OPENING OF THE AMERICAN EXHIBITION IN LONDON.
The American Exhibition was opened yesterday afternoon, at West Brompon, with Republican simplicity. Being an enterprise entirely due to private initiative and effort, no representative of the State drawn either from the Royal family or the Government, was committed to official approval of it by taking a leading part in the opening. There had indeed been some doubt entertained as to whether this bold invasion of the British market by the American manufacturers and proucers would be altogether welcome, and this and other consierations dictated an official and modest inauguration. A few thousand people gathered in the main exhibition in front of a platform. On this were assembled the principal organisers of the enterprise, headed by Colonel Henry Russell and Mr. John R. Whitley, and the chief members of the Council of Welcome, headed by Lord Ronald Gower and Cardinal Manning. "Hail Columbia," by the Grenadier Guards Band, gave the keynote to the proceedings. A prayer by Archdeacon Farrar for God's blessing on the undertaking followed, and then "God Save the Queen" was performed by the band.
Lord Ronald Gower expressed how cordially the Executive Council of Englishmen formed to welcome the Americans desired to receive them in England. This council consisted, he said, of about a thousand leading Englishmen in all walks of life. They hoped the exhibition would cement the friendship and good feeling beween the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples. (Loud Cheers.)
Colonel Henry S. Russell, the president of the exhibition, in the name of those who were present from America with their products and inventions, thanked the many Englishmen, high and low, who had given them encouragement in their effort to make a fair show of Yankee industries. It would be easy, he remarked, to dilate upon the enormous resources and produce of the United States, but their object here was merely to indicate what improvement they had made since the days when their ancestors reclaimed the American forests from the families of the very redmen who were now with them in this exhibition.
A pleasing interlude following in the shape of the "Star Spangled Banner" sung with great effect and amid indescribable enthusiasm by Madlle. Lillian Nordica. She next gave "Rule Britania."
Mr. John R. Whitley, director-general of the exhibition, next delivered an address, in which he spoke of this as the first American exhibition held beyond the territory of the Great Republic, and as the natural sequence to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, held in Philadelphia. It would, he said, give the death-blow to all suggestions of any remnants of ill-will or jealousy continuing to linger between the two great nations of the English speaking world. He mentioned that the preliminary thought and preparation for this exhibition had extended over three years, and its design was to illustrate the conditions and modes of that bright and active, that incalculably wealthy and varied section of human life, which developed its resistless energies and practically inexhaustible resources betwen the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, Lake Superior, and the Gulf of Mexico, America came to learn of England and to teach hor. (Cheers.)
The Guards band having performed the popular American air "Dixie," Colonel Henry Russell proclaimed the Exhibition to be opened, and started the machinery, "Yankee Doodle" by the hand brought the opening proceedings here to a close, and the audience trooped off to witness Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. This representation of life on the frontiers of civilisation is undoubtedly the main attraction of the exhibition, excellent though the rest of it is in all the products of a fertile country and an ingenious and industrious people. It was to the Indians and the trappers, huntsmen and hersmen of the backwoods an prairies that the visitors hastened, with the conviction that in them they would behold a spectacle entirely unique and novel. This country has had many exhibitions of the arts and manufactures of civilisation, and is fated in this year of jubilee to have many more; but an exhibition of genuine barbarism, with barbarians no interesting as tho Red Indians who have figure so largely in American history and romance is not to be seen every year in England.
