The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-02 00:00:00

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF 1871

It was time (the Daily Nezvs remarks) for the Royal
Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851 to announce
another. It is their nature to make exhibitions, as it is
that of the sparrow to build its nest or the beaver its dam,
and they must have been feeling uncomfortable a long while.
Accordingly, we have before us the prospectus of the Inter-
national Exhibition of 1871, which is to be very like
its two predecessors, and at the same time very
different from both. It is not to be the continuation of
the old series, but the beginning of a new one of "Annual
International Exhibitions of selected Works of Fine and
Industrial Art." As the displays are to be annual, per-
manent buildings will be required, and these are about
to be erected adjoining the arcades of the Royal
Horticultural Gardens. Anothernew feature of the scheme
is that there aro to be no prizes. This is a very im-
portant innovation. An Exhibition without prizes—
without gold, silver, and bronze medals, without certifi-
cates of superiority and honourable mention, will seem
to many shrewd, practical people to be an Exhibition
without raison dare, without utility, and, worse than all,
without motive power. It is a notorious fact that the
London and Paris Exhibitions of the last few years have
:cost powerfully affected trade. Old houses secure
in their traditional renown, and disdaining to match
hemselves with new and unknown firms, have

found their business failing beneath them, and seen
their custom carried off by young competitors rely-
ng on nothing but their own skill and energy.
::'he wares and products of these latter have
obtained the stamp of approbation ; the medal has been
won, and wise and courageous advertising has done the
rest. Great and wealthy firms, whose names are familia:
to our ears as household words, would not hesitate to recog.
nise in this recital a true description of their own rise and

progress. The Exhibition of 1,5.71 is, however, to want this
apparatus of judgment, this passport to fame. Its place
is, however, to be to some extent supplied. If within
the Exhibition comparisons are to be eschewed as odious,
a certain work of discrimination is to be attempted, and a
certain minimum of excellence secured. " The produc
Lions of all nations will be admitted, subject to obtaining
the certificate of competent judges that they are of sum.
cient excellence to be worthy of exhibition." This condi-
tion would seem to exclude those useful and homely articles
of manufacture the display of which made some of the
lourts in the last Exhibition look like booths in it

.country fair. From the terms of another rule,
however, it appears tlat cheapness will of itself
constitute a title to admission, and as the claims
of novelty will also be admitted, there seems no reason
why anything that was really worth exhibiting in Hyde
Park or South Kensington should be shut out the year
after next. The authorities intend to take into their own
hands the arrangement of the articles exhibited, providing
their own cases, stands, and other requisite fittings, a
measure which will doubtless heighten the general
effect of the display, if it curtails somewhat the
luxuriance of individual fancy. Deprived of the
chance of gaining medals, exhibitors will still
have three advantages. In the first place, their articles
will be exhibited side by side with the best of the same
kind from all countries, for the arrangement of the objects
will be according to classes, and not, as in former Inter-
national Exhibitions, according to nationalities. Secondly,
certificates of having obtained the distinction of achnis-
sion to the Exhibition will be given to each exhibitor,
and, of course, it is to be presumed that the authors of
this regulation see their way to the maintenance of
such a standard of excellence as will give va'ue to
the distinction. Thirdly, there will be, as in former
exhibitions, the reports of qualified jurors, and these will

be published before the Exhibition is more than a month
old. Such are the principal features of the International
Exhibition of 1871, as announced in the prospectus.
Judging from that document its aspect will be more austere
than that of the last. There will be less to gratify
curiosity and e:-.cite wander, and more to exercise
the judgment and cultivate the taste. There will
not be those crowded avenues and mazy labyrinths
in which the visitor was wont to toil, until a glimpse of
the pale ale and sandwiches in the distance was hailed as
eagerly as that of the palm-trees by the tra, yeller in the
desert. So, at least, it appears now ; but it is a long
while until May 1871, and undertakings of this kind
developd their character as they grow. In all circum-
stances the commissioners will no doubt take care that
their Exhibition shall not be deficient in any of the
elements of a genuine popularity.

A rumour is repeated that Mr. A. J. Stephens,
Q.C., has been instructed by the. Irish Archbishops and
Bishops to draw up a " Constitution" for the Free Church.
A SOCIETY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF
AUTHORS.—An organisation for the encouragement and
protection of authors has been formed in this city. It
aims to secure a hearin g and fit recompense for deserving
writers who have not yet achieved popularity and the
admiring regard of publishers. We commend it to public
consideration.—New York Tribune.
THE KILDONAN GOLD DIGGINGS. —lt appears
from correspondence published in the Scotana n that the
Sutherland gold diggings are yielding sufficient quantities
of the precious metal to remunerate the diggers. The 10
per cent. royalty charged on the proceeds leads the
miners fraudulently to conceal the real value of their
finds.

THE COWCATCHER,—A. little child, 4 years old,
near Kukomo, Indiana, suddenly appeared on the railroad
track as a train was passing at a rapid rate, and was
picked up by the cowcatcher, thrown fifteen feet high in
the air, and landed in a ditch withcut injury.
RE-ENDOWMENT OF THE IRISH CHI:RCM—The
Rev. George Venables proposes a plan for the re-endow-
ment of Irish benefices. He suggests that four or five
persons should combine to effect au insurance o n the life
of some person of middle age, the sum assured to be vested
as soon as realised in trustees, as the nucleus of an endow-
ment for some parish. The present life-interests will hold
out for some years, and by this scheme, without
any gigantic effort, a sum would meanwhile be pro-
vided to take the place of the life-interests when
expired.

THE LOWER HOUSE OF CONVOCATION. The
beneficed clergy of the diocese of Canterbury have been
cited by the Archdeacons of Canterbury and Maidstone
to assemble at Canterbury on Wednesday next, for the
purpose of electing a proctor to represent them in the
Lower House of Convocation, in the room of the Rev. Dr.
Ashton Oxenden, now Bishop of Montreal. Three gen-
tlemen were named as candidates, the Rev. E. Hoare,
M.A., vicar of Holy Trinity, Tunbridge ; the Rev.
J. Puckle, M.A., vicar of St. Mary's, Dover; and the
Rev. C. F. Tarver, M.A., vicar of St. Peter's, Thanet. It
is announced that Mr. Hoare and Mr. Tarver have
retired from the contest, and that Mr. Puckle will be
returned without opposition. Mr. Puckle, who belongs
to the moderately High Church party, was educated at
Brasenose College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree
in 1836, when he was second-class in mathematics.
AFFECTION IN WOMEN.—It is common to
attribute want of affection to others merely because it is
not in their nature to be affectionate after our own
external pattern. We break our hearts over the thought,
"I should not have done this or that," and with the mar-
vellously false logic of self-torture, we say, "If there were
any true love, this thing could not be." But love is not

one, but many. Its angel-wings are of varied plumrge. I
had a very dear friend who married, as men the wisest
amongst us often do, a woman younger than, and much
unlike, himself—in all ways charming, but in all ways
provoking, too, as only very pretty women can be—saucily,
coquettishly, petulantly provoking, often rainy and stormy,
but with marvellous gleams of tender sunshine—beau-
tiful and bewitching and irresistible always ; treading down

reason, judgment, all things with her small foot, and
snapping all the boundaries that lie between right and
wrong with her queenly hand. Some men would have
resented this—my friend saddened under it. Like Shak-
spere's Moor, he was "not easily jealous," but, in time,
he came to be " perplexed in the extreme." So he spoke
to her one day, very gravely and sorrowfully, saying that
he was afraid that she did not love him—that she would
have been happier with some one else. And what did she
do? She turned upon him a face radiant with happiness,
and said, " You dear old goose, not love you—' happier
with some one else !' Why, if I had married
anyone else but my silly old darling, I should have
worried him into his grave in a month. But
you must take me as I am, you know, and let
me love you in my own way." And from that time a
great contentment came upon him. With his tenderness,
which was unfailing, there went forth towards her an
infinite toleration ; and in time it came to pass that he
would not have changed the love which she gave him "in
her own way " for any love shaped in accordance with
the standard of his egotism. What she gave him was all
herself, as he found, not as once he wished to fashion
her; aad it was far better than anything he could have
made. Sickness fell upon him, and she was the gentlest
of nurses. Poverty-- I mean what was poverty to
them---descended upon him ; and she was the most
self-denying of helpmates. She, who had been wont
to have every wish gratified—and to pout, perhaps to
murmur, if it were not—now subdued herself to all the
wishes of another. She who had once exacted, now
yielded everything; and she lovingly-confessed, "I am
happier now, dear, than when I was your spoilt child."
And I believe that this is anything but an uncommon
story. We blame others and we worry ourselves, mainly
because, lacking the necessary amount of imagination, we
cannot go out of ourselves—we cannot eat our way out of
the hard shell of our egotism and look abroad xpon the
manysidedness of nieralLyn,"
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