EXPOSITIO^T OF 18G7. 
865 
moreand well knowing the benificent tendencies of national 
rivalry in promoting the arts of peace, we may safely accept 
even this simple circumstance as an omen for good. 
Only he who had seen the Champ de Mars when it was a 
wide, sandy waste on the outskirts of Paris, with (except on 
the side of L’Ecole Militaire) its surrounding of the habitations 
of the poor and of unoccupied lands, could realize how vast the 
'work that had been done within the past few months. The 
hundred-acre field had, indeed, vanished, and was nowhere to 
be found. Where for centuries the armies of France had been 
mustered, now rose in bewildering association, and in the midst 
of gardens of marvelous beauty and magnificence, countless 
palaces, villas, workshops, farm establishments, school houses, 
churches, representative of every nation under heaven ; while, 
in the centre of all, stood the mighty Palace of Industry, cover¬ 
ing the products of the genius and skill of all the peoples on the 
globe. Mars had been expelled and Minerva reigned supreme. 
Nor had the potent influence of the magician’s wand been 
limited to the boundary of the Champ de Mars. The hovels 
of the poor, the score of stenchy soap factories and those hid¬ 
eous blocks of bald, bleak and ugly stuccoed houses, which, 
altogether, once made this precinct as execrable as Paris in the 
main is beautiful, had given place to numerous handsome shops, 
dwellings and cafes, and was now also Parisian. 
Some idea of the Exposition building and its immediate sur¬ 
roundings may be gained from the accompanying illustration. 
Hundreds of hypercritical newspaper scribblers were prompt 
to pronounce the plan a pitiful failure, in advance of execution ; 
and these same were only more emphatic in the expression of 
that opinion after the building was once erected. Judging 
from a purely aesthetic stand-point, it certainly was obnoxious 
to criticism. It possessed none of the magnificence of that 
architectural wonder of the world, the Crystal Palace of 1851, 
nor did it afford those far-reaching and grand vistas which 
must dwell forever in the memory of one who ever once stood 
in the grand nave of the palace of 1851, 1855 or of 1862. 
But then it was vastly better adapted to the end proposed 
