Considering the absence of any formal public character in the movement
and the brief notice, foreign exhibitors came forward in tolerable
force. They could not expect to address through this display each
other's commercial constituencies, as very few visitors would traverse
the Atlantic: they could reach only the people of the United States.
This difficulty must interfere--though much less now than twenty years
ago, when the means of ocean-travel were but a fraction of what they
are at present--with the strictly international complexion of any
exposition in this country. If, however--as we are already assured
beyond peradventure will be the case with the Centennial--our
neighbors over the way send us a full representation of their
products, and a delegation of visitors from their most intelligent
classes, not inferior in numbers, for example, to the Germans who went
to London, and the English who repaired in '73 to Vienna, we shall
claim a cosmopolitan character for our exposition, and hold that it
well fills its place in the line of progress.

What Europe did send to New York sufficed to prove the superiority
of our own artisans in such labor-saving contrivances as suited the
conditions of the country. The foreign implements and machines were
more cumbrous in both complexity and weight of parts than ours. In
the finer departments of manufacture, the Gobelin tapestry, the French
glass, porcelain and silks, the broadcloths of England and Prussia,
and a host of other such articles, could expect no rivalry here. The
slender contributions of statuary and paintings hardly sufficed to
illustrate the conceded superiority of the Old World in art. Crawford
and Powers did very well by the side of the other, disciples of
the antique, their chief opposition coming from some indifferent
plaster-casts of Thorwaldsen's _Twelve Apostles_. In point of