312 STATE BOAED OF AGEICULTUEE. 



did after the exposition of 1851, Avlien, says tlie writer from whom we have just 

 quoted, *^' the English manufacturers were amazed at tlie beauty and grace of 

 design shown by many articles of continental manufacture, and were especially 

 humiliated by the marked contrast between foreign earthenware and glass and 

 the English collection, which, said Mr. Eussell, ^disgusted the whole nation 

 with its blue earthenware plates, cuj^s, and saucers, borrowed from the two 

 thousand year's tradition of China, and with its huge lumps of glass called de- 

 canters, and glasses cut or molded into hideous distortions of form.' This 

 inferiority was wisely attributed by Prince Albert to the lack of art education, 

 whose earnest efforts were at once directed to the establishment of art schools 

 in the manufacturing districts. So soon did these young institutions bear fruit 

 that in the next exposition in 1855, England, in the opinion of Mr. Eussell, was 

 no longer outstripped in pottery and glass ; and when, a few years later, a com- 

 mission came from France to ascertain the cause of this marked progress, they 

 went home and pointed to the English art schools and the South Kensington 

 Museum as a sufficient explanation." At the time of the first exposition in 

 1851, industrial art schools were hardly known in England. From that time 

 their number increased rapidly, and twenty years after they could boast of "one 

 hundred and twenty-two special art schools with nearly twenty-three thousand 

 students, and five hundred and thirty -eight night classes with more than seven- 

 teen thousand students, while nearly two hundred thousand children were taught 

 drawing in the public schools Avithout charge." The centennial exhibition will, 

 we have no dou1)t, vividly impress upon us the necessity of such schools in this 

 countrv, the establishment of which would ere loner be an annual saving to the 

 country of millions of dollars. 



It is not to be overlooked that the exhibition will undoubtedly exert a bene- 

 ficial influence in promoting intellectual and moral refinement. A nation's real 

 wealth consists not so much in its forests, and mines, and fertile lands, and 

 railways, and manufactories, and public institutions, and palatial residences, as 

 in the character of its people. That is a low and sordid view of national great- 

 ness and prosperity in which money and possessions of a material kind are 

 regarded as of greater importance than the high and noble qualities of cliaracter 

 that may be developed in the citizens. ''You will confer," says Epictetus, 

 "the greatest benefit on your city not by raising its roofs, but by exalting the 

 souls of 3'our fellow-citizens, for it is better that great souls should live in small 

 habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses." As industry 

 goes everywhere hand in hand Avith godliness, it is evident that whatever tends 

 to quicken the pulses of national industry will tend to the elevation of national 

 life. Then the fact of the extensive intercommunication and associations v^ith 

 the representative men of the most advanced and progressive nations of the 

 world, occasioned by the exhibition, cannot fail to leave behind it an elevating 

 and refining influence. To many a soul struggling on amid difiiculties, by which 

 it is often Avell nigh overborne, it will be the commencement of a new era of hope- 

 fulness and success. Seeing what others have accomplished they will work with a 

 new confidence in those faculties which give man power over the numberless 

 objects of nature to fashion them as he pleases, and make them subser\nent to 

 his uses. 



We hasten on to notice before closing that an intei'national exhibition regards 

 man not so much in his individual capacity, or even nationally, so much as in 

 his universal relations. It is designed not to benefit one particular nation 

 merely, but the world, the most distant parts of which need to be brought in 



