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HATEVER else we may do," said one of the directors of the Pan-American Exposition, at Buffalo, when the plans for it were under discussion, "we must make a beautiful spectacle." This purpose was never for a moment forgotten; it became the dominant purpose; and it is as an outdoor spectacle that the Exposition is most novel and noteworthy. It is its spectacular features that will be longest remembered and that will have the greatest effect on the popular mind. And it is a sight worth traveling across the continent to see-a sight such as nobody ever saw before. Landscape architects, engineers, architects, sculptors, decorators, painters, electricians and gardeners, have all worked towards one end and by one great plan; and the result is a group of beautiful buildings, so placed, so colored, so lighted, and so harmoniously adjusted to a general outdoor festal scheme that the effect is something new in the world. The ambitious and even audacious coloring of the buildings, and the prodigal and artistic diffusion of electric lights, are experiments that were never tried before. They are both original and they are both successful. The

result is a new kind of outdoor scene by daylight, and especially by electric light, a sight that gives a new experience and makes a lasting impression.

The most impressive view-the view that one ought to take first in order to get the full effect of the whole scene is from the Triumphal Bridge just at dusk when the lights are first turned on. The great towers of the bridge make a dignified, stately approach to the court with its play-day effect-its domes and pinnacles and warm colors, the fountains, and the great electric tower as the climax of it all. You have hardly realized the scene as it appears in the dusk, when on the rows of posts tiny dots of light appear in clusters, like little pink buds in a nosegay. You become gently aware of similar pink points on the tower-apparently millions of them; and on either side they outline all the buildings-in rows about the panels on the domes, under arches, over windows, everywhere. The buildings themselves seem for an instant to become invisible, and you see only their outlines marked in these tiny dots of fire. tiny dots of fire. And the court seems larger than it was by sunlight, for you seem to see a

whole city of towers and domes, and eaves and doors, outlined in sparks. Then the pink points grow brighter and change their hue, and in another moment the full illumination bursts forth, and the whole great court becomes luminous with a soft brilliancy that does not tire the eye. And it is a new kind of brilliancy. You are face to face with the most magnificent and artistic nocturnal scene that man has ever made. It is an effect so novel and so gentle in its glow that you think of fairy-land, not a fairyland of tinsel, but the fairy-land that you once believed in.

I had the pleasure to see this illumination first in the company of a child of ten years. She stood for a minute in speechless wonder. Then she cried "Oh, isn't it beautiful!" And she danced in forgetfulness of herself and asked "Is it really real?" For the sensation is of an optical illusion. You ask yourself if You ask yourself if