which the average Briton will class among the fine arts. Lovely as the
Graces are, they need a little editing to harmonize them with a coal
fire.

This halfway house of the nineteenth century, the house of glass in
which it boldly ensconced itself to throw stones at its benighted
relations, will ever be a landmark to the traveler over the somewhat
arid expanse of industrial and commercial history. Its humblest
statistics will be preserved, and coming generations will read with
interest that 42,809 persons visited it, on an average, each day, that
these rose on one day to 109,915, and that there were at one time
in the building 93,224, or six thousand more than Domitian's most
tempting and sanguinary bill of theatrical fare could have drawn
into the Coliseum. Its length, by the way, was exactly equal to the
circumference of the Flavian amphitheatre--1848 feet.

A new home (of progress)! who'll follow? "I," quoth New York. The
British empire had taken three years in preparation: New York was
ready with less than two. Not quite ready, either, we are apt to
say now, but most creditably so for the time and the means of a few
enterprising private men bestowed upon it. And up to this time the
display of '53 under the Karnak-like shadow of the Croton Reservoir
has not been equaled on our soil.

Architecturally, the building was superior to that of London, and
showed itself less cramped by the peculiarities of the novel material.
The form was that of a Greek cross, with a central dome a hundred and
forty-eight feet high, and eight towers at the salients of seventy
feet. The space, including galleries, did not reach a third of that
afforded by its prototype, but proved equal to the demand.