Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/273

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

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��The Brussels Free Trade Conference calls forth the remarks :

" We doubt if there is a man left in the United Kingdom who would unreservedly proclaim himself a Protectionist. The marvellous progress of our exports, as shown by the returns of the last ten years, is, in truth, an unanswerable argument. In 1846 the amount was 57,000,000^. ; in 1855, a year of war, it reached 95,000,OOOZ. But the present year of peace [1856] far surpasses all, the exports already returned being at the rate of 110,000,0002., or nearly double the amount of 1846."

London and its buildings form the subject of many articles.

On the llth of November, 1855, Mr. Pennington, the architect of the new Record Office in Fetter Lane, conies in for a severe castigation :

" Describe the building we really cannot ; for our architectural vocabulary does not contain terms to define its monstrosities. The general effect combines the workhouse, the jail, and the Manchester mill. The style is meant to be Tudor, with every larger feature and every detail of that style misapplied and distorted."

On the 22nd of December we have an extract from the pro- spectus of

" the Victorian Way ; or Sir Joseph Paxton's splendid designs for a Girdle Railway and Arcade Boulevard, with shops and houses attached, all under a glass roof, similar to the Crystal Palace, with a roadway in the centre, and double railways on the drawing-room and attic floors trains every two minutes and a half forming a salubrious enclosed circle of pure country air through ten miles of the densest part of the metropolis, crossing the river three times on magnificent bridges, with a Branch from the New Cut to Regent's Circus, affording instantaneous communication from the West End to the Bank, and rendering foreign climates unnecessary to invalids. Capital only 34 millions, which is decidedly in excess of the probable cost."

The writer treating on this is " puzzled " to account for the strange infatuation that has made this Knight of the Crystal Palace an object of so much popular worship :

" He has carried out his ideas at the expense of the share- holders of the Crystal Palace, by placing them in possession of the most gorgeous and the least remunerative exhibition in the world.

His estimates grew from 400,OOOZ. to upwards of 1,400,OOOZ Yet

the Crystal Palace outlay is thrift itself compared with the cost of the projected Girdle."

The journalism of the period forms the subject of many pungent articles. Present readers of The Globe will be amused at this description (February 2nd, 1856) :

" Rich in its vein of solemn respectability, it discourses on every- thing with judicious gravity, and in a spirit of unimpeachable Whiggism. It can, however, condescend to the assumed tastes of its readers ; and it handles little matters as an evening journal must do, though always with great seriousness and dignity. Only a few days ago it examined

��Brussels Free

Trade Conference.

��Pennington and the new Record Office.

��Mr. Joseph

Paxton's

" Victorian

Way."

��Journalism

of the period : The

Globe.

�� �