CORRESPONDENCE.
THE PARIS EXHIBITION. (TO THE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR.") Sri,—It is characteristic of France's vitality that at the very moment when she seems to be attempting political suicide she should invite all the nations- of the earth to such a fair as has never been equalled in the world's history. With Dreyfusards and Nationalists clamouring in her streets, she has smilingly renewed her Imperial hospitality, and has shown once more what her tact and taste may achieve. For whatever be the result, commercial or political, of the Exhi- bition, there can be no doubt as to its artistic success. Before so splendid a combination of diverse elements scepticism is dumb and contempt should hide its face. Nor was the project easily realised. It is no small enterprise to fence in a vast piece of a vast city, to throw down within the fence a village from Dahomey, a pagoda from China, a manor house from England, a cathedral from Italy, together with innumer- able factories and music-halls, and to produce from these scattered and contradictory elements a beautiful and homo- geneous whole. Yet that is what M. Picard and his assistants have achieved. Slices of Paris are wedged in between these diverse and multicoloured pavilions; the trottoir roulant moves perpetually along streets and across avenues, but once within the fence, you forget the city, and so long as you remain you are on enchanted ground. You have but to rub your lantern (in other words, to step upon the trottoir) and you may be transported from China to Peru in a minute.
And first of all, it must be said that nothing in this vast congeries but is designed with deliberate and successful fore- thought. From the Louvre, for instance, the Exhibition is unseen. It is Paris which there dominates her visitors, and if the Eiffel Tower is still conspicuous, the Eiffel Tower is a familiar object. But once in the Exhibition, and the spectator sees no more of Paris. It has shrunk into nothing- ness, and even if you do climb the Tower, the white buildings that lie at your feet dwarf the very hills of the ancient city. What could be a more remarkable achievement than this,— to put no deformity upon the face of Paris, and yet to build up within her walls so fantastic a province of fairy-land as makes Notre Dame (for the moment) look grey and distant, and reduces the Church of the Sacred Heart to a modest size ? Yet this is what the artists of Paris have achieved, and they have achieved it because they have never forgotten what was to be the frame of their picture, and what materials would contribute to the effect. When the doors are closed, and art is scarce remembered in the tumult which the prophets predict, it is the memory of a skilful and exquisite design that we shall cherish.
By whatever gate we enter the Exhibition, the effect, various though it be, is always elegant. The gateway of the Place de la Concorde, which should have been a triumph of modern art, is the flagrant failure of the Exhibition. It is an ambitious attempt to use a new material, and it ends as it began, in a mass of iron. To cut a dome in two, and to set one half upon the ground, flanking it with _.two heavy and meaningless pillars, is to point. the sad moral of modern ambition. Nor does the Parisian lady who seems to step down from the half-dome encourage the sculptors of our day in bold experiment. For, admirably as she was intentioned, she could look dignified only upon a sugared cake, and the disappointment is the greater because the. triumph of this gate might have marked an.
epoch (as the Germans say) in the history of decoration. But forget the gateway, and enter the garden. In the sunlight the lawns are' gay with flowers, and .the walks :lined with 'sculptures; in the night lights twinkle in the trees,. Japanese lanterns hang like strange fruit upon the branches, and cast fantastic shadows on the path. But it is the entrance of the ChamPs Elysees that is the real 'splendour of the Exhibition. The two palaces of art, one on either hand, are not for this year but for all time, masterpieces of classic architecture without, masterpieces of colour within. What finer setting could be found for treasures of art than the white walls, the pink-marble columns, the rich tapestries of the Petit Palais ? How could pictures be seen to better advantage than in the rooms in the Grand Peals opposite And between the palaces you arrive at the spacious bridge of Alexander III., which is woven most deftly into the general design, and from the bridge you look through an avenue of white and gold to the stately, sober facade of the Invalides. Never have the sites of a city, been more cunningly employed in the arrangement of a pleasure-ground, and even if the roofs are too restlessly adorned with fretted pinnacles, the fault of detail is merged in the surpassing beauty of a general aspect.
But long before you reach the Invalides your curiosity is whetted afresh. Across the bridge and alongside the river, which for the moment has lost its ancient reality and seems a scenic rather than a living stream, lies the Street of the Nations, a strange medley of style and character, where new and old, East and West, jostle in an admired confusion. Then at . the Champ de Mars another surprise awaits the spectator. Another avenue of temples and warehouses stretches as far as the Trocadero, whose remote fountains answer to the cascades of the Chiteau d'Eau. So in whichever quarter you wander, you encounter the same wide spaces, the same vast avenues. And round the Trocadero are grouped the wonders of the South, the exotic splendours of the Orient. Here there is no thought of rivalry, no contest of prosperity. It matters not a jot whether Ceylon has a. better display . than Indo-China, whether Java is superior in wealth or interest to Western Australia. Not even the Boer farm excites a passing displeasure, and the Englishman can smile at the Frenchmen or Russians who deposit their names (and addresses) at the pedestal of President Kruger's bust. And the swart natives of Dahomey gaze in amused surprise at the yellow Chinaman, and all the world is free- of the place. In brief, the general impression of the Exhibition is an impression of gaiety and splendour, of a vast music-hall controlled by a cosmopolitan curiosity, and a taste which is wholly French. - The temples and their-worshippers, the booths and their wares, have been contributed by all the . nations of the earth ; it is the French architects who have set them in their places and surrounded them with flower-gardens, for whose exquisite discretion we should look in vain without the borders of France. Here, too, ,ov may listen to the barbarous music of savage tribes, you may study the drama of Japan, and of yet remoter isles. There the Abyssinian maid plays upon her dulcimer, singing, no doubt, of Mount Abora. And until eye and ear get accustomed to the mingled colour and the strange sounds, it is idle to think of the treasure which the countless pavilions contain.
But even a first visit reveals enough to amaze and amuse the fancy. We may not believe in the optimistic vision of a regenerated Europe sketched by politicians; we may not believe that one Exhibition is sufficient to impose pace and an improved taste upon the.people. But we know that he who has seen, the wonders of the Chimps Elysees and the Trocadero will carry away an ineffaceable remembrance of reauty. The Exhibition, in truth, is Kubla Khan's pleasure- dome refashioned :— e.-■ twice five. miles of fertile ground With walls sad towers were girdled round! And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where bloss•Aped many an incense-bearing tree ; And here were forests'ancient'as the'hills Enfolding sunny spots of greenery?' • • The description is exact, and one hopes that when the.ISst tune is 'played the ears of Europe will. not be assailed' by " ancestral voices prophesying war."—I am, Sir, &e., • •
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