Building with works fit to be there. For the accomplishment of this
task the principal credit is due to John Sartain of Philadelphia,
the Nestor of American engravers. But for Mr. Sartain's efforts, the
studios of the best artists of America, especially, would have been
much less adequately represented, while the walls would have been in
danger of defacement by a flood of inferior productions. To secure the
best, and the best only, of what artists and collectors could give,
committees were appointed to inspect the offerings of the principal
cities and select works of real merit. The difficulties in the way are
appreciable only by those familiar with the diversities of feeling and
opinion which are apt to make shipwreck of art-exhibitions. They
have been overcome, and American artists have united in the practical
measures needed to ensure them as fair a position by the side of
foreign competitors as their actual merits can sustain.

It could hardly have been a recognition of carriage-making as one of
the fine arts that caused the placing of an immense receptacle for
such vehicles in so prominent a position near Memorial Hall. This
structure stands opposite the western half of the Main Building.
Combined with the annex erected for a like purpose by the Bureau of
Agriculture, which covers three acres, it would seem to afford room
for specimens of every construction ever placed on wheels since
Pharaoh's war-chariots limbered up for the Red Sea campaign. These
collections have no trifling significance as a sign of progress.
They are the product of good roads, one of the surest traces of
civilization. A century ago, a really good road was almost an unknown
thing. So recently as half so long since one of the light equipages
now so familiar to us would have been a simple impossibility. What
words of ecstasy Dr. Johnson, who pronounced the height of bliss to be
a drive over a turnpike of his day in a cranky post-chaise, would have