manifest advance in designs for ornamental manufactures. The
schools of decorative art were beginning to tell. Carpets, hangings,
furniture, stuffs for wear, encaustic tiles, etc. showed a sounder
taste; and this in the foreign as well as the British stalls. French
porcelain was more fully represented than before, and in finer
designs. The Paris exhibition of '55, more extensively planned, though
less of a financial success, than the London one it followed, was not
without effect on the industry and art-culture of France. The United
States also showed that they had not been idle. Our fabrics of
vulcanized rubber and sewing-machines were boons to Europe she has not
been slow to seize. The latter are now sold in England, with trifling
modifications and new trademarks, at from one-third to one-half the
price our people have to pay.

The secret of making money out of these great fairs seemed to have
been lost. Although England's second took in much more than the first,
and four times as much as the first French, four hundred and sixty
thousand pounds having entered its treasury, it failed to leave any
such profitable memorials of profit.

By this time the spirit of French emulation was stirred to its
inmost depths. They had gone to London, argued the Gauls, under every
disadvantage. To prove that they had returned covered with glory,
they hunted every nook and corner of numerical analysis. Out of 18,000
exhibitors of all nations, they had had but 1747, and yet Paris had
received thirty-nine council medals, or honors of the first order,
per million of inhabitants, against fourteen per million accorded to
London. She had beaten the metropolis of fog not only in general,
but in detail. In every branch, from the most solid to the most
sentimental, she was victorious. For machinery a million of gamins