Last Sunday night at 9 p.m. a fire broke out
at the Brussels Exhibition; and by the time the flames were got under, some . Eve hours later, the British section was wholly destroyed.
The Belgian and French sections were also partially destroyed, the Brussels Kermesse—a reproduction of an old Belgian village—reduced to ruins, and most of the animals burned in Bostock's menagerie. Though no lives were lost, the amount of irreparable damage done by the fire has been immense. In the British section the exhibits from South Kensington were all copies, but a magnificent historical collection of furniture gathered together from country houses and private and public collections, including plate, china, glass, tapestries, and silk, has perished, together with examples of old English house decoration, including the work of Grinling Gibbons and other valuable relics, shown by leading English firms. The loss sustained by our great potters and porcelain manufacturers, again, is quite irreparable, many of the exhibits being art treasures which were not for sale. The disaster is all the more to be deplored as this was the first international Exhibition in which British participation had been organised by the new Exhibitions Branch of the Board of Trade.
