There are probably some of this company who, like myself, having had the good fortune to be in London at the time of the world’s fair, stood under that magnificent, transparent roof, trod that immense area whereon fifty thousand people moved at ease.  It was a privilege,—­the memory of which will last a life-time, to have been admitted into that gigantic temple of industry, there to behold in unimaginable profusion and variety the product of man’s labor, intellect, and genius, gathered from the four corners of the earth into one vast, gorgeous pile,—­a spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor, and from its moral significance absolutely sublime.

On entering by the chief portal into the transept,—­covering in the huge oaks of Hyde Park,—­the American, after wondering for a moment in the glare of the first aspect, will, with the eagerness and perhaps the vanity of his nation,—­have hastened through the compartments of France, Belgium, Germany, gorgeous with color, glistening with gold.  He will have hastened, hard as it was to hurry through such a show, in order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace where a broad area had been allotted to the United States,—­Jonathan, as is his wont, having helped himself largely.  Great was the American’s disappointment, cutting was the rebuke to his vanity; his country made no show at all.  The samples of her industry were not outwardly brilliant.  Their excellence lay in their inward power, in their wide usefulness.  They were not ornaments and luxuries for the dwellings of the few, they were inventions that diffuse comforts and blessings among the many,—­labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers.  By the thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated, as it was acknowledged in the final awards of the judges.  And even in this high department where we are so eminent, owing to distance and misunderstandings, we were not adequately represented.  But even if we had been, the European would have said, “This has a high value and interest; but still I find not here enough to justify the expectations entertained by this people, and by many in Europe, of the future greatness of the American Republic.  These things, significant as they are, are yet not an alphabet that can be so compounded as to write the richest page of man’s history.  In this present display I find not prefigured that splendid future the Americans are fond of predicting for themselves.”  And the American, acknowledging the force of the comment, would have turned away mortified, humbled.  But he was saved any such humiliation.  In the midst of that area, under that beautiful flag, day after day, week after week, month after month, from morn till night, go when he would, he beheld there a circle ever full, its vacancies supplied as soon as they were made, a circle silent with admiration, hushed by emotion, gazing at a master-piece of American art, the Greek Slave of Powers.  And from that contemplation hundreds of thousands of Europeans carried away an impression of American capacity, a conviction that truly a great page is to be written by the young republic in the book of history,—­a sense of American power which they could have gotten from no other source.