Year: 1878

(trom our Regular Correspondent.)


PARrs, October 3, 1873.


r. M. WHITE-As one talks to hol-
iday-makers now returning home in
shoals after making point Of seeing
the exhibition on their way, one can
| not well avoid calling to mind the
half-forgotten fable. 1t is ''eyes and
no eyes" over again; Only on a lar
ger scale, and with a greatly IN
creased variety of episode. 1t need
scarcely be said that allude 10 that
class of general sight-seers which so
enormously preponderates over the
comparatively few visitors who have
been to the exhibition for some def
mite purpose Of art or business, or
both combined, and who expect to
make tangible profit in one way or
another out of their study of the
latest achievements of agricultural
engineers, of potters, of upholsterers,
and of builders. The general visitors
have been or are going to Pans,
partly because they like to see all ex-
hibltions of every kind, partly be-
cause they fancy that they ought to
see this particular exhibition for the
sake of being as other men are, and
of obtaining material for small talk,
and partly because, if the truth be
told, they grasp eagerly at any ex-
cuse for holiday IL the recreation
ground of Europe. The impression
left upon different members of this
body by their inspection Of the Paris
Exhibition are worth study by reason
of their variety and their singularly
extraordinary nature. There are first
of all the good people who come home
delighted with all that they have seen,
because they set out intending to be
pleased, and because they fear that if
they seemed dissatisfied their neigh
bors would fancy they lad blundered
into failure, and waste of money
and time. At the opposite pole,
though actuated by much the same
insincerity OF motive, are the unhappy
people who are disappointed, and be-
cause they believe that their dissatis-
faction proves their own superiority.
Leaving the genuine impressions of
these sight-seers out of the question
as beyond the reach Of anything save
guess-work, we come to the spccta-
tors who are chiefly struck by the
magnitude of the thing to be seen.
They have been oppressed by their
self-imposed task of pleasure, and
having no method in their holiday
occupation, have confessedly derived
from it little but a vague sense of its
Importance. There has been so much
to see that they have seen nothing.
1t would, they say, and say truthfully,
take weeks to ''do" the exhibition
thoroughly, so they have not known
how to spend few days there with
intelligent enjoyment. With them it
is not exactly case of ''no eyes," or
of eyes wilfully blind; they honestly
desire to see, but they do not know
where to begin to look. Others, still
without the charmed circle of those
who have acquired the art of ''seeing,"
have failed because they have limited
too carefully their horizon. Interest
ed in the pictures, they have forgotten
the furniture; paying attention to
the characteristic productions of the
furniture makers, they have missed
taking a comprehensive view of the
still more characteristic structures in
which they are placed. Struck by
the merely curious, they have lost
sight of the beautiful, or, on the 9TH
er hand, they have looked only where
they could admire.


1t would be difficult to expand the
catalogue of exhibition-goers to a
length as great as that of the more
familiar exhibition catalogue. The
ways of seeing are as many as the
sights to be seen. AS a rule, 1t may
be said that he who takes most into
an exhibition takes most out of it,
Just as he who brings most informa-
ton to bear upon book derives most
from its pages. 1t is certain that
the art of profitable sightseeing is
one well worthy of cultivation, since
the result of proficiency in 1t is to in-
crease indefinitely. the means and
opportunity of education. Not only
are we enabled by its aid to effect the
oft-laughed-at combination of busi-
ness and pleasure /; our very pleasures
are elevated and intensified by the
mental advancement which they are
thus made to imply. If the series of
exhibitions inaugurated in 1851, and
eliminating for the time being in 1878,
had done nothing else, they would
have accomplished a great work in
training the myriads who have visited
them to make profitable use of those
powers of observation which as often
lie dormant, while other faculties are
actively employed in the monotonous
routine of life. That the crowds who
now throng the building opposite the
Trocadiro and study its huge mass of
contents, are better fitted than their
predecessors of twenty-seven years
ago to derive mental Improvement
from their study, can scarcely be
slAI Ush,x hav.. ,,,,ch, f<> loor,,