Following Belmont Avenue, the Appian Way of the Centennial, to the north-west, we penetrate a mob of edifices, fountains, restaurants, government offices, etc., and reach the Agricultural Building—­the palace of the farmer.  The hard fate of which he habitually complains—­that of being thrust into a corner save when he is wanted for tax-paying purposes—­does not forsake him here.  The commission does not tax him, however, and the boreal region whereto he and his belongings are consigned is in no other way objectionable than as not being nearer the front.  The building is worthy of a Centennial agricultural fair.  Five hundred and forty by eight hundred and twenty feet, with ten acres and a quarter under roof, it equals the halls of a dozen State cattle-shows, The style is Gothic, the three transepts looking like those of as many cathedrals stripped of the roof, the extrados taking its place.  The nave that spits them is a hundred and twenty-five feet wide, with an elevation of seventy-five feet.  An ecclesiastical aspect is imparted by the great oriel over the main entrance, and the resemblance is aided by a central tower that suggests the “cymbals glorious swinging uproarious” in honor of the apotheosis of the plough.  The materials of this bucolic temple are wood and glass.  The contract price was $250,000.  Its contents will be more cosmopolitan than could have been anticipated when it was planned.  Germany claims five thousand feet and Spain six thousand.  Among other countries, tropical America is fully represented.

Besides this indoor portion of the world’s farm-steading, a barnyard of correspondent magnitude is close at hand, where all domestic animals will be accommodated, and the Weirs, Landseers and Bonheurs will find many novelties for the portfolio.  A race-track, too, is an addendum of course.  What would our Pan-Athenaic games be without it?

From this exhibition of man’s power over the fruits of the earth and the beasts of the field we cross a ravine where the forest is allowed to disport itself in ignorance of his yoke, and ascend another eminence where floral beauty, gathered from all quarters of the globe, is fed in imprisonment on its native soil and breathes its native climate.  We predict that woman will seek her home among the flowers on the hill rather than in the atelier specially prepared for her in the valley we have passed.  Her tremendous struggles through the mud, while yet the grounds were all chaos, to get sight of the first plants that appeared in the Horticultural Building, left no doubt of this in our mind.

[Illustration:  Horticultural hall.]

No site could have been more happily chosen for this beautiful congress-hall of flowers.  It occupies a bluff that overlooks the Schuylkill a hundred feet below to the eastward, and is bounded by the deep channels of a pair of brooks equidistant on the north and south sides.  Up the banks of these clamber the sturdy arboreal natives as though to shelter in warm embrace their delicate kindred from abroad.  Broad walks and terraces prevent their too close approach and the consequent exclusion of sunlight.