The river is,

which delights even more than it amazes. appropriately, the centre of the fair; and the new bridge, dedicated to Alexander III., is a noble pathway, leading from the triumphs of French art to the Street of all the Nations. So simple and just is the design that it would have escaped any but a French brain, and while other countries must assume the blame attaching to their bizarre and fanciful imaginations, the credit of perfect order belongs to France alone.

Enter by the gate of the Champs Elysées, and you will see with how keen a sense of the picturesque the endless buildings have been placed. The vista is closed by the Palais des Invalides, a piece of old France reverently included in the new design. Against the white wings which enclose it, its aspect, perhaps, is dingier than it should be; but there it is to remind the world that the France of the Monarchy is still the France that we know to-day, and to suggest in some vague fashion that ancient and modern are not irreconcilable. Moreover, though the fatal ugliness of the Trocadero can know no palliation, though the buildings which surround it are awkward enough to be parts of an iron foundry, it needs only nightfall to convert the scene into a fantasy of the Arabian Nights.' There in the distance is the Château d'Eau, brilliant with its manytwinkling fountains, and over all strides the Eiffel Tower, its heavy iron turned to lace in the gloom, and its outline touched as it were by a phosphorescent hand.

But the two palaces, great and small, need not fear the light of day. None but French architects could have built them, and it is to the severe respect for tradition that they owe their beauty. Designed for the proper display of masterpieces, they are perfectly adapted to this purpose, and they will remain to do honour to Paris long after the Exhibition closes its doors. The Little Palace, especially, is a marvel of elegance, and, indeed, it should be, for it holds within the elegant treasures of

France. No more beautiful collection has ever been made, and within these spacious rooms, splendid with tapestry and stately with armoured figures, may be studied the handicrafts of France. Her furniture, her jewels, all the ornaments of her cathedrals, are there gathered and displayed, and it is evident that from Merovingian times to the Empire France was the home of magnificence and dainty design. There on the wall hang the rich tapestries of Angers; there is a gold cup, studded with jewels, which carries you back to the eighth century-barbarous perhaps, yet noble in its savagery. And so the Gothic age ascends to the Renaissance, and presently Louis XIV. yields to the simplicity of his successors, until the Directory gives way to the heavy grandeur of the Empire. But so far each style has its own propriety, its own splendeur.

Vulgarity the privilege of to-day.

As we descend to our own time there is another tale to tell, and we are forced to ask, Is vulgarity the privilege of the moderns? Or is it the universal habit of mankind to shudder at the contemporary taste? Will the centuries that are yet to come admire the cheap furniture and common inventions of to-day? We cannot think it, and the Exhibition is (from one point of view) of dismal augury. Of course, all ages have listened to the groans of conservatives, and have been half persuaded to believe that they marked the final decadence. The old knights who had served under Louis XIII. shuddered, as we know, at the new-fangled magnificence which distinguished the Court of the Grand Monarch. Doubtless, too, the style

of Louis XVI.'s time seemed austere to those who remembered the twisted elaboration of an earlier taste. And how should the stately mahogany and the strange emblems of the Empire appeal to the stern partisans of the Ancien Régime? These changes of style corresponded to a change of feeling, and were each and all inspired by sincerity. They were also marked by a proper growth

and a logical development. In the modern style there is no growth, there is no character. Enter what pavilion you will be it Mexico or Italy, Austria or Belgium—and you will encounter the same enormity. You cannot call the prevailing style French, nor even European; to name it after Felix Faure or Loubet would be an affront to those respectable Presidents. The style is of no place, of no time—it is merely modern. Nor is its ugliness its sole fault, though that should be sufficient to condemn it. Its lack of sincerity is a more heinous sin, because that sin not only ruins the present but makes the future appear hopeless. The prevailing fashion of ornament, in fact, belongs to nobody and corresponds to nothing. The man (or the people) who adopts it did not find it out; nor was it chosen from the ragbag of the past, because it satisfied a taste or chimed with an idea. Though it comes from the past, it is none the less an outrage upon tradition, because, old as it is, it jolts back to a purely arbitrary point of view. In the Little Palace no vulgarity distresses our eye. But we cannot believe that oceans of years will purge the stain of an indelible vulgarity from the cosmopolitan art of the shops.

arrangement.

The French taste of arrangement, then, is pure as of yore. The architects of France have not forgotten the value of space, the capital importance of balA taste of ance and variety. So far as the ground-plan is concerned, nothing has been left to chance. The walks and gardens are designed with an exquisite tact. The very palings which encircle the Exhibition are proof enough of thought and intelligence. And so long as the buildings are a faithful echo, they commend our admiration. Their fairy whiteness, too, is the best background for such ornament as marble and tapestry afford. But when once a modern fantasy is let loose, disaster is immediate. The great gate in the Place de la Concorde, upon which so much praise is lavished, is a frank and blatant horror. An experiment

in the use of iron, it might have been both curious and interesting, but no material-not even the butter of the famous American statue- can excuse a palpable eyesore, and the flattened dome and the meaningless circles of this monstrous gate have no excuse save youth. Nor is the modern lady of Paris, who seems to step down from its top with opera-cloak on shoulder, one whit better than the parti-coloured gate. Yet it was a right idea, and perhaps it only failed because the sculptor, with no model before him, was forced to rely upon a treacherous fancy.

As with handicrafts and architecture, so with the pictures. The canvases of the last ten years, accomplished as some of them are, still look as crude and brutal as they did in their respective Salons. The canvases of the last hundred years-for it is into "decennal" and "centennal" that the galleries of French painting are divided-have already the complexion of old masters. Manet, once irreconcilable, is to-day enveloped in an atmosphere of distinction. The public of 1863 laughed at his "Déjeuner sur l'herbe"; the public of to-day, which is possibly less intelligent, smiles in approbation. What is it that is so easily accomplished by time? Maybe the heresy of to-day becomes the gospel of to-morrow; maybe the creed which half-a-dozen intrepid spirits dare to formulate is accepted after a first struggle. But at any rate it is consoling to reflect that the great man is ahead of his age, and that he can comfortably wait for the laggards to catch him up.

The unity of nations.

So it is that France has done her utmost to introduce in a spirit of unity all the nations of the earth, and she has done it with an exquisite skill and tact which belong to her alone. Yet, without being churlish, one may remember that the President and his Ministers pitched the key of enthusiasm a little too high. The Exhibition, we were told, was to revive our dying civilisation, to relight

the torch of art, and to give peace to all men. Of course it will do none of these things, which, indeed, are beyond the reach of human enterprise. But its achievement, if less humble, is none the less praiseworthy. It has given an example to the architects of the world; it has displayed its ancient treasures, which should be at once a model and an inspiration; it has marked the point of inefficiency to which modern handicrafts have attained; and it has proved that human ingenuity, which once was busied in the making of a chair, the modelling of a clock, or the enamelling of a snuff-box, is now exhausted in vast machines and in the manufacture of warlike implements. Schneider's great gun seems to threaten the Exhibition, and it is perhaps in the corner devoted to the army that we should seek an explanation of the prevailing vulgarity. So long as cannons engross the ingenuity of mankind, we must be content with a commercial art and with houses of hideous mien, The warfare of to-day is no aristocratic pastime; long ago it was lifted from the realm of sport into the realm of science; and so keen is the rivalry of destruction that guns and explosives are enough to engross the energy of a whole people. When the lull comes, if ever it come, then maybe the arts of peace will revive; but in the meantime the Paris Exhibition has taught us that the triumph of the modern world is mechanical. We can threaten our enemies more efficiently; we can kill space and time with greater ease; an automobile can speed us from one end of a country to another more rapidly than the old stage - coach. For these privileges we must pay the penalty, and, if our own generation produce little that is beautiful, we may solace ourselves with the creations of the past.

But while her President spoke with quaking voice concerning the mission of peace, the politicians of France still look upon the Exhibition as an opportunity for violent discussion and bitter acrimony. The Govern