Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1867-08-09
THE GREAT EXPOSITION COM
PLETE.

Of Irenaus, has written to the New York
| Observer some Of the best letters from Paris,
descriptive of the Exposition, that have
been published. We make the following
extracts from his last letter.
"At last it may be fairly and truthfully
said the Exposition is complete Every
department is open and full. The sound of
the hammer has ceased in the Palace of In
dustry and Art. No more doth the work.
man in his blouse, with his ladders and
brushes, his car and his bars, jostle among
the silks and the laees Of the gay and the
fair who throng the walks and inches Of the
grand bazaar, It is DONE The world is
here to see it. The kings of the earth,
with their queens: the great men Of the
East with their wives and their coneubines:
princes and princesses, generals and cap
tains, and ambassadors and commissioners,
and men Of high and low and no degree;
deputations of the laboring classes from
various countries; schools Of young men and
young women on excursions of pleasure;
regiments Of soldiers on a holiday, in pic
/ turesquo uniform, from the mountains Of
the Tyrol; students from the German uni
versities, wild rolicking set Of fellows who
| play as hard when they are abroad as some
Of them study when they are at home; Chi
nese and Japanese, and Turks and Greeks,
and Russians, in great numbers, and Fins
and Poles, and Swedes and Danes, and coal
black Africans and keen, sharp-set Yankees
and Brazilians, and gay Italians and solemn
Spaniards and Portuguese, and how many
more | do not at this moment remember;
but assuredly all the civilized the semi-civ-
ilized and some Of the uncivilized peoples of
Of the earth have their representatives at
this moment in the capital, the metropolis
Of art, the most beautiful attractive, sedue-
tive, dangerous, destructive, delightful city
in the world.
Around the central garden stands the
great Exposition building itself, and over
its several doors are the names of the streets
that divide it into sections, and of the coun-
tries to which they lead Standing in the
garden we read the names of all the nations
and select the one we wish first to explore
Now that have taken you with me through
the most Of them separately, it is well
enough to go through the walks, making
successive voyages or travels around the
world, passing constantly out of one land
into another and making comparisons
s----es r,.svu ura.>,
grand impression of the whole. fiat any
time in the slow and imperfect development
Of the display, we have been tempted to re-
gard it as failure, now that all its proper
tions are revealed and the completed idea
made fixed and tangible fact, no one can
CALI a failure unless be had made such ex-
aggerated previous conceptions that city
Of pearls and gold would fail to satisfy bis
expectations. The outer circle is alive with
the movements Of useful art-the machin-
cry by which the work, the hard work of the
world is done. The inmost circle is the re-
pository of the fine art-the paintings and
statuary-uf the several nations. Between
these are many concentFic circles, divided
and sub divided, into convenient compart-
ments, in which all the results of human
ingenuity and labor, whatever the wants,
real OF imaginary, of mankind demand, are
assembled. 1t is not toe much to say that
so great a collection was probably never
made before. Forty thousand persons are
enrolled as exhibitors Each of these has
sent something, and many of them many
things which the judges deemed of suffi-
cient interest to be placed in competition
with the rest. All together, the number of
objects exceed one million Whatever
therefore, is admirable for its power to ben
eft or crafty the human race, whatever
tends to exalt, improve, please and bless,
distinguishing the human from the merely
animal races, is therefore here, in its most
elaborately finished form. We know some
what Of the games and fairs that brought
kings and peoples into contact and competi-
ton in Greece and Italy, and Asia Minor
in the days of old; we know that Damascus
and Babylon, Bagdad and Cairo have had
their streets and squares and bazaars throng-
ed with millions of people to see and buy
and SELL but never until railroads and steam
ers could be used to transport the produc-
tions of the earth from its most distant
points to a common center, has it been pos
sible to gather in one enclosure such mil
lion Of various fabrics as are now visible in
one day, within this Park in Paris The
one chamber of diamonds exceeds descrip-
tion: room full of precious stones, in eve
ry form of art, to adorn the women whose
highest type of beauty is to need no other
jewel Yet it is not SO much the briliancy
and excellence of one or other Of these de-
partments of art that gives the character to
the Exhibition True, you will not find in
any shop or street such specimens of silks
in piece and in dresses, such patterns of
gold and silver ware, such porcelain in all
he shapes that luxury and taste can devise
OF want require, such glass and crystal in
every range of ornament and use, such
wealth Of wool and cotton wrought by hand
and machinery into all the purposes of life,
such instruments of mnsie peculiar to GER
tain lands and others common to all, but
vieing with each other IN splendor of finish
and perfection of tone; such manifold pro-
ductions of the earth, vegetable and miner
al: such enginery to move the works that
produced these various articles for mans
y,sa and y,al-n man tba master of tbe Iopd