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THE WORLD’S FAIRS 
the home manufacturers on one side 
and the foreign traders on the other. 
The public, as supreme judge, examines 
the pretensions of either party, and draws 
the lirnits of their rospective domain. The 
ground plan of the last Paris exhibition, 
showing the distribntion of the different 
departments, gives an illustration of this 
fact. One half of the main building was 
occupied by the French department and 
the other half by the foreign exhibiters 
collectively. It was more or less the 
same at Philadelphia, and it will be in- 
fallibly so at an exhibition in New York 
or in Germany. 
What becomes then of the original idea 
of a public examinatiou in the school of 
nations, as it were, and of the rewarding 
of the respective diligence by prizes ? If 
it is to be a serious one, and notto degene- 
rate as it does in sorne schools, where 
every child receives a prize, lest his 
parents should become dissatisfied, and 
take bim away, this will have to become 
the domain of Special Exhibitions, that is 
Exhibitions especially organised for some 
particular branch of manufactures, ma- 
chinery for instance. The general plan of 
such exhibitions, and the determination 
of the epoch, at whicb they are to be 
held, ought then, however, to be the