Page 501

INDUSTRIAL ART.
Perhaps no other country, with possibly one exception, could have paid the
penalty of milliards of money for foreign aggression, besides bearing the
enor-
mous cost of her own military operations, without becoming ruined and undone.
Yet to-day the skilled manufactures of France are righting the country, and
with the power of supremacy in taste she claims tribute from the whole world.
The periodical occurrence of International Exhibitions enables us to see
the
relative progress made by different nations in the broad fields of industrial
art
and science, and                                        oldcountries,and
to those  who
have been fortu-
nate enough to
watch this pro-
gress from the
first exhibition in
London, in I851,
to the last in
Philadelphia, in
1876,thechanges
made have been
very great. The
present is pre-
eminently an age
the influence of
such exhibitions
as that we have
enjoyed this year
has been to en-
courage such re-
vivals, and create
a general love
of art where it is
not an ancient
story.   I
It is not too
much to say that
in the exhibits
of revival in art            Shawl: Compagnie des aides.    of every country
in many of the                                              participating
 in
these general displays, there has been evidence of a striking improvement,
as
each exhibition succeeded the last, in all the sections containing objects
of
industrial art. The example of successful manufacturers and the masterpieces
of designers have influenced the enterprise and skill of those whose success,
through want of sufficient skill, has not been what they desired.
The objection which some manufacturers have raised against International
Exhibitions, that they gave opportunities for the weak to imitate the strong,
and placed the accumulated experience and success of the few at the service
of the many, must be regarded as a powerful argument in favor of such
displays, from every point of view, including that of the successful manufac-
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