A new gospel of progress had been declared. The French
Republic meant victory because it meant peace. As you
walked these long corridors, crossed these golden pave-
ments, and looked down these glittering perspectives, the
monarch you met was the multitude ! And he felt that he
was master. He came from all the human climes: the
swarth Nubian, the silent Chinese, the passionless Turk,
the stolid Swiss, the ruddy English, the ebon Moor, the light
Caucasian, the grave German, the gay American, the black
African, the olive Italian, and the frowning Spaniard. What
a fable to say that mankind prefers to be ruled by mediocrity !
What a lie to insist that hereditary government is essential
to civilization ! The world is getting wiser, and the pro-
foundest lesson it is acquiring is that the kings of men must
be kings of mind, and that inherited titles are no more com>
petent to control humanity than inherited disease. The citi-
zen of a republic is judged by his character and his record,
and '4n a republic a title is no more than a counterfeit bank-
note."

The greatest wonder of the Exposition was that it hap-
pened when it did. The wounds cut deep into the face of
the fair city, in '71 and '72, were still unhealed. The marks
left by war were visible almost at the very doors of this fes-
tival of peace. German soldiers, who marched beneath the
Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elys^es in full
panoply of battle, with their music of victory echoing and
re-echoing from the walls of the closed and barred houses,
sipped their petUs verrea in the caf 6s of the Exhibition, and
talked like brothers with men hardly more than yesterday
their deadly foes. To stand in the courtyard of the Grand
Hotel de Kivoli and look over upon the ruins of the Tuileries
was almost to smell the cans of the petroleuses. The rising
walls of the new Hotel de Ville recalled the yells of the fren-
zied Commune, and as you saw everywhere how Paris now
rejoiced you could not but remember how she wept ; you



THE AMERICANS. 