s not only bring their choicest
possessions, but they also set up around them their local habitations.
It is a cosmopolitan town that has sprung into being beneath the great
roof and glitters in the rays of our republican sun. In its
rectangularly-planned streets, alleys and plazas every style of
architecture is represented--domestic, state and ecclesiastical,
ancient, mediaeval and modern. The spirit and taste of most of the races
and climes find expression, giving thus the Sydenham and the Hyde Park
palaces in one. The reproductions at the former place were the work of
English hands: those before us are executed, for the most part, by
workmen to whom the originals are native and familiar. In this feature
of the interior of the Main Building we are amply compensated for the
breaking up of the _coup d'oeil_ by a multiplicity of discordant forms.
The space is still so vast as to maintain the effect of unity; and this
notwithstanding the considerable height of some of the national stalls,
that of Spain, for example, sending aloft its trophy of Moorish shields
and its effigy of the world-seeking Genoese to an elevation of forty-six
feet. The Moorish colonnade of the Brazilian pavilion lifts its head in
graceful rivalry of the lofty front reared by the other branch of the
Iberian race. In so vast an expanse this friendly competition of
Spaniards and Portuguese becomes, to the eye, a union of their
pretensions; and a single family of thirty-three millions in Europe and
America combines to present us with two of the handsomest structures in
the hall.

[Illustration: FACADE OF THE BRAZILIAN DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.]

A moderate dip into statistics can no longer be evaded. We must map out
the microcosm, and allot to each sovereign power its quota of the
surface. The great European states which have assumed within the century
the supreme direction of human affairs are assigned a prominent central
position in the Main Building. Great Britain and her Asiatic possessions
occupy just eighty-three feet less than a hundred thousand; her other
colonies, including Canada, 48,150; France and her colonies, 43,314;
Germany, 27,975; Austria, 24,070; Russia, 11,002; Spain, 11,253; Sweden
and Belgium, each 15,358; Norway, 6897; Italy, 8167; Japan, 16,566;
Switzerland, 6646; China, 7504; Brazil, 6397; Egypt, 5146; Mexico, 6504;
Turkey, 4805; Denmark, 1462; and Tunis, 2015. These, with minor
apportionments to Venezuela, the Argentine Confedera