The cosmopolitan cataloguer, the man
who made inventories almost epical, is the one man to whom the Fair would
have been a magnificent inspiration. Judging from the Fair, Whitman would
seem justified in claiming to be the voice of America. The Fair was like
him both in its moral broadness and its material all-inclusiveness. In
his absence no poet has risen "to the height of this great argument," so
that now the insubstantial pageant is faded, now that "the cloud-capp'd
towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples," have dissolved, "like
the baseless fabric of a vision," they have left not a rack of real
literature behind. And to what but literature can one look for a
permanent conservator of the eternal lesson of an ephemeral exhibition?
Truly, as the Latin poet said, literature is more durable than monuments
and dynasties. Except as an object-lesson in the unity and federation of
mankind, the Fair had no valuable _raison d'etre_, and, unfortunately,
the school-term was short and the number of pupils comparatively limited.
America is a long way from everywhere, even from itself, and the moral
heat dissipates in crossing the ocean to the Old World. The Congress of
Religions in whose voluminous report the Fair has still a chance of
surviving itself, was the most patently spiritual side of the Exposition,
and was, undoubtedly, a most valuable index of the progress of human
catholicism.
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