point of success an army of artists, contractors, superintendents,
clerks, exhibitors, railroad companies and State and national
commissioners, fell to General A.T. Goshorn of Ohio, director-general.
We do not know that anything more eloquent can be said of him than
simply thus to name what he had to do and point to what he has done.
The duties of procuring the ways and means and controlling their
expenditure devolved upon the Centennial Board of Finance. Of this
body Mr. John Welsh is Chairman; Mr. Frederick Fraley, Treasurer; and
Mr. Thomas Cochran, Chief of the Building Committee. Their office
was fixed upon the grounds at an early stage of the proceedings. Mr.
Welsh, more fortunate than Wren, has been able while yet in the flesh
to point to his monument, and see it rising around him from day to
day.

The exposition is peculiarly fortunate in its site. Had historical
associations determined the choice of the ground, the array of them
in Fairmount Park would have sufficed to justify that which has
been made. Its eminences are dotted with the country-houses of the
Revolutionary statesmen and with trees under which they held converse.
On one of them Robert Morris, our American Beaumarchais, enjoyed
his financial zenith and fell to its nadir. To another the wit and
geniality of Peters were wont to summon for relaxation the staid
Washington, the meditative Jefferson, Rittenhouse the man of
mathematics, the gay La Fayette with enthusiasm as yet undamped by
Olmue