The Exhibition, which I fear will be a financial failure, is only one of
the many celebrations of the Millennium, which include the erection of
statues and an Arc de Triomphe, the opening of a canal, the construction
of two new bridges, of three or four great public buildings, the
inauguration of the splendid new Houses of Parliament--situated like our
own on the river-side,--international congresses, historical corteges,
and the opening of five hundred new primary schools! This programme is a
sufficient guarantee that the Exhibition itself is similarly
thorough-going, that it represents every side and department of the
national life; and if much of it does not differ from other Exhibitions,
or even from Whiteley's Stores, this can only be the more gratifying to
the Hungarians, inasmuch as it proves that they have indeed come into
step with the general march of European civilisation. For my part I am
not sure that I do not prefer Arpad's Hungarians, who believed in one God
and one wife, and roved about Europe in the four-wheeled waggons they had
invented. And I am certain that in the Exhibition I preferred the
beautiful aquarium in the cool dim grotto, which has nothing to do with
Hungary, to all the splendours of the Historical Group of Buildings, to
the great model steamer, the naval and military pavilions, the very new
and very glaring native pictures, and even the wonderful models of the
town and the steamer-laden Danube.
Pages:
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434