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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
thoroughly trained to exhibition life. In the London Exhibition of 1862 , the nation which turned that event to the greatest commercial advantage, and which, in all respects, managed the affairs of its exhibitors best, was Austria; and those results were entirely due to the unwearying activity and admirable arrangement of the baron, then Chevalier Schwartz; and well is his genial co-operation and perfect disinterestedness remembered by those who, like the writer, had the satisfaction of working with him on that and other occasions. With his councillors, however, he had difficulties, although on the whole that part of the arrangement worked tolerably well, perhaps even better than was supposed; for, though the public tongue indulged itself in assertions of disagreements, etc., the public eye did not penetrate into its chambers, nor did the public ear hear its discussions. In the third portion of his commission Baron Schwartz was lamentably weak; he had no efficient staff of aids, to whom the separate departments could be safely allotted, and hence arose confusion, and most irritating annoyance to the exhibitors, which was increased and intensified by the efforts to carry out a complicated and impracticable classification. Everywhere amongst the officers of the commission who were intrusted with the departmental arrangements, under the Director- General, there was an almost oriental spirit of procrastination, and a want of knowledge of the value of time, which seriously impeded the completion of the exhibition, and this inertness, added to the utter inability of the railway companies to do the work they had undertaken, at one time threatened to make the exhibition a complete failure. The various national commissions, however, saved it by taking matters into their own hands, and carrying out the arrangements of their own sections as they thought best.
From this a good lesson ought to be learned and acted upon in all future international exhibitions; namely, not to hamper the foreign commissioners with restrictions which cannot be complied with, and which can only result in a petty warfare and an ignominious abandonment, one by one, of all the disputed points, after the sacrifice of much precious time and temper in the discussion. Every nation will, if left alone, do its best to make its exhibits appear as effective as pos-