the bridges, avenues, and boulevardsbelonged, moreover, to the municipality, and could neither be moved nor modified. Nor could the traffic of the city be interrupted for a moment, either during the construction or continuance of the great Fair. The smallest object--small as regards ground space-had to be considered. Nothing, for instance, could be done which would destroy or jeopardize the trees which everywhere make Paris beautiful. If a line of a pavilion included any one of them, then the line of the pavilion must stop short. The gnarled treetrunk, for instance, which held up one corner of the Russian pavilion, when seen from inside the building, looked like a sample of Siberian timber decorated with semi-barbaric shields and strap pings a mere column supporting the ceiling. It was really one of the sacred trees of Paris-a vigorous old sycamore spreading its branches high above the roof, its future glory assured by a municipal edict. These conditions hampered the architects, and, except in a few favored spots, rendered impossible the effects they sought and which otherwise they might have produced. This fact alone makes comparison between our own Columbian Exhibition and the French Exposition a difficult task. And yet a desire to make such comparison naturally arises in the breast of every American. Thus the Columbian Exhibition was not hampered by the conditions found in Paris. Its site lay outside the turmoil and whirl of Chicago, on a bare stretch of marsh and sand-dune, where there was room enough and to spare. The plan had only to be drawn along broad lines, and the steam dredge promptly bored its way in from the lake, carving out lagoons and waterways. The architectural effects obtained along this flat waste were due as much to this practically unlimited elbow-room as to the genius of the board of architects who caused a bare desert to blossom into beauty. They had only to use this square of land as they would a chess-board, placing pawns and castles as they wished, and the White City rose like a white wraith from out the ooze of the marshes. The projectors of the French Exposi tion had no such elbow-room. The river, as I have said, and all its bridges, with their connecting streets and boulevards, were immovable fixtures, while almost every tree that spread its shade above the grass had to be considered. This curtailment of space, this arbitrary cutting of corners, greatly deplored by foreign governments and exhibitors, had, however, its compensations-it destroyed the possibility of that regularity of design so dear to the French landscape architect. For the moss-grown rule in many French ateliers demands that all designs must be balanced and squared-as well balanced as the stretch between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe, where a line drawn along the middle of the Champs Elysée exactly intersects the Gambetta statue, the fountains of the gardens, the obelisk, and the keystone of the Arc itself. These geometrical parallelograms delight the Parisian. "How beautiful!" said an admiring stranger, as he drove up the Champs Elysée. "The rows of superb trees, the great line of palaces, the majestic arch crowning the hill-it is perfect.” "No," said the Frenchman beside him, "not perfect. We could not arrange the sky." At Chicago no such geometrical plan was attempted or considered. The arrangement, while symmetrical, was not formal. Nor did any two objects repeat themselves for the mere sake of balancing the general composition. It is true that Hunt's superb Administration Building filled one end of the loop, and that Atwood's marvelous Peristyle beautified the other, the connecting link being the Lagoon. But both these objects were so unlike in mass and detail that the regularity of the whole design passed unnoticed. A certain harmony of form followedgreatly heightened by the choice of material and color, especially that of the delicate ivory-white which drank in every sky-tone from dull gray to resplendent turquoise. The result was a vast sweep, a dreamy bigness, expressing a dignity, grandeur, and beauty which made you catch your breath when the full glory of the display burst upon you. Another difference between the two expositions was to be found in the points of view obtainable. In Paris there was really no one point from which the whole extent of the display could be seen, unless, perchance, one climbed a tower or soared heavenward in an anchored balloon. Even when some supposed point of vantage was gained, the view never rose to the dignity of a grand vista. Nor did any one building help any other by reason of its proximity. From one end of the Alexander Bridge, for instance, looking toward the Champs Elysées, one could see the full sweep of the wonderful bridge, with its square columns topped with gilded figures, the roadway thronged with people; but no other structure about it helped the composition. The two new Art Palaces were in evidence-the little one behind the trees, and the big one against the horizon-but neither of them counted in the general whole. When you walked nearer, you lost the full effect of the Bridge, and when you walked away you lost the Palaces. Your best view of the Grand Palais was from the steps of the Petit Palais, and you had to walk over to the Petit Palais to see the Grand Palais in its entirety. So it was with the view from the terrace of the Trocadero. One could look, to be sure, down the broad street which was flanked by the Russian Pavilion, toward that of Algiers at the foot of the hill, with the Eiffel Tower candlestick and electric fountains beyond; but it was like looking down any other broad avenue hemmed in by high buildings. of the Lake softening the outlines of the buildings reflected in the still Lagoon, every minaret, dome, and roof ablaze in the silver light. "The Dream City," one woman called it. Others named it "The City of the White Lady," "The Wonder of Aladdin," and the like. Or some more devout and impressionable soul, looking in wonder at this marvelous spectacle, would compare it to the Eternal City, with its streets of gold, or liken it to some fairy picture conjured from out the tales of his youth, and equally vague. This universal inability to find words with which to express the beauty of the Columbian Exposition, or any name or title by which to convey the impression it produced, always seemed to me to be the strongest proof of its unique originality. No such profound impression was made by the Exhibition at Paris. Other comparisons between the two Expositions naturally suggest themselves. The assumption that France holds first place in the art of the world is no longer true, if this Expositon held her standards. This claim may have been true fifteen years ago, but it is not so now. I have the effrontery to hazard the opinion that only four distinct new notes have been sounded in France in the past fifteen years. These are by Cazin, in landscape; Rodin, in sculpture; Rostand, in poetry; and that incomparable wizard, Réné Lallique, who in his exercise of the goldsmith's art displays a genius that astounds the world. Many others have rung their silver bells both in art and literature, and still ring them to our delight-Zola, Coquelin, Bernhardt, Gérôme, Bastien-Lepage, Bonnat, and the others but these silver bells were cast long before 1875. At Chicago, on the other hand, every step around the Lagoon gave a new and commanding picture. There were, moreover, numberless points of sight, notably from the little bridge spanning the outlet canal of the Lagoon-the one lying between French's statue and Atwood's Peristyle-where the eye at one sweep caught Many influences have produced this the full glory of a display unequaled in change. Some of them are due to national our own and perhaps in any other period and social conditions outside the scope of of the world's history. Men's hearts have this paper, and have no place here. Others glowed at sight of what is left of the Par- can be more easily traced. One of them thenon; the Taj Mahal has thrilled with is, unquestionably, the steady progress in its white beauty; and the City by the Sea, art made by foreign competitors; notably guarded by the Campanile, has compelled that of the little band of men who have an admiration and love which in some of come out of the West, and whose canvases us savors of idolatry. But nowhere on have been of late years hung upon the the globe-no, not in a thousand years line beside the best that Paris could prohave the eyes of man fallen on so exquisite duce. These Americans have pressed an architectural group as was seen at hard for this position of first place, and sunrise of a summer morning,. the haze still do. One had only to walk through |