crowding waves chase one another in endless succession. And again one dreams of the time when power and use shall wear the shape of beauty, and the vast forces which have come into human service shall not only lessen its toil but light its ways!

The great fairs held in this country have not only marked its material progress, but have been points of departure in its education. The Centennial Fair, held in Philadelphia in 1876, was a revelation to hosts of people of the richness of the older civilization and of the possibilities of beauty in the utilities of daily life. That Fair brought the Old to the New World, and made Americans aware how much the older countries had to teach and to give the youngest of the family of nations. The Columbian Fair, which commemorated the discovery of the continent and was possible of achievement, on SO vast a scale, only in a city like Chicago, where civic pride and the sense of individual responsibility to the community have had so notable a development, was a revelation of ordered beauty of form, structure, and grouping. In the presence of the White City it seemed as if the Greek had reap peared to give impulse and suggestion to a people full of racial energy and eager to possess the best. On the shore of Lake Michigan the continuity of history, the unbroken co-working of the races for the race, was symbolized and taught with a simplicity, a directness, and a nobility of expression which touched first the imagination of the Central West, and later diffused its subtle and searching influence through the whole country. aggressive city, throbbing with the most vital life of trade, had shown a rare intelligence in commissioning a group of the foremost architects, artists, and sculptors to manage what promised to be a vast commercial enterprise, but which, through insight, vision, skill, and beauty, became a beautiful and impressive revelation of the loveliness and significance of art. The White City is only a memory, but it is one of those memories which fertilize the imagination and bear the fruit of a finer life over the whole range of the continent. The Pan-American Exposition comes logically after the celebration of Discovery and Independence. In the

An

order of time the individuality of a nation must be developed before it can recognize its relations to other nations; in the order of time nations must come to a high degree of self-realization before they are able to discern clearly the inheritances, duties, responsibilities, and works which unite them. beneath all the diversities of their gifts and their activities. We have commemorated the glow of that fire which announced to the discoverer from the Old World that a New World lay behind the mysterious seas; we have celebrated our coming of age and assumption of the dignity and responsibility of a nation; at Buffalo we take account of the achievement of the race on the fresh soil, and, looking at its works, become aware of the essential unity of its life and the growing harmony of its interests. When we recalled the hour of Discovery, Greece stood behind us, as she stands behind every modern people, to disclose to our young eyes the beauty of a completely developed architecture, so noble in form that it needsno varying emphasis of color; now that we are taking account of what we have done in our own world, and striking hands with all the working races on the continent, we have instinctively housed our machines, tools, products, and inventions by the aid of the oldest and most picturesque architecture in use in the New World. The Spanish Renaissance, modified to meet the needs of a new climate and landscape, is notable, not for space nor elevation nor beauty of detail, but for harmonious lines, broad effects, and a use of balconies, towers, pinnacles, and loggias which gives richness and apparent depth to color. Red, blue, green, and gold are boldly and even lavishly evoked to secure warmth, brightness, and that Occidental brilliancy to which our skies are so much akin. These colors, which are used in a symbolic order to suggest the struggle of men with the elements in their long endeavor to subdue the continent and turn its forces to fruitful uses, are graduated from the heavy reds of the pergolas, where the Triumphal Causeway merges into the central Court, to the cream white of the central tower. If there is a touch of the fanciful in this endeavor to suggest the evolution of man by means of a scheme of color, the

general effect is rich and striking, and the eye which loves color finds delight in the warm tones modulated over a great space with a harmonious sense of values. Chromatic effects of great beauty are secured in the handling of the ornamental detail of the entrances to some of the buildings. Neither the architectural nor the color scheme is worked out with uniform success; those buildings are most satisfactory which follow most closely the Spanish order, and those are least artistic which depart from it by the introduction of inharmonious, fanciful, and over-elaborate decoration, recalling some of the artificial and ugly idiosyncrasies which disfigured the Paris Fair last year. These defects are, fortunately, of minor importance and are hardly noted in the general effect.

One of the most effective and striking features of the Exposition is the free and bold use of sculpture, an art in which Americans are showing genius of a very

high order. To comprehend the general scheme of the many groups of figures one must begin at the point from which the color scheme must also be studied, the key-point, so to speak, of the Expositionthe approach to the Triumphal Causeway. From this point on the right and left, vitally related to the buildings which they flank, and interpreting them, the successive groups portray the story of man's struggle with and conquest of the elements; in successive chapters in massive figures, molded in many cases with a noble freedom and power, the conquests of man are interpreted in plastic forms. These groups must be seen in their places in the great court if their vitality and beauty are to be comprehended. They constitute one of the most novel and impressive features of the Exposition, and are likely to be one of its most potential educational influences. More than any other single feature they bring into clear light the unity of plan behind the Exposi

The three great facts in the history of the Americas which the successive Fairs have commemorated, Discovery, Independence, and Fraternity, sum up in large generalization the spiritual story of the New World. Discovery and Independence are fully accomplished. Fraternity is partly achieved and partly prophetic. Prophecy is, indeed, one of the notes of the Exposition, as must be the case in any endeavor to illustrate and interpret the life of a New World. The achievements commemorated are many and great, but there is an air of expectancy enveloping the whole; an atmosphere which issues out of the depths of a vast, struggling, generous, aspiring life; a life which shows the crudity of freedom but also its tremendous spiritual impulse; a

with materials, but has never been content with them nor rested in them. It is significant that the Chicago and Buffalo Fairs, in depth and unity of artistic conception, hold a place by themselves; nothing so complete and beautiful has been attempted or realized elsewhere. In Paris there was a richness of individual exhibits which the New World cannot command; but in harmony, beauty, lightness, and grace the New World has gone beyond the Old and risen into prophecy. The thousand inventions, machines, appliances, and products which crowd the buildings are the work of its hands, but the Exposition is the work of its spirit. It predicts the spiritual synthesis of the far future; the harmonious adjustment of man to his surroundings in the New World; his victorious accomplishment of his tasks; his escape from the perils, the sorrows, the colossal toils of settling a new continent, into freedom, power, and individuality of culture; beyond the America of Toil it evokes the America of Art.