processes of manual and mechanical labor, which in the passage of
centuries have resulted in the modern industrial utensils used in the
arts and trades." This exhibit has a particularly historical and
technical character. It is far from excluding objects of art, for in
several ages the utensils, those especially which were used in the
liberal arts, were veritable jewels, either from their elegance of form,
or from the richness of their material, or the grace of their details.
We find chefs-d'oeuvre, for instance on a geographical map, on the
handle of a chisel, on the barrel of a musket. Our ancestors were not
possessed with the same passion for speed and cheapness that possesses
us. Industry lost, perhaps, but the arts were the gainers. The aim of
the retrospective exhibition is well defined. It is to retrace with
broad strokes by means of the reproductions of diagrams and authentic
monuments the stages of human genius. To achieve this result it was
necessary to associate with the retrospective exhibition of labor that
of anthropologic science, in order to show in the outset what man was
when he left the hands of nature in the different physical forms of
different races. The exhibit of anthropological science and history of
labor comprises then five grand divisions--first, anthropologic and
ethnographic science; second, the liberal arts; third, arts and trades;
fourth, means of transportation; fifth, military arts.

The central nave of the Palace of the Liberal Arts is wholly occupied by
this exhibit. Grand porticos and galleries of woodwork with platforms in
the lower story, form four grand divisions with interior courts that
approach by monumental staircases opening under the dome upon each side
of the rotunda, which occupies the centre and shelters the theatrical
exhibit. All around the porticos and galleries full panels were reserved
upon which M. Charles Touché placed decorative compositions broadly
treated in aquarelle illustrating, so to say, the history of labor.