Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

enjoy it, rise obedient to one’s thought in aftertime. Such a memory is that of a first sunny morning in Paris: a ride from the Madeleine across the Place de la Concorde, along the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre, across the Seine with the island and Notre Dame in the distance, and then through older Paris to the gardens of the Luxembourg. Or again, a certain early moonlit evening in Florence, with the Duomo looming at the end of the street, Giotto’s Campanile standing sentinel at its side, the narrow street to the Piazza della Signoria with its Palazzo Vecchio and the Loggia dei Lanzi, thence by the side of the Uffizi to the Arno and across the Ponte Vecchio up to the Pitti Palace. These memories, common to so many, are often gained on ground made familiar through study of guide-books and photographs which, instead of dulling realization, add to it the zest of more thorough appreciation. In like manner, study, discussion, photographs, and engravings prepare one for the Columbian Exposition; but the first few hours of living in its architectural dreamland gives reality to the shadowy preconception, and adds the priceless gift of another masterpiece to memory’s picture-gallery.

It is probably impracticable in any case, and when we think of the transformation that this prairie has witnessed in two short years, quite impossible, in the case of the Exposition, to keep the approaches of a great popular resort in any degree beautiful. Here we have on the land side of the Fair the usual assemblage of cheap shows, lemonade venders, and the like, which line the unsightly fence and make up what a friend has dubbed the Sideway Unpleasant. The fence is hard to pardon in a land where energy is predominant, desire to do the best not wanting, and _staff_ abundant. A high white wall enclosing the substantial fabric of their dream would have done much to give the western approach something of the festal magnificence which the architects have given to the entrance by the Peristyle at the lake side.

But once within, to pick flaws criticism must take a higher flight than one, frankly astonished at the goodness of it all, is disposed to permit it to. Nothing is perfect in this mundane sphere, but this effort on lines as yet untrodden by these States has such measure of success that one is proud to feel that this has been done in our own time, in one’s own country, by men of one’s own race--the race that peoples our seaboard, fills our manufacturing towns, tills our great farms, and stretching westward extracts precious metals here and cultivates orange-groves and vineyards there; the race which is daily urged, on the “whaleback” steamer from the city to the Fair, to purchase its chewing-gum before the boat starts, as none is sold after leaving the pier; the race that is so cosmopolitan, so made up from strange and opposing elements, and is withal so homogeneous, so American--and proud, above all, to feel that this curious people have had, at the crucial moment, the good sense to be inconsistent, to make haste slowly, to defer to the few, to make their Exposition the most beautiful before setting to work to make it, as things needs must be here, the biggest in all creation.

To be of this race and a follower of the arts; to have noted for years the growth of public desire for

art and the frequent lapses to indifference on its part; to have seen that our artists as they grow in strength and numbers claimed the right to do something larger and finer and better than the private house, the portrait statue, or the _genre_ picture; and then to come here, where for the first time they have found opportunity, and where the alliance of architecture, sculpture, and painting has produced its first work, to find that first work surprisingly good, is to feel proud not alone for the valiant craftsmen who have produced this result, but for the country at large which has stood behind them, and above all for the solid men of the city of Chicago who have planned the work so bravely and so wisely. So many elements enter into an enterprise of this kind that to a community like ours (unaided by a parental government which, as in France, takes upon itself, as one of its functions, the provision of public pageant and amusement, and keeps as it were all the material in stock) the problem was more than difficult, and the solution, solved as it has been, most surprising. Eighteen months ago in Paris, as I stood with a French friend in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, he said, indicating the colossal construction, “I suppose that at Chicago you will have a tower bigger than that, and that your exposition will be a triumph of that sort of thing.” “I suppose that it may,” was the answer; but the tower which is such a blot on Paris, diminishing in scale her most beautiful monuments, is nowhere to be seen in Chicago, and though the bones and sinews of the Liberal Arts building may be a “triumph of that sort of thing,” its flesh of staff effectively covers and adorns it without concealment of construction or strength, but with due consideration paid to beauty.

To house the exhibits, to provide for instruction, and to make a pleasure-ground for the people (it could be urged from a utilitarian point of view) might indeed have been done more simply, or, as the phrase runs, in a more “business-like” way. One rugged old farmer I overheard, as I stood leaning on the balustrade at the back of the MacMonnies fountain, as he pulled his wife away from the contemplation of the charming group of mermaids and sea-babies who disport themselves in the wake of Columbia’s triumphal galley, “Come along, Maria, I never see no use in them things; women with fishes’ tails.” Maria went along, but I fancied that Maria’s daughter lingered a moment, and she may have found the “use” of the artist in the social system. At any rate, the Chicago business man who individually and collectively represents the controlling power of this vast enterprise knew the use of beauty, and with the sagacity born of commercial success called to his aid the men most eminent in their professions, and then--left them alone.

Arguing without absolute knowledge, is it not easy to imagine that many times during the two years spent in constructing these superb structures, the heart of the business man must have failed him in seeing this child of his creation grow in beauty and strength to be sure, but at a cost of so many millions? No record exists, it is safe to say, of any questioning. The artists had been called in, they were doing their work loyally; and no less loyally, through financial crisis, business depression, and public indifference, the business man performed his part of the contract. He had pledged himself to the whole country to do his best, the pledge had been given and accepted in the hour when he bore the coveted privilege to hold the Exposition away from competing cities, and the Court of Honor shows how well the pledge has been kept. A detail of organization, one of the many which would make the history of the Exposition most interesting if written, was told the other day, and is so characteristic of the spirit in which the Fair has been put through, that it is worth incorporating here. At a time when the Exposition had reached the limits of all possible insurance, when every sound insurance company in the world was carrying all the risks it was able to take, the Exposition concluded to do its own insurance, the details of which procedure need not be gone into here. At this time there were a number of pictures, about nine in all, which had been promised for the Loan Collection of Foreign Masterpieces, and were not forthcoming because of the inability of the Exposition to procure special insurance policies which had been promised when, long before, the owners of the pictures had consented to lend them. There seemed no way out of the difficulty, when the simple question was asked of the head of the Art Department, if it was essential to the completeness of the Loan Collection that these pictures should be in it? To which was answered, that if not essential, it was at least desirable; whereat this business man gave instructions that the owners of the pictures be at once communicated with and informed that he would personally guarantee them against loss if they would allow the pictures to come. As this little show of public spirit involved a personal liability of over two hundred thousand dollars, the figures may be considered eloquent enough to find place in such a paper as this.

The wisdom of a large policy is to be found on every hand. The Exposition has been called a dream, and as it is so soon to vanish may well be one; but if the intent had been to deceive, it could hardly have been made more deceptive. To one in the gondolas or the launches speeding between these walls, they stand as though for all time; and for one walking in the long arcades, detail and veracity of construction force themselves on the attention most plausibly. It has been too often described how the architects, adopting certain dimensions, have obtained a conformity of effect; but that once obtained, they have shown the greatest freedom, and though all of them are men of many works, they have never perhaps been more happily inspired. The Administration building is the appropriate crown to the buildings leading up to it, and Mr. McKim’s Agricultural building is characterized by great charm of proportion, and though heavily charged with sculptured decoration is in nowise overloaded. In addition to the very decorative sculptures due to Mr. Martiny, there is on this building some of the most satisfactory ornament in purely classical vein that I can remember on any modern structure. In fact, though the treatment of this group of buildings is thoroughly classic, it is pleasant to record the belief that in no other country would the traditions have been so well observed and at the same time so revivified as in ours. Our men owe their education to the Old World, chiefly to France; but it seems as though a certain separation from the influences of their schools had given them an independence which their foreign schoolmates lack. It is probable that had Paris in 1889 adopted the programme followed here the result would have been as correct, as thorough, as noble as this; but the result as a whole would have been colder, and lacking in the individual character observable here, where every man seems to continue the tradition rather than follow it. Mr. Post had long accustomed us to his capacity to build big and well; but never to build so big and so well as in the Liberal Arts building. When sailing along the lake-front one appreciates the immensity of the structure, which seems to equal that of all the other buildings combined; but near at hand one feels its beauty more than its bigness, and the simplicity by which this result is arrived at. The portals, taking almost all the decorative features, are admirable. Mr. Atwood’s Fine Arts building is perhaps the best where all is so good, owing almost nothing to its decorative features--which, as the building is to be permanent, one may hope to see changed. The frieze of the Parthenon should hardly be borrowed to grace so fine a modern building. At night Mr. Atwood’s building is seen in all its beauty of proportion, and the nights when it is illuminated best of all. The torches running along the top of the building burn great flames of natural gas, and the illumination is at once simple and effective. On the roof of the Administration building something of the same effect is obtained in conjunction with the electric light outlining the dome; but as the torches on the Fine Arts building are seen against the sky, the effect is finer.

Night and electric light play a great part in the spectacular side of the Fair. Solomon in all his glory never saw such a sight as the plain people of this continent have had on illumination nights this summer. Innumerable incandescent lights sparkle along the cornices and pediments; the top of the wall inclosing the grand basin is outlined in fire; search-lights from the top of the Liberal Arts building cut their wide swaths of light in gigantic circles, resting for a moment here and there to bring out now this detail or to throw into dazzling relief a

sculptured figure or beast. It lingers longest on MacMonnies’s fountain, the fitting jewel resting lightly on the bosom of this Venetian beauty whom but yesterday we called Chicago; and well it may, as in a degree the fountain is the _clou_ of the Exposition. It seems but fair to call this fountain the most important of all the decorative sculptures. Every exposition has its great fountain, and the choice of Mr. MacMonnies to execute this one was most happy. Our sculptors as a rule have had too little opportunity to exercise the decorative side of their art, and we do not possess as does France a small army of sculptors who can be, as they were in ’89, turned loose to decorate a great exposition with groups and figures. It demands not only a decorative instinct but practice as well, a certain habit of and delight in handling huge masses of form which men who are capable perhaps of graver and more ponderated work may lack or have lost. Thus fifteen years ago Saint-Gaudens, fresh from school and filled with its traditions, would have in the course of natural selection been the man for the work; but with years and widening experience it is a question whether he would have undertaken to design and carry out in the short space of time that which his brilliant pupil has undertaken and carried through with all the audacity and fire of youth, tempered by a delicacy of taste which gives it after all its greatest value. Anything more typical of the youth and hope which we fondly believe to be the characteristic of our nation is hard to conceive; and if, as is to be so greatly desired, the monument is to be made permanent (which the completeness of the modelling of individual parts, an unusual quality in works like this, would render easy), it might well stand to represent an era. Mr. French’s massive and dignified figure of America may be taken as the matron of this generation, tried and made strong through war; but MacMonnies’s epitome of youth represents the future of our as yet experimental civilization, and though the boat is propelled by the arts and sciences, it is the young girl who fills such a large part in our experiment who is really to the fore. It is Smith and Wellesley who row with the young girl enthroned; and _vogue la galère_, with pleasant waters ahead and a safe port at last!

Of Mr. Saint-Gaudens we have only a figure of Columbus, which he has signed in collaboration with another of his pupils, Miss Mary G. Lawrence. It is a good exemplification of what has already been said that at the first glance this figure seems almost out of place here. It is of a character--the highest character--of work which depends on the most serious study. Conception and pose are reduced to the simplest, almost archaic form, and while it does not seem quite as successful, it is of the same family as the Lincoln here in Chicago or the Deacon Chapin in Springfield. The best of the sculpture here, while subject to the limitations twice mentioned, has perhaps gained a quality more essentially American by the absence of what may be called the ready-made decorative quality. The quadriga on the Peristyle, by French & Potter, the Indian girl and the bull, and indeed all the figures and animals at which these artists have worked together, are thoroughly satisfactory as decoration, and more native and appropriate to our soil than the lighter touch and greater facility of the sculpture at the exhibition on the Champ de Mars would have been.

The painters of the band of allied artists had the more difficult task. In the first place our country has arbitrarily forced our painters to work on a miniature scale, and with little exception our men affronted their task with theory and enthusiasm as their preparation. The sculptors had at least the practice of modelling large works; but with the exception of Mr. Maynard, who has taken Pompeian motives and given us under the porches of the Agricultural building a thoroughly architectural and adequate decoration in which his past experience has rendered him service, the painters were virtually winning their first spurs. Taking this into consideration their success is marked. Tried by the standard that the space allotted to a decoration should be filled, and filled by a composition which could not serve within any other shaped space than that for which it is devised, Mr. Blashfield’s seems the most successful. In addition to this quality it has great charm of color and dignity of conception, which latter quality, combined with clean, workmanlike drawing, is shared by Mr. Cox. Mr. Reid’s and Mr. Weir’s domes also have charming qualities, while Mr. Shirlaw’s gives one the impression of a complete mastery of his scheme and intention. At the southern end of the Liberal Arts building, Mr. Melchers and Mr. McEwen have large compositions, those of the latter being marked perhaps by the greater individuality; but while they are all (each painter having two compositions) executed in a very able manner, they seem somewhat lacking in spontaneity. In another part of the grounds in the Women’s building the feminine contingent makes a brave show. Mrs. MacMonnies here leads the van with a composition sober in line and excellent in color. Miss Cassatt, having apparently defied the laws of decoration, has divided her space in three parts, in each of which she has painted pictures which, from her previous work, must be judged to be of excellent quality, but which, from the height at which they are seen and by reason of the small scale of the figures, are virtually lost. But this partial and cursory enumeration of what may be seen at the Fair could be continued beyond the limits of an article like this, and still leave unnamed and apparently unappreciated much that is admirable and more that is hopeful. Of the delights of living in the midst of this, of seeing our people in holiday trim and, albeit, taking their pleasure somewhat sadly and getting as much instruction combined with it as possible, still enjoying it, much could be said. No mention has been made of the State buildings, which give, however, so much character to the grounds. New York’s imperial palace, bright and luxurious, is flanked on one side by Massachusetts’s staid and trim reproduction of John Hancock’s mansion, with additions of a character which must temper the smile of gentle reproof with which it regards its frivolous neighbor; while on the other stands Pennsylvania’s broad piazzaed home which shelters the Liberty bell. New Jersey reproduces a colonial “Head-quarters” mansion, and Washington is big and new and booming; California shows her fruits and extols her wines in a lowlying structure which recalls the _adobe_ missions of her first settlers; and each and every State has here its home, first for its own people and then for the neighbors. Strange neighbors we have too, for the Midway Plaisance is not far away with its turbaned, sandalled, greased, and befeathered inhabitants, with its German and Austrian bands, its great difference of tongues and great similarity of _cuisine_. The outdoor life which is made so much of in Europe here seems unappreciated; the numberless cafés and out-of-door restaurants which make up so much of the comfort with which one sees an exposition there still “leave to be desired” here. But these are details and of things earthy. The moral of the tale is short and easily read.

Our work-a-day nation awakened, it has been frequently said, to knowledge of the existence of art as a factor in life at Philadelphia seventeen years ago, and here and now attains as it were its majority. We may leave out our exhibit in the Fine Arts building proper, with the mere registration of the fact that by general consent it holds its own as well or better than close students of our art have known that it has done for several years past. The exhibition, or that part controlled by the Columbian Commission, is our best sign of progress, nay, of achievement. It has proved that throughout the land when occasion arises to build, to carve, or to paint, we have the men to do it. Art hath her victories no less than commerce; the qualities which have given us our place among nations, now that the struggle is past, are turned in gentler paths; and that which was prophecy so short a time ago is now truth realized:

“Following the sun, westward the march of power,
The rose of might blooms in our new-world mart;
But see just bursting forth from bud to flower
A late, slow growth, the fairer rose of art.”

FOREGROUND AND VISTA AT THE FAIR

_By W. Hamilton Gibson_

By the time this brief sketch shall have appeared in print the world’s greatest international fair will have thrown open its gates to the impatient multitudes, and millions will have looked with rapture upon its impressive perspectives of palaces and enjoyed their treasures. Even to the great general public, who are as yet awaiting with eager anticipation the indispensable outing at the Fair, its surpassing architectural features are already enticingly familiar. The “White City” is already a heritage of delight and inspiration to a vast multitude who have spent their available days beneath the spell of its enchantment.

It is no small thing thus to have penetrated the veil, as it were, as is here actually done for many--to have materialized a vision--to have embodied a paradise. The “Heavenly City,” the “New Jerusalem,” with gates of gold and pearl, which in one questionable shape or another hovers in the hopeful, faithful fancy of so many of the sons of Adam will here find a realization, supplanting or exalting the ideal which has hitherto not always been to the glory of Heaven.

But in thus paying tribute to the architect we are perhaps unconsciously crediting him with more than his due; certainly more than he would himself claim. Of what avail were beautiful palaces if they could not be seen? and how easily might such an assemblage of heroic structures such as these at Jackson Park, as in previous similar expositions, have been so disposed, with relation to each other and their environment, as to have completely lost not only their individual impressiveness but the infinite advantage of their imposing _ensemble_.

We traverse the winding lagoon for an hour in continual delight, every passing moment, every quiet turn of our launch or gondola beneath arching bridge or jutting revetement opening up in either direction new and ravishing vistas of architectural beauty. Yet how little have we considered that the very means of our enjoyment, the pure blue waterway upon which our gondola so listlessly floats, is the crowning artifice by which the work of the architect is glorified--a very triumph and inspiration in the great scheme of landscape--say rather waterscape--gardening, which has made this Columbian Fair a unique model for all others of its kind. I think it is conceded by the architects of the Fair that in no way are its buildings to be seen to such satisfaction or full effect as from the lagoon. And it is well to remember, if only as an instructive object-lesson, as we glide upon this liquid street, how much of our present enjoyment is due to the forethought of a supreme design, which, even before a single foundation-wall was laid, had taken into account the most effective grouping of the architectural features.

More than this, too, how many of these fortunate architects must have realized the rare satisfaction of having builded better than they knew, when for the first time they viewed their works from the vantage point afforded by their collaborator, the landscape artist, and saw these superb creations given back to them in twofold beauty from the clear mirror of the lagoon. The unique character and important innovation of this lagoon feature may be inferred when we consider that we have here an Exposition covering over five hundred and fifty acres, comfortably filled to its limits with the ample buildings, and yet no vehicles are to be allowed within its enclosure, and none will be required. The circuitous elevated

railroad will of course transport the multitudes; while by the interior skilful distribution of the water-ways, rippling with gayly caparisoned gondolas by the score, and a hundred trim electric launches and other equally picturesque craft, every portion of the grounds will be easily accessible. The entire circuit on this water-course, from any given point, will occupy nearly an hour. The luxurious tourist arriving at his destination is invited at the water’s edge by ascending terraces of marble steps, their balustrades on either side overtopped by picturesque masses of tropic and other luxuriant vegetation. Huge bronze-like agaves surmount the lofty marble urns; cannas, musas, caladiums, in most effective and artistic groups, are dispersed among broad expanses of velvety sward, begemmed with parterres of brilliant bloom.

But it is not alone in these picturesque settings of lawn and garden which everywhere abound throughout the grounds that we find our fullest appreciation of the landscape art. In the spell of these imposing structures, towering above the revetement walls on each side as we traverse the lagoon, we had utterly ignored another feature of its banks, or perhaps had our attention only momentarily inveigled thither by the invitation of the bevy of snowy ducks or geese or graceful swans hastening from our prow, and gliding beneath the overhanging boughs of feathery gray willows. Here indeed is a haven for a tired soul, a fairy realm whose modest charms are apt to be overlooked in the claims of the overwhelming architectural surroundings. But sooner or later its restful refuge will be discovered and welcomed. How many a foot-sore mortal, weary from the very excess of enthusiasm, will seek this quiet retirement, content for the moment to consign the architect to the accessory place of vista and horizon, while he roams and pries and muses among the labyrinthian paths, fragrant bowers, and shadowy glades, and along the reedy flowery borders of this sylvan fairy island, which the artistic genius of Olmsted and Codman has here, in two short years, conjured up like magic from the muddy, dreary marsh.

Connected to the mainland by a half-dozen spans of bridges, it is readily accessible from any approach. It is a realm of strange inconsistencies and surprises, harmonies and pleasant discords, unified with the rarest skill. The familiar park or garden at one moment, its curving walks encircling more or less--generally less--conventional parterre, diversified with closely bedded mosaic of bright blossoms; and now a path leading us between high walls of blossom-laden shrubbery, skirting a rustic arbor, or winding beneath the shade of tall, dense branches of trees, which, however at home they may appear, so wonderfully has the skill of the landscapist concealed his artifice, are still almost as much strangers to the soil as ourselves; the adjustment and grouping giving the complete illusion of nature’s random planting.

Only a very few of the thousands of trees upon this “wooded island”--medium-sized white-oaks--are native tenants of the place. Only two years ago isolated in the more elevated dunes of a great morass, they now find themselves in strange company; the soil from the bed of the lagoon, having levelled the former slopes about their feet, is now peopled with individuals as large as themselves. Many a rare nook upon the island’s borders would defy the critical scrutiny of the botanist or artist to detect a single tell-tale evidence of artifice. Would you step from the conventional park to the wild garden in

ten paces? Follow me through this winding path, embowered with its snowy banks of spiræa. Pry your way here beneath the branches. A few more steps, and the ripples gleam through the branches before us, and we emerge at the water’s edge beneath a tangle of willows, while a brood of white ducks, disturbed at our approach, glide out upon the mill-pond--for such indeed is the irresistible association from the surroundings. This haphazard chaos of willows and alders disarms all suspicion of artificial planting. We already anticipate the scene at the brink, and as we press our way among the yielding oziers, find ourselves listening for the familiar “c-r-o-n-k” among the spatter-docks. In a moment more we confront a tiny cove bordered with sedges and tall bulrushes, and intermingled gray-green willows and alders, while the water beneath is hidden by dense clumps of lush pickerel-weed, luxuriant in their feathery spikes of azure bloom. A tiny sportive frog leaps from the border mud, and a dragon-fly darts past on shimmering wing.

It is only as we contemplate the vista across the water that we realize the beautiful deception as yonder beetling dome, in its gilded splendor, or sunlit palaces everywhere gleaming through the waters are brought to our feet in ripples from gliding gondola, swan, or duck.

Was ever border-tangle brushed by mill-pond raft or fishing-punt more wild or spontaneous than this! Foreground and vista in endless combination and surprise greet us as we follow our course about the shore, with Flora’s own wild calendar from week to week. Here a secluded harbor, bristling with arrowheads and white with its spires of bloom, its sedgy banks aflame with cardinal flowers, whose scarlet reflections mingle with the snowy glints from the sunlit façade or spangling flashes from the crystal dome across the water. Here we invade the sheltered retreat of a bittern or small heron, which stalks away with ruffled temper at our intrusion. Creeping between the neighboring bank of alders, we emerge upon a sequestered nook shut off from the main lagoon by a small, straggling islet, plumy with willows and sedges, the main banks fringed with rushes and burr-marigolds and tall galingales that wave their graceful heads above a wild garden of blossoming blue flag. In and out among its willows beyond, the ever-present fleet of ducks glides among the dancing ripples, or snow-white swans “float double--swan and shadow,” as in the enchanted vision of “St. Mary’s Isle.”

As we leave this beguiling haunt the air is suddenly bewitched with entrancing perfume, and our fancy lit with luminous visions of the Orient from the great golden doorway which glows through the branches from the opposite brink and floods the water with its liquid replica. Attar of roses! One such inviting whiff is sufficient. Leaving the water’s edge we return toward the interior of the island, and are soon confronted by the wonderful rose-garden wherein are assembled all the roses of the world, with their thousands of varieties. Roses single and double, pink roses, white roses, roses yellow, crimson, orange, and saffron, and, indeed, of every hue but blue, mingling their beauty and their fragrance in an acre of bloom, and sprinkling the ground in showers of petals with every breeze.

The now famous rose-garden lies in the southern end of the island, approached through winding walks, garlanded with flowery shrubs of every habit and hue, of graceful blossom-burdened spiræas, drooping as with a weight of snow, or varied with rare foliaged plants which vie with the flowers in the endless play of their brilliant colors. Through the skilful foresight and planning of Mr. John Thorpe, the custodian of this realm dedicated to Flora, the fair goddess has crowned him with a new decoration of wreath or laurel for every week, from the earliest yellow glow of May to the brilliant maples and the final autumnal glory of the chrysanthemum.

Japonica! Japonica! How continually does the spirit of the flowery land hover here! It is, indeed, scarcely a surprise that the actual, familiar outlines of its quaint massive gables suddenly confronts us, looking down above a mass of the Mikado’s own chrysanthemum, and we suddenly find ourselves transported to Tokio or Yokohama, surrounded by a veritable epitome of Japan, embracing all the actual features, floral, ornamental, and utilitarian, with which, through the educational influence of painted fan and screen and household gods of vase and kakemono, we have become so pleasantly familiar.

The long, low-roofed, wooden temple is surrounded from its foundation by a characteristic terraced garden, embracing many examples of those “precious goods done up in small parcels,” which have always been the particular fad of the Japanese horticulturist--tiny giants of trees, so to speak, arranged in miniature parks, which, for the moment, make the beholder seem to be upon a mighty cliff or in flight with the soaring falcon, else how could he thus gaze down upon the summit of such a huge, lofty pine as this which he now sees beneath him! A fine example of one of these arboreal paradoxes is to be seen in the Japanese exhibit in the Horticultural Building--an aged dwarf of an _arbor vitæ_ (_Thuja_) like a gigantic cedar of Lebanon, which, while having all the inherent characteristics of an actual age and dignity of over one hundred years, is still, with the big vase which it occupies, barely the height of one’s shoulders.

AN AGED JAPANESE DWARF, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD--A CORNER OF THE
HORTICULTURAL BUILDING.
]

In no structure within the grounds is the outward expression so sympathetically reflective of its architectural purpose as in the Fisheries Building. Itself reflected in the blue lagoon, in its architectural functions and sculptural ornament, it in turn reflects the lacustrine life of the waters, which not only almost lave its foundation walls but actually pour into its interior in fountain and cascade and gigantic aquaria. As we follow around these green translucent walls within, our passage lit only from the diffused light transmitted from above the water, we can almost fancy ourselves walking on the actual river-bed, ogled by familiar forms of sun-fish, perch, or pickerel; or perhaps wandering as in a dream among fair ocean caves abloom with brilliant sea-anemones, and embowered with mimic groves of branching corals and all manner of softly swaying sea-weed--graceful crimson laminaria reaching to the surface of the water, responding in serpentine grace to the soft invasion of waving fin. Rare living gems of fishes, very butterflies of the deep, float past flashing in iridescence with every subtile turn of their painted bodies. Star-fish, at first apparently stationary, as though in mid-water, glide across the illusive plane of glass, with their thousand fringy discs of feet. Strange crabs and mollusks and bivalves sport on the pebbly bottoms, and portentous monsters, with great gaping mouths, threaten us as they emerge from their nebulous obscurity and steal to within a few inches of our faces.

All of its interior ichthyological features might have been anticipated even at the threshold of the building, with its rich and effective portals, where so many of these very forms are seen petrified in surface ornament. The building is in the form of a rectangular central structure with two octagonal annexes, each with its own beautiful portal, and connected to the main edifice by curved colonnades, with arch and balustrade--portal and pillar, capital, entablature and arch and panel--everywhere sculptured with ornaments whose themes are drawn from the subaqueous life to which the building is dedicated. The very balcony upon which we lean is supported by columns composed of four ingeniously and gracefully interlocked dolphins, while the pillars on right and left and throughout the entire exterior suggest curious geometric fossils from the deeps. Here a spiral procession of huge toads, whose uncouth shapes thus embodied in conventional ornament are singularly agreeable and effective. Each successive pillar is a study alike for the naturalist or designer--here a sinuous procession of river-horses (hippocampus), the incurved tail forming a volute repeated with pleasant effect in the spiral bands of ornament. Accommodating star-fishes embrace their respective pillars, touching points in geometric design. Here are eels and fishes meandering among bulrushes and arrowheads. Lizards, crabs, and turtles, each combine in effective ornament about their particular columns, which are surmounted by capitals of even greater ingenuity and effectiveness of design, perhaps because less geometric. Gaping frogs leaping among water-weeds; lobsters captive and sprawling in their wicker “pots;” fishes entangled in the meshes of nets, or engaged in mortal combat, their gaping mouths finely utilized in effective points of shadow--the modelling of each and all suggests the perfection of a cast from nature. To those who look for a happy blending of architectural purpose and harmonious ornament, this building will be a welcome innovation. To the naturalist or the idler in quest of the mere picturesque, the Fisheries Building with its wandering façade and colonnade, its roof of ruddy tiles and almost Moresque richness of surface ornament in high relief, will be found well worth careful study.

How many are the obvious natural themes yet awaiting their sculptured memorial in the temple of architecture. Must the classical and testy acanthus

ELKHORN FERN, A SUGGESTION FOR AN ARCHITECT--IN THE AUSTRALIAN
EXHIBIT, HORTICULTURAL HALL.]

forever guard that exalted basket unchallenged, and the antique, indeed almost palæontologic lotus forever keep us oblivious to the abounding wealth of natural suggestion of even surpassing opportunity? What a rare suggestion for a national architectural theme, for instance, has nature thus far wasted on the wilderness in that elk-horn fern of Australia, which forms one of the most conspicuous features of the arboreal exhibit of that land of tropic contradictions and zoölogical anomalies. Where can there be found another such ready-made and graceful model for a massive capital?

Had this remarkable plant chanced to have been a native of ancient Egypt or Rome or Greece, it is difficult to conceive of its having escaped being immortalized in stone. Will the future national architecture of Australia ever embody its opportunities? Here is a veritable capital of clustered fern-forms, springing in graceful relief from a solid sculptured base. In some of the examples shown it simply surrounds the trunk upon which it is a parasite, and in others, the architectural suggestion is heightened by the cluster appearing at the summit of its pillar, the dead continuation of the trunk above having fallen.

* * * * *

Superlative anticipation of our hopes is often disastrous to their full realization. But no such danger awaits the visitor to the Columbian Fair. The most extreme glorification of this superb achievement at Chicago still leaves us the superlative of actual experience.

Dull indeed must be the intelligence which fails to respond to the vision of beauty which the genius of architecture has here created. Whatever oblivion may await the other features of the Exposition, the fame of the architect is secure. Even though in their substance his creations here are but as the flowers of a day, to be cut down ere the coming of winter, their very evanescence constitutes their most abiding charm.

Though we may spend weeks in the enjoyment of the unexampled treasures within these walls, confusion will at length claim most of our minor reminiscences, and the winnowing process of the years will at last leave few tokens. But the glamour of this celestial city, this throng of ethereal palaces hovering between sky and sky, buoyant as with uplifting archangel wings from dome and pinnacle and acroteria--these will abide to the end of our days.

THE PICTURESQUE SIDE

_By F. Hopkinson Smith_