REPORT OF MR. HILL.
57
reason of the distances which separated them. This difficulty was again aggravated by the fact that the original buildings proving much too small, between nearly all the transepts covered courts were built; and, in addition to this, other large buildings were erected by several governments, in which a portion of their groups or classes of exhibits were displayed. It thus became a serious work, even for those most familiar with the Exposition, and to all others a hopeless task, to trace a single class of productions through the space of the different nationalities.
Another great objection to the arrangement of buildings adopted was the utter absence of that impressiveness, which arises from general effects. Had the buildings been so designed as to inclose the great mass of exhibits under one roof, and bring them all in sight at one time, the Exhibition would have been wonderfully more grand and interesting than it Vas. As arranged, it was only to those who spent a long period in daily examination of the various transepts, courts, rooms, buildings, "annexes,” special exhibits, etc., that its vastness became apparent. The majority of visitors, who came for a few days and went away again, never saw one-half of the various places of exhibition, and got so confused an idea of what they did visit that it was impossible for them to associate the special rooms, halls, etc., with the nations which occupied them, or to understand the relations of their contents to those of other neighboring apartments.
If it could be decided, before the erection of the main x e difice, what space in the whole, and what in each group or class of objects each nation would require, the construction of proper buildings would be much simplified. But this has been found impossible, and in all the later exhibitions the demand % .most of the leading nationalities has, at the last moment, I*een found greater than the space allotted, and they have been forced to place a considerable portion of their articles of exhibition in specially erected buildings, entirely separated from their proper association with objects of the same kind, and from others from the same country. Thus, at Yienna, the American exhibit of agricultural implements—the finest, in some respects, in the exhibition ground—was placed in a building, erected for the purpose, behind the general agricult-