your traditional John Bull'opinion about Paris being an over-rated place. And of all the beautiful sights there to be seen and meditated upon, I think you will find that not one of the least beautiful is the much-abused Exposition Universelle.

It has been the fashion in our papers to decry the building, as being an architectural failure. Our regret at its supposed failure has been tempered by a subdued satisfaction. It is all very well for us to acknowledge the superiority of France in all matters of art and taste, but we do not exactly relish the acknowledgment. I have always thought that, in spite of Virgil's famous repudiation of Roman supremacy in the artistic arena, the real way to flatter the public of ancient Rome would have been to tell them that, after all, their sculptors were not unequal to those of Athens. We may repeat with pride the "Excudent alii spirantia melius æra," and so on; but what we really like are not disquisitions on the empire over which the sun never sets, but statements that the Royal Academy is a higher school of painting than the "Salon," and that Landseer's lions mark an epoch in sculpture. So we learnt, without unmitigated regret, that the French had produced a great show building as hideous as if the plan had been selected by the Society of Arts from an open competition of British architects. Thus much we may honestly pride ourselves upon, that in what I may call the glassshed order of architecture we have produced the only work of genius which the world has yet seen. Among all structures of the kind, the Sydenham Palace stands alone and unrivalled; and the French Exhibition, if judged by comparison with it, is a lamentable fiasco. No person on earth can ever make the immense blank expanse of iron wall that forms the outside of the building anything but unsightly. No attempt of the kind has, however, been made if the walls had been run up, as you would fancy when first looking at them, simply as a temporary protection for some great building which was

:

to be constructed within the enclosed area, they could hardly have been barer or plainer. But, if you look on the Exhibition from an utilitarian rather than a sentimental point of view, I think you must admit no plan could be more admirably contrived for its purpose than that adopted on the Champ de Mars. The Greek cross shape on which all previous Exhibitions have been constructed appears to me to be ill adapted for a monster show-room. In the forerunners of the present structure we have had one grand central street of booths, and to that we have sacrificed everything. The courts in the back rows and the galleries were practically refuges for the destitute,-places where the poor relations of the exhibition family were stowed away out of sight. The "upper ten thousand" exhibitors who got stalls on the sides of the main thoroughfare monopolized the attention of the public. Moreover, the distances to be traversed between one part of the building and another were necessarily immense; and anybody who wanted to compare the products of different countries had to perform a series of intricate journeys, which almost always resulted in leading you to the place you did not intend to go to. Now at the present Exhibition there is not a foot of ground wasted. It is hardly necessary to say that it consists of a series of concentric ellipses, each inner one lower in height than the outer; so that if you could look down upon it from a balloon, I fancy it would have a sort of resemblance to a lath-and-plaster Coliseum. From one gallery to another you pass by a series of open passages, all converging towards the centre of the ellipse, the spot on which stands the temple destined to contain the crown jewels of France. If this description gives you any idea of the shape of the building-for my own part, I never met any written description of an architectural structure which did-you will see that you can pass very rapidly from one point to another. I have a very bad eye for distances, and the statement of the measurements of the Exhibition would

give me no very distinct notion of its size; but I can say from experience that, if you walk reasonably quick, and do not find your path choked up with sight-seers, or, what at this time is more probable, with cases half unpacked, you can get from any point to any point within the building in five minutes' easy walking. No doubt our old form was infinitely more preferable for people who, either because they did not like the persons they were likely to meet, or because they did like the person they were with, preferred comparative solitude. In our Exhibitions there were deserted regions, out-of-the-way corners, empty corridors, where you might stroll about in peace out of sight, if not out of hearing, of the crowd of sight-seers; but in Paris there is nothing of the kind. As you go round and round the long galleries, you are always surrounded by the tide of visitors, always being washed against the same waifs and strays in the human current. For persons, therefore, who look on an Exhibition as a lounge, the building is ill constructed; the only spot where you can promenade or loiter about is the central ellipse, which is surrounded by a colonnade open to the air. There you may sit and make an appointment with your friends, and listen to music; and, I fancy (though of this I am not sure), eat ices and consume absinthe; but, when once the summer comes on, the heat in this exposed space will be tremendous, and even at the best it is a poor substitute for the grand promenade of our central naves.

The very reasons, however, which diminish the value of the French building in the eyes of loungers who come to be seen and not to see, render it acceptable to exhibitors, and to the visitors who come in good faith to behold its contents. It can hardly be said that one place in the show is better than another for purposes of exhibition. I suppose the parts of the galleries adjacent to the main radii or "secteurs," as the French call them, are considered the posts of honour. But if you once enter a gallery and get into the stream of visitors, you are carried naturally

along it. And as you pass, unless you wilfully close your eyes, you cannot avoid seeing everything on your route. In our Exhibitions the public, either through the criticisms of the press or through its own instincts, picked out, before the building had been many days open, a certain number of courts or articles it deemed most worth seeing; and, after this selection had been made, nine visitors out of ten confined themselves to the central promenade, only turning out of it at points which led to the few courts in request, being out of the grand row. But here in Paris you cannot pursue this Jack Horner policy; if you want your plum, you must eat your slice of pudding with it. If, for instance, you wish to see the French and Spanish collections of pictures, you must perforce pass through the English galleries, unless you are prepared to make a long detour for the purpose of avoiding them. There are no staircases, everything is on the same level; and no exhibitor can complain that nobody saw his wares because they were placed out of sight. If goods fail to attract notice, it must be not because they are not seen, but because, right or wrong, the public does not consider them worth looking at. So if, as seems likely enough, Exhibitions should become permanent institutions, I think the French will justly claim the merit of having invented the form of building which will serve as the model for all future edifices of the kind.

The limits of your space would not allow me to enter into any disquisition as to the merits of the different departments; and, long ere this, the newspapers will have given you detailed criticism of the various branches of art and manufacture displayed therein. Moreover, I own candidly that if such disquisitions were required I should feel myself disqualified for giving them. I confess to holding, amongst many other heresies, a belief that, to form any judgment on a subject, you must have studied it professionally. I have no doubt that I am wrong. A friend of mine, who is considered a high autho

rity on Byzantine architecture, acquired his knowledge of the subject, as far as I could ever discover, while engaged in farming a sheep-run in New South Wales. Another pundit, whose opinion is received as gospel on all questions of the comparative excellence of English and Continental culture, knows the Continent through a holiday trip or two to Paris. I am acquainted distantly with a gentleman recognised as the chief judge of letters, whose sole qualification is that he has written poems which nobody ever read. But in spite of these, and countless examples I might quote, I adhere to the belief that amateur judgments are of very little value on professional subjects. About plate, pottery, jewellery, upholstery, machinery, lace, tapestry, and all the thousand other productions of which classified specimens are to be seen in the Paris Exhibition, I know nothing, and, what is more, know that I know nothing. And, if I am to confess the plain honest truth, I am not unhappy at my own ignorance. I like pretty things, or, what is the same, things that seem to me pretty; but as to comparing one article with another, or trying to understand the canons by which their respective merits are discerned, all I can say is that it is not my line of business. How things are made is a department of human knowledge I have never cared about. I have always, on the contrary, felt that the derided undergraduate who, according to legendary lore, when he was asked how the walls of Babylon were built, answered that he was not a bricklayer and had no intention of becoming one, made a remark of a highly philosophical character.

for high art and elevating influences. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham was created as a sort of temple to intellectual culture. Plaster casts of illustrious celebrities of art, science, and literature, with their names and dates inscribed beneath; models of antediluvian animals; collections of minerals; aquariums and galvanic batteries; dissolving views and scientific lectures,were to be the chief attractions of the programme of the People's Palace. But the people refused to be charmed into thinking they were amused when they were not; and so, at last, dancing dogs, Christmas revels, fireworks, comic songs, Punch and Judy shows, and I know not what, have been substituted for intellectual culture, with much profit to the management and with much satisfaction to the public.

Profiting by experience, the French authorities have neglected no means of making the Exhibition pleasant to holiday folk who go to have a stare at the show, not to improve their minds by studying the progress of art. I think it will be found that they have succeeded excellently. In the first place, the eating arrangements are admirable. Within the building there are no refreshment stalls; but the whole of the outer colonnade is pretty well one succession of cafés, eating-houses, divans, restaurants, and beer-sellers. Casual French cooking is doubtless the best in the world, that is, if you go into an eating place in France promiscuously,

you have a better chance of getting good food there than you have anywhere else. But it is possible you may get tired of French drinks and French meats; and, at any rate, variety in matters of food and liquids is always pleasing. In this circle of cafés you may dine and drink in turn with many nations, and may really learn something of the muchneglected science of international cookery. You may eat real macaroni dressed with the Poma d'Oro sauce, and wash it down with Capri, as you would in Naples; you may, if so inclined, feed upon genuine sauerkraut, with unlimited supplies of frothy Bavarian

beer; you may have kabobs à la Turque, whatever they may be, and drink real Turkish coffee with the grits at the bottom; you may perfume yourself with the flavour of Spanish dishes pregnant with garlic; you may scald your throat with tea made in the Russian fashion; you may "liquor up" with cocktails and mint juleps of Transatlantic brewing, and remove the taste by true Boston crackers cooked in an American

oven.

But the real attraction of the Exhibition to the goodly company of idlers, who, I suspect, could outpoll those, who come to study, by overwhelming majorities, will be found outside, not inside, the building. Of all the summer gardens-Vauxhalls, Tivolis, Krolls, and Cremornes-which the world has known, this Paris pleasure-ground will be the prettiest. To every one who remembers what the old Champ de Mars was only two years ago, it seems impossible to imagine that the ground can be the same as that on which Paris has created its scenic city of many lands. All round the central building there is, as it were, a fringe of gardens, and conservatories, and châlets, and flower-beds, and grassy knolls, and ornamental ponds. The dwellings of a score of countries are supposed to be represented by the different booths with which the ground is covered. Many of the original are known to me. I have seen American log-houses, and Russian villages, and Swedish farm-yards, and Magyar barns; and, judging from the amount of resemblance between the originals and the models, I am disposed to be sceptical as to the houses in Japan and the mosques in Turkey being much akin to their fac-similes displayed in Paris.

But

still, whether like or not, they are, one and all, very pretty; and, indeed, the only structure on the ground which is positively ugly is a model English labourer's cottage,-a model which, I am thankful to say, could not be matched in England. Possibly champions of the doctrine that an industrial display ought to be of a grave and instructive character, will opine that models of Egyptian temples and Turkish baths and Moorish mosques and Mexican shrines do not belong, to use a theatrical term, to legitimate exhibition business. Possibly they are right, and, with the best wish in the world, I cannot find much to say for the theatres and dancing-booths and open-air concerts with which, when the place is completed, the gardens are to be adorned. Still, when the place is lit up on a still summer night, as it is to be, with thousands upon thousands of gas-lights, and the grounds are crowded with a motley multitude collected from many nations, the scene will be a picturesque one enough; and will leave behind with those who witness it the recollection, so rare in life, of having seen something that of its kind was perfectly beautiful. I see that, in spite of enlightenment and scepticism, the great public is still passionately fond of the transformation scenes upon our stage, when glimpses of fairy land are produced with coloured lights, and spangles, and tinsel; and so

I

suppose this taste for lights and colours and fireworks is imprinted somehow in our prosaic nature. This taste will be gratified on the evenings when the Exhibition gardens are thrown open; and, unless I mistake the British public, they will like the Exhibition by night better than they do by day.

sense

In the four volumes forming the first instalment of Mr. Burton's work, we are presented with a succession of broad, bold, graphic sketches of events in Scotland, from the earliest age of which we know anything down to Queen Mary's abdication. A shrewd reasoning intellect and a large share of that uncommon faculty called common have enabled the author to take a far firmer grasp than most of his predecessors of the national and political life of Scotland, and the causes of its development. While some previous historians furnish us with a more microscopic view of individual transactions, none have been so successful in expressing the spirit of Scottish history. The style is graceful and flowing: we have much lively description, varied at times by cynical and humorous touches; and the materials are throughout so skilfully arranged, that the reader's attention can never flag, even in the most dreary parts of the story. partisanship there is none; Mr. Burton's philosophic way of looking at events raises him to an elevation far above the strife of parties. Occasional errors of oversight there are in matters of detail, as there will be in every work of the kind,-errors which, though they seldom materially affect the truthfulness of the No. 92.-VOL. XVI.

Of

narrative, or the general view of events, are of course to be regretted in a book of such value; but, we doubt not, a second edition will soon give the author an opportunity of removing these blemishes.

It is to Tacitus that we owe our first gleam of authentic light on Scotland. He tells us how his father-in-law Agricola, marching into Northern Britain, won a decisive victory over 30,000 Caledonian savages at the Mons Grampius.' The Romans, however, in spite of oft-repeated attempts, failed to subdue the fierce Caledonians; and the dominion asserted by their walls and fortresses amounted to more than a military occupation. South Britain soon became a civilized Roman province, harassed, however, with a troublesome northern neighbour, whose inroads grew more

never

1 The more correct reading would appear to be Groupius; and Mr. Burton warns us against identifying the site of Agricola's victory with the hills on which Norval's father fed his flock. The name Grampians was bestowed on the range of mountains now so called at the revival of classical learning, on the hypothesis of their being the locality indicated by Tacitus. This certainly is not an absolutely solitary instance of such a reversal of the ordinary conditions of etymology; but we do not think with Mr. Burton that any very large proportion of modern local names in Britain have come by a like process from classical sources.

H