Many a high-sounding, much-heralded and more-debating Peace
Congress has been held with less effect than that conducted by these
humble porters, carpenters and decorators. This one has solidity. Its
elements are palpable. The peoples not only bring their choicest
possessions, but they also set up around them their local habitations.
It is a cosmopolitan town that has sprung into being beneath the great
roof and glitters in the rays of our republican sun. In its
rectangularly-planned streets, alleys and plazas every style of
architecture is represented--domestic, state and ecclesiastical,
ancient, mediaeval and modern. The spirit and taste of most of the races
and climes find expression, giving thus the Sydenham and the Hyde Park
palaces in one. The reproductions at the former place were the work of
English hands: those before us are executed, for the most part, by
workmen to whom the originals are native and familiar. In this feature
of the interior of the Main Building we are amply compensated for the
breaking up of the _coup d'oeil_ by a multiplicity of discordant forms.
The space is still so vast as to maintain the effect of unity; and this
notwithstanding the considerable height of some of the national stalls,
that of Spain, for example, sending aloft its trophy of Moorish shields
and its effigy of the world-seeking Genoese to an elevation of forty-six
feet. The Moorish colonnade of the Brazilian pavilion lifts its head in
graceful rivalry of the lofty front reared by the other branch of the
Iberian race.
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