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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
pare designs for them. The simplicity and beauty of these are very far removed from the heavy styles, overloaded with machine-made ornaments, which we too generally find with us. In furniture, the Austrians were, however, perhaps of all exhibitors, the strongest. Their forms were for the most part very simple, and their great effort seemed to be to bring out as strongly as possible the natural beauties of the wood. Where ornament was introduced, it was in the form of inlaying, or of hand-carving. The artistic feeling of Europe seems to have recognized the fact, that those objects alone are really beautiful which have been produced by hand-labor, and by the individual thought and taste of the artist applied to each individual ornament.
A very attractive department in the Austrian section, and one to which they devoted much attention, was that of interior decoration. Many small rooms w T ere fitted up by different artists, and, without exception, the combinations of colors and effects were those of refined and cultivated tastes.
One of the most interesting collections, in which artistic feeling had scope to display itself, was that of the carpets, of which there were literally hundreds in the Exposition. Undoubtedly the East, with her hand-made work, carried the day here, and of the Eastern nations the Persians were perhaps the most perfect. Equal to any in richness of effect, they surpassed in the perfect harmony of color. It is needless to say that the good feeling of all these Eastern nations leads them to avoid those glaring contrasts of color and staring patterns which are too common in our windows; and it was noticeable also that all their figures had a perfectly flat effect. The apparent projection of flowers, fruit and geometrical figures, looking as if in danger of tripping the foot at each step, is most carefully avoided. The English, and in a measure the French, showed the effects of a study of these Eastern productions, and the best work of the English certainly was in styles borrowed from them.
The Austrians were still closer students of these Eastern nations, and much of their display could hardly be distinguished from its original.
Of cast-metal artistic work there was an immense quantity