VI

INTRODUCTION.

and processes of which have been from age to age commemorated on great occasions, therecords of which may be regarded, as those of the festivals of contemporaneous labour.There can be little doubt, that what the Olympic Games, and the Imperial solemnities andtriumphs were to Greece and Rome, her Expositions have been to France . As thetraditions of the industrial arts of Greece and Rome faded away, and new processeswere developed by the Christian element, the carvers, the painters, the embroiderers,the mosaic workers and goldsmiths of Byzantium, held their festival in the inaugurationof Santa Sophia. In the glorious feasts of Haroun el Raschid, the Oriental variations fromGreek practice asserted their independent existence. The sum of the modificationsinduced, by lapse of years, on the fountains of art-workmanship springing from thosesources, were respectively represented in the inauguration of the cathedral of Saint Denisand the mosque of Corduba, —the former illustrating the nascent processes of Gothic, thelatter of Moorish art—the former of these two series of processes to accomplish theirdestiny, and reach their climax, in the construction of Cologne Cathedral , the latter inthat of the Alhambra . The great religious anniversaries of the middle ages were somany vast fairs at which Exhibitions of Industry took place,—the glorious festivals andmascherate of Sienna, Florence, Pisa, and Venice, were celebrations of the first triumphsof commercial enterprise, and their records perhaps better illustrate conditions of mediaevalsupply and demand than those of any other states throughout Europe .

The revival of the forms of ancient art, through the study of the relics bequeathedby it, soon extended its influence over manufacture, and in the completion of the SistineChapel and the commencement of St. Peter’s the principle of such a revival waspublicly acknowledged and celebrated in Italy. In the meeting of Henry VIII. andFrancis I. on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and in the triumphs of Maximilian, theextension to France, to England, and to Germany , of the arts and types of form peculiarto the period of the Renaissance , must be fully recognised. Working on the basisof that revival, manufactures and designs for manufactures gradually dwindled into anunsatisfactory condition, and we look in vain for any very important mark ofchange until the genius of Colbert arose, invigorating the whole commercial system ofEurope . The foundations of many improvements in production, secured by that profoundminister for France , were gradually worked upon until originality was attained ; and theimpetus so given to graceful, although bizarre design, was communicated by France to the other nations of Europe, and thence originated the shoals of scroll-work Rocaille ,which overspread every object manufactured in this country during the last century.

The progress of production thus elaborated in France , at length, and at its