REPORT OF MR. ARCHER.
89
sible, and, provided the general arrangements are not too complicated and unwieldly, a few general directions to each foreign commission will secure as much harmony as can be hoped for in an undertaking so vast as an international exhibition must necessarily be. It is one thing to sit down with pen, ink and paper, and with leisure for reflection, and plan the arrangement and classification of either a museum or an exhibition ; it is another, to bring together all the varied products of man’s industry, associated with all the peculiar wishes and opinions of the producers, and in a very short space of time so arrange them that they shall not only be in some sort of order, but what, after all, will always be the chief consideration, placed so as to exhibit the individual articles in the most effective manner. It follows, therefore, that the more simple the code of regulations, and the less they interfere with the individual action of the foreign commissioners, —who, as a rule, are earnest and well skilled in their work,— the better for the general management. There never has been, at any of the European great international exhibitions, any proper bureau for information to exhibitors ; and yet how much trouble might be saved, and bow greatly business might have been facilitated ! Suppose, for instance, such a department had been fully, instead of very partially, organized in the Vienna Exhibition, and it had consisted of twelve intelligent men of each of the following nationalities,—French, German, and English,—and there had been four officers placed most conveniently for the exhibitors in different parts of the exhibition or grounds, the functions of these officials being simply to receive inquiries on forms, and to transmit them to the proper authorities and see that answers were obtained in foe course and transmitted to the inquirers; these officers, a >ded by a dozen messengers, could have saved enormous trouble, time, and personal annoyance; their proper performance of their duties would have acted like a good lubricating oil, and would have made the great machine work much more smoothly than it did.
There is another point of great importance in which the ■Austrian Commission signally failed. It was in regulating the daily admissions of the vast army of exhibitors and uttendants necessary to carry on the business of the Exhibi- 12