60
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
seum, so called, lately erected in Boston, which were devoted to agricultural exhibits. In a line with these, and between the industrial and machinery-halls, were numerous other buildings, —some erected by the various countries to display their surplus exhibits, some the special buildings of private exhibitors.
Beyond the end of the industrial palace were the art buildings, also of brick and stucco, handsomely decorated with architectural ornaments, and surrounded with arcades. In the fifty-two rooms of these buildings were displayed some thirty-two hundred paintings and one thousand statues.
Still beyond these, an arched gateway led to'a portion of the grounds in which were many buildings of a temporary nature, some illustrating the various types of peasant houses of Eastern Europe, others built as models of stables, barns, etc., etc. South of the great industrial palace, before its front, were many other erections, such as the Persian and the Egyptian palaces; the Japanese village, of which the very wood was brought from Japan; iron buildings; others of artificial stone; others set up by the lighthouse board, the navy department, and other branches of the Austrian administration. With these were characteristic buildings of almost every nationality, erected as restaurants. Here also was the palace of the emperor of Austria, and, opposite to it, the juries’ pavilion. Altogether, there were more than two hundred buildings within the inclosure of the Exposition grounds. These grounds themselves were laid out in squares of the finest turf, intersected with gravel walks, bordered with beds of flowers, and dotted with ponds, in which were fountains. The whole was arranged with that taste which seems natural to the Austrians.
This description gives but a feeble idea of the grounds and buildings of the Vienna Exposition, upon which the Austrian government expended more than ten millions of dollars, and which was intended to be by far the most complete of any that has been held.
Turning from the buildings to the articles in them, the first thing to be noted is this: that, contrary to the general impression in America, the contributions of the different nations were not mere irregular collections of incidental objects, furnished by parties who desired to advertise themselves, but,