The Portland daily press., 1866-10-29
The Worlds Fair.

A Paris correspondent of the New York
World furnishes the following description of
the magnificent structure on the Champs de
Mars, for the exhibition of the worlds products
next spring:
For moment you can make of all this flash
of colors and mingling of shadows more
cOngruity than of the eternal babble and roar
of men and beasts and spindles and steamers
that come out of the valley like the sparks and
smoke and hammering of Vulcan! The city,
sweeping far behind and on the flank of this
specific and extraordinary congregation, looks
like absolute quiet, in the comparison-unpop-
ulated and unnoticed. Pausing moment till
the eye has mastered the motion, you will see
out OF this chaos the greater components liber-
ate themselves. The exhibition building re-
solves to concentric circles, or ellipses rather,
OF iron, stone, and glass. OF these concentrc
ellipses there are eight, and within the Utmost
or eighth one, beneath suspended roof of
wire and crystal, lies the great middle garden,
checkered with statuary, flashing with foun-
tains, and into which all the cafes of the place
open. Crossing the eight ellipses, like SO ma
ny radii, are sixteen great avenues which serve
to divide the edifice into the compartments in
tended for the respective races and nations.
vi these the two great transverse avenues are
of equal height with the exterior and interior
elGpses, but none of them cross the central
fountain space. There the loud hum of all
quarters ceases, and the weared visitors under
the leaves of green ferns and spreading flow
ers, may taste the separate cuisines of every
nation on the globe. American buckwheat
cakes, and Bourbon compounds mixed in Bos-
ton ice, will alternate with Egyptian coffee,
Smyrna sherbet, and household rats, q la Chi
noise. 1t is the rule of the exhibition that each
cafe shall sell only refreshments indigenous to
its nationality. Out of this monster building
sixty arches open into the Palace Garden,
which also is representative of the architec-
lures OF all the countries, variegated with bow
ers, cloisters, offices, jets cascades, powered
walks, lakes, grand aisles Of trees, minafets,
mosques, ObseryatOries. The grand portal to the
exhibition is built of Paris limestone, carved
with the arms of the empire, and the motto of
welcome made of fine colossal arches, the mid
die of which is lighted with grand rose win
dow, greater than Notre Danes. The outer
and inner ellipses of the edifice are thrown
open to the roof; the whole is magnificently
lighted with crystal chandeliers and where the
whole fabric stands, the greatest in size, as the
most perfect in ornament of any such building
ever designed, there was not, six months ago,
any green growing thing. Eight thousand
trees have been, in their full height, transplant
ed here; six thousand workmen have wrought
the great ribs of the building; fifteen thousand
men have prepared the grounds; two thou
sand six hundred masons have set the stone
foundations; eleven hundred carriers and team
sters have driven twenty-eight hundred horses
to and fro in this preparation. The cost of this
edifice proper has been eighty millions of francs
and the transformation of the grounds, specific
and outlying, has cost thirty-two millions.
Whoever would see the whole world in one
coup d9H, as if he beheld itfrom some far star,
foaming and smoking with its own inherent
passions, and ringing with the sledges and axes
of its anxious habitants, should stand here, in
the disappearing frosts of next April, to see
this stalwart crystal building creak with the
cargoes of all our tribes Then all energy of
description will be needed all clearness of
sight and memory imperative to keep apart and
the innumerable wares, models
trifes, glories, that stand in all the rivalry of
color, space and power to compete for the
award of the highest in intellect among men,
And when they are all revealed and measured,
we doubt that the beholder will not walk with
out, and looking at the noble proportions of
this Incompatible palace, say "This represents
them all, Us it contains them ALI"