of this day shall make us braver and stronger.” The pecuniary success of the Chicago Fair surprised even the most sanguine among its projectors. Instead of $25,000, which was announced in their circular as the sum which they hoped to raise, the amount actually paid into the treasury of the Northwestern Branch of the Sanitary Commission, as the net pro ceeds of the Fair, was over $78,000. The total receipts were 500,000, and the expenses about $11,400. It should be borne in mind that all this money was used in Chicago in the purchase of supplies, which were forwarded to the front by our agents. Not one dollar ever reached the Central Treasury of the Commission, which has to maintain the vast machinery by which the supplies arc rendered available for the purposes designed. RECOLLECTIONS OE THE FAIR IN NEW YORK—NO. 2. BY A WOUNDED SOLDIER. THE ART GALLERY Had the Metropolitan Fair done nothing else, the Art Gallery, its “ bright consummate flower,” would have Baved it from disgrace. There was a long, beautiful room, admirably lighted by day and by night, with not a bad picture in it. There was “every creature’s best;” and Mr. Cozzens, one of New York’s most distinguished connoisseurs, had made himself, for weeks before, the Orpheus of pic tures ; for to his music they danced down from their galleries, up the outside and down the middle, cross one and right and left; and if, after all, he did not want them, they danced back again; there, thanks to his admirable powers of persuasion, hung the choicest gems of private galleries (except the Belmont and Aspinwall collections, which, with princely generosity, were thrown open to the public for the benefit of the Fair). There, at the upper end of the hall, was Mr. Roberts’ splendid picture— Leutzes’ masterpiece “Washing ton Crossing the Delaware”—a good picture for faint hearts in these times. There were Leetz.es’ superb “ Venice Victorious,” and his “ Bi'idge of Sighs,” as dramatic a picture as the “ Duel after the Masquerade,” by Gerome. There were the two lovely French pictures of the “Conscript” and the “Re turn,” pictures which we see off the canvas every day. There was Church’s “ Heart of the Andes,” which makes one want to stop and pray at the Cross in the Wilderness, thanking God that the world is so beautiful. There was Church’s “ Niagara,” where you could go bathe your bruised sight, after looking at Hicks’ noble picture of “Booth as lago,” which is a blaze of color. There was Bier stadt’s great Rocky Mountain picture, in which we climb other peaks than those sunny OITB ID JYI Ij"sr Fabe. ones, over the heights of Fame. It was my good fortune to hear this superb picture criti cised by two distinguished officers of our army, General Andrew Porter and Colonel Clitz, who were familiar with the scenery it represents, and they gave it unqualified appro bation as truthful in general effects. There was Baker’s “Blonde,” “a creature,” I should say, decidedly “too good for human nature’s daily food,” for how a man could go down town with such a wife to look at —but we must not linger. The Art Gallery alone would make a book. There are probably no men who have a more enviable position in their own city than the New York artists. They are prophets in their own country. Church, Huntington, Kensctt, Gifford, Bierstadt, Leutze, Lang, Hart, Casilear, Hascltine, Ehringer, Stone, Baker, Hicks, Dix, Hays, Hall, Whittredge, McEntce, and many others, are not only “names of high renown,” but every one indicates a patriot and a gentle man. Their gifts of time and talent to this Fair cannot be estimated by dollars. In fact, the utter absence of personal selfish ness in men to whom “ time was money,” was most auspicious. Outside of the roll of artists were many like Mr. Cozzens, who gave up most important avocations to attend to the self-imposed duties of the Fair. Mr. William T. Blodgett, Chairman of the “Arms and Trophies,” was conspicuous in this way. He first brought together the most wonderful and interesting relics of the war, suggestive and memorial; he then issued a catalogue—itself a wonder; lie then tore down from his own walls the “ Heart of the Andes;” he gave, what was more important, his time and atten tion, to the glittering room of which he was custodian, and acted as Treasurer for that and the Art Gallery. In fact, such instances, and the records of other Fairs which arc traveling over our own land, recall these lines of Gold- “ So bleßt a life these thoughtless realms display, Thus idly busy rolls their world away; Theirs are those arts that miud to miud endear For Honor joins the social temper here. Honor, that praise which real merit gains, Or e’en imaginary worth obtains, Here passes current, paid from hand to hand, Jt shifts its splendid traffic round the land: From courts to camps, to cottages it Btrays, And all are taught an avarice of praise; They please, are pleased, they join to get esteem, Till seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.” Speaking of the “social temper,” it is re ported to have been lost several times, and the Police Commissioner, Mr. Kennedy, does not mention it as among the articles found. It is now said that in the “Arms and Trophies,” repartees were made as brilliant and pointed as the bayonets on the walls; be that, as it may, it is hoped that “Silence, like a poultice, came to heal the wounds of sound,” and that all was forgotten and forgiven. The company in the “Art Gallery” and in the “Arms and Trophies” was always interest ing. Good people came to see good things; you met the friend you had not seen—the friend from another city—from across the water. There w.as room for little children. You could hold your boy up to look at the torn banners of Antietnm, or that which kissed the wave from the mast of the “Cumberland.” You could show your girls Martha Washing ton’s plain gown, and endeavor in vain to make them despise fine clothes. They were depositories of great ideas, these two rooms. In the “Art Gallery” were seen “ in bloodless pomp arrayed, The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade.” In the “ Arms and Trophies ” were the dread realities. Here were “ Their rival scarfs of mix'd embroidery, Their various arms that glitter in tiro air. ****** * * The Grave shall hear the chiefest prize atvay, And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array .” I turn from these rooms with sorrow. I always left them with regret. They paid their quota of money nobly into the treasury. Many a poor fellow at this moment experiences the blessings which that money has bought, and yet I do not know if that money were the chief or greatest good done by the “ Arms and Trophies ” or the “ Art. Gallery,” for what man or what woman left either room without a nobler inspiration of Patriotism ? PARAGRAPHS OR PETROLEUM, BY A DISINTERESTED ADMIRER OF THAT ARTICLE, mllE liberality to the Sanitary Commission, which has been displayed by the gentlemen engaged in Petroleum—the irresistible tend ency of that article to rise from the bottom of Pennsylvania meadows to the summit of the stock market—and finally the very perceptible smell of several thousand rock-oily barrels, within a few squares of the “ Great Central,” induces me to lay before my Fare readers a few remarks on that spontaneous oleaginous natural product—to which I have referred only four times in the course of this sentence ! DERIVATION OF THE WORD. Petroleum, or Rock Oil, is so called— according to a very intelligent and, apparently, self-educated drayman, whom I found trans porting the article—“ from the way the barrels of it rocks when you rolls ’em along”—“ rock ing,” as I ascertained, being a technical term expressive of the gurgling and shifting of the fluid after much leakage. The organic defini tion or derivation of the word, current in Third street, declares, however, that it comes from the vast amount of rocks (or money ) which have been accumulated by the purchase and sale of certain stocks based upon this slippery substance. I am, however, informed
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