402 
PAEIS UOTYEKSAL 
“In all these ways, Sire, the Universal Exposition of 186Y will furnish a 
brilliant page to the history ol Your Majesty’s reign and of the grandeur of 
the 19th century.” 
After the reading of this address, the Emperor pronounced 
the following words: 
.REPLY OF THE EMPEROR. 
[Translation.] 
Gentlemen: —After an interval of twelve years, I come again, for the sec¬ 
ond time, to distribute the rewards to such as are the most distinguished in 
those labors which enrich the nations, embellish life, and refine manners. 
The poets of antiquity celebrated with eclat the solemn games wherein the 
different colonies of Greece came to contend for the prize of the course. 
What would they say to-day, could they assist at these Olympian games of the 
entire world, where all peoples in a contestputellectual, seem to dart forward 
at once in the career of infinite progress towards an ideal, which they ap¬ 
proach without ceasing, yet without the power ever to attain it ? 
From all places on the earth, the representatives of seience, of the arts and 
of industry have joined in the contest; while peoples and kings are come to 
honor the efforts of labor, and by their presence to crown them with an idea 
of conciliation and peace. In fact in these grand reunions, which may ap¬ 
pear to have nothing for their object but material interests, there is always a 
moral thought disengaged by the concourse of intelligent minds—the thought 
of concord and of civilization. The nations, in coming together, learn to 
know and respect each other; enmities are extinguished, and truth is es¬ 
tablished more and more as the prosperity of each country contributes to the 
prosperity of all. 
“The Exposition of 186Y may be justly called universal, because it reunites 
all the riches of the globe ; by the side of the latest improvements of modern 
art appear the products of the most remote ages, in a manner that repre¬ 
sents at once the genius of all nations. It is universal, because by the side 
of luxuries for the individual, it is mainly occupied with what will meet the 
necessities of the greatest number. Never have the interests of the laboring 
classes awakened a more lively solicitude. Their moral and material needs, 
edncation, the necessaries of existence at a fair price, combinations the most 
fruitful of associations have been the object of patient researches, and of 
serious study. Thus all improvements advance. If science, in subduing 
matter, enfranchises labor,the culture of the soul, in conquering vices, preju¬ 
dices, and vulgar passion, enfranchises humanity. 
“Let us congratulate ourselves, gentlemen, on having received most 
of the sovereigns and princes of Europe and so many eager visitors. Let 
us be proud that we have been able to show them France as she is, great, 
prosperous, and free. It is necessary to be wanting altogether in patriotic 
faith not to see her greatness; to close the eyes to all evidence, to deny her 
prosperity; to misunderstand her institutions, which sometimes tolerate even 
to the verge of licentiousness, not to see, here, liberty. 
“ Foreign people have been able to appreciate this France, lately so dis¬ 
turbed and casting off her inquietudes beyond her frontiers, to-day industifi- 
ous and calm, ever fruitful in generous ideas, devoting her genius to marvels 
the most varied, and never permitting herself to be enervated by material en¬ 
joyments. 
“ Attentive minds will readily discover that notwithstanding the devel¬ 
opment of wealth, notwithstanding the resistless advance towards well-being, 
the national heart is here always ready to vibrate at the touch of whatever 
affects honor and country; but this noble susceptibility should not be a 
ground of anxiety for the repose of the world. 
“ Let those who have dwelt among us for a little time, bear to their homes 
a just opinion of our country; let them be pursuaded of the sentiments of 
