I c . vv 
VOL. XXXVII. No. 13 
WHOLE No. 1470. 
PRICE SIX CENTS 
*‘.2.50 PER YEAR. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, la the year 1878. by the Rural Publishing Company, In the office of tiie Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
PARIS EXPOSITION 
and, already their show-cases are beginning to 
fill the spaces allotted to them. In this depart¬ 
ment there will be nothing worth knowing 
about France and its brilliant capital which will 
not here find an appropriate place. Among the 
features of the Exhibition will be a display of 
all the latest inventions of the electric light 
apparatus aud of the telephone and its various 
offshoots, such as the phonograph. The pavilion 
of the city of Paris, in the center of the grounds, 
will contain models of everything belonging to 
that great city, its prisons, public works, its 
system of paving and drainage, models of its 
underground sewers, and everything that might 
interest or please the visitor. 
On the elevated ground across the Seine, the 
palace of the Trocadero, which will be devoted 
to a display of the Fine Arts aud to various 
kinds of amusement, is advancing rapidly to 
completion. This vast building can easily 
i aocommodato seven thousand people. The 
concert hall will hold 5000 people and the orches¬ 
tra, besides 400 performers, can be so extended 
as to seat one thousand more. Of the 
external appearance of the building and 
its flanking pavilions as well as of its beautiful 
grounds and splendid cascades and waterfalls, 
an excellent illustration was given in the issue 
of the Rubai, for Feb. 17th 1877. 
But magnificent as will be the exhibits displayed 
at this World's Fair, to most of the visitors, the 
city of Paris itself will afford still greater inter¬ 
est and delight. Already she is making her 
toilet for the gay company she expects in May. 
All the publio buildings are being burnished up 
externally and internally, and those in course of 
construction are being pushed rapidly to com¬ 
pletion. Even to the old man who marveled 
at the splendor of the city in the days of his 
youth, its present aspect will be a matter of 
surprise and admiration. Covering an area of 
18,315 acres, and containing a population of 
about 2,000,000 of the most artistic people on 
the earth, with 28 theatres subsidized by the 
government, and 150 other places of public 
amusement, with magnificent public buildings, 
long lines of finely-paved Btreets, shaded many 
of them, with rows of trees, flanked most of 
them with six-storied, balconied houses, no city 
in the world presents so artistic and attractive 
au appearence. For centuries it has beeD cel¬ 
ebrated as the chief seat of learning iu Christen¬ 
dom. bnt its present beauty of appearauce is 
due almost entirely to the two Napoleons. The 
Man of Waterloo expended upwards of 100,000,- 
000 francs in embellishing the city ; the work 
thus inaugurated was carried on steadily but 
slowly during the reign of Louis Phillip and 
the two Legitimatist Kings, bnt it was only on 
the accession of the Man of Sedan to the im¬ 
perial throne, that, the Nephew set vigorously 
to work to complete the rebuilding aud adorn¬ 
ment of the city, inaugurated by his Uncle. 
Form vessels belonging to the Government 
have already left the port of New York for 
Havre* laden with American exhibits for the ap¬ 
proaching Frenoh Exhibition; and a fifth will 
bear away in a few days the last of our contri¬ 
butions to the grand display that will crown the 
multitudinous attractions of the gay capital of 
France in the gayest mouth of the twelve— 
flower-bedecked May. The Champ de Mars, on 
which the Exhibition buildings stand, iB a large 
military parade ground, usually baro and sand- 
strewn, but now covered with long linos of ar¬ 
tistic edifices, and carpets of green verdnre, 
spangled with flowers and shaded by groves that 
have sprung up as if by magical spell. The 
buildings are already in so forward a condition 
that there is no doubt of their being finished in 
ample time for the opening. The French are, of 
course, the most forward in their arrangements , 
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