“These Exhibitions, then, which make us acquainted with the superlative arts of other nations, cannot but be highly useful to us. But they have also another use--a moral, if not a religious use, in that they teach us so powerfully the dependence of nations upon each other--their mutual relations, and the absolute necessity of each to the comfortable existence of all the rest. There is hardly an article in the Crystal Palace to which the labor of all the world has not in some sort contributed--hardly a machine which is not an embodied record of the industrial progress of the world--hardly a fabric which, analyzed, does not carry us to the ends of the earth, or which does not connect us intimately with the people of every clime--with the miners who tortured its raw material from the dark cave, or the diver who brought it from the bottom of the sea--with the solitary mariner who shielded it from the tempests--with the poor, toil-worn mechanic who gave it form or color, or with the artist who imparted to it its final finish. Thus, no man liveth to himself alone, even in his most ordinary occupations; he is part and parcel of us, as we are of him. A wonderful and touching unity pervades the relations of the race; all men are useful to all men; and we who fancy that, in some important respects, we stand on the summit level of humanity, have a deep interest in the laborers of the vales--in the celerity, the excellence and the success of what they do, and in the comfort and happiness of their general condition. As Emerson has wisely sung, in that sweet poem of his:
‘All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.’
“There is also another thought suggested by our topic which contains a world of meaning. We are apt to speak, in our discussions, of the
[Illustration: CHICAGO STREET LIFE, WASHINGTON STREET AND WABASH AVENUE.]
progress of industry, but do we always ask ourselves wherein that progress consists? Is it in the greater perfection to which, in modern times, we have carried the works of our hands? Look at the elegant tissues of Persia and India, or at the flexible blades of Toledo and Damascus, and say in how far we have surpassed these works of semi-barbarous ages and people, with all our boasted mechanical improvements! Can we imagine anything more splendid, more rich, and more delicate than the clothes in which the Oriental princes still array themselves, as their forefathers used to array themselves centuries ago? Have we yet a dye more brilliant than the Tyrian, a sculpture equal to that of Greece, an architecture better than that of the ‘Dark Ages,’ paintings on glass to compare with those in the old cathedrals, workers in bronze to rival a Cellini? Is it not the highest compliment that we pay to a product of skill or genius to say of it that it is ‘classical,’ that it is worthy of the models that have been preserved for ages in our galleries and museums? What then do we mean when we speak of ourselves as more advanced than former nations; what is that difference between us which authorizes us to use the word progress and to look back with a complacent half-pitying eye upon the attainments of the generations that have passed away?