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28 EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
sons from the experience ; for here in America we are at best too far removed from what are still and will long remain the great models of art and the most thorough systems of instruction. If, however, the State is to take her part with other civilized communities in these tests of relative development, it is a matter of no small import that she should appear iii a manner not unworthy of herself. If this could hereafter be secured, it would be perhaps the best and richest result possible to be derived from her own and the nation’s experience at Vienna. In no event, however, should that experience be repeated. That it may not be repeated, it is proper that the truth in regard to it should be told, even though it prove somewhat unpalatable. In doing this, it will be necessary for me to refer to the national representation and that of other States as well as of Massachusetts, though no individual application belongs to any of my remarks.
A nation or a community in entering upon the competition of a world’s fair must have one or both of two objects in view ; it must go there to exhibit, or it must go there to observe. In going there, however, for the one object or the other, or for the two combined, there is, after the experience we now have of such undertakings, no possible excuse for any people in going so unprepared or so represented as to either fail in accomplishing the objects it has in view, or to humiliate itself and its citizens in the eyes of those with whom it proposes to compete. Whether to exhibit or to observe, however, it is not too much to say that the entire arrangement of the American organization at Vienna, both state and national, was an utter, entire and disgraceful failure; a failure in conception and a failure in execution ; a failure unjust to our industries, discreditable to the country and humiliating to those more immediately concerned. To us representing the State upon the spot, it was painful to think of what the Massachusetts exposition might easily have been made,—most mortifying to see what it was. A better opportunity to achieve a great and brilliant success in the eyes of all civilized nations was never offered to any community than was lost by the Commonwealth at Vienna. It was lost simply from the fact that the State, as such, undertook to participate without previously having any definite idea either as to what it proposed