Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/578

17, 1862.] sister,” said Mrs. Stephen as she kissed the blushing bride, “be sure that you bring Wilford back to the Grange.”

They left Grilling Abbots behind. The doctor threw the old shoe after them for luck with most boisterous merriment; but he sobered and saddened suddenly, locking himself up for some hours in the surgery, after the departure of his darling daughter, Violet.

Madge dried the tears which were dimming her blue eyes.

“How dreadfully dull the house will be without them,” she said. Then she assumed her new office. She rattled her keys as though to remind herself of the authority now vested in her, and she determined to visit the store-room just to count the jam-pots, and for no other reason, certainly not.

a just impression of the enormous building, covering the twenty-four acres of ground, which this time last year was a thriving orchard, we must ask the very important question. Is it to be considered as a permanent casket, or a rough packing-case,—a structure reared with the utmost art that Britain possesses, in which we shall hold future international tournaments, or is it a mere temporary affair, doomed to disappear at the end of the season, like the mushroom growth, the International bazaar, which lies in its shadow? If we are to believe the reports which are everywhere current, and if we examine the main details of the building, we must conclude that those domes which shine afar, and which cannot be discovered within 200 yards of the building itself, never will come down again. Moreover, there seems to be no necessity that it should suffer either the translation or destruction to which its predecessor was destined, in consequence of its being an intruder upon the park. It stands upon the land of the Commissioners of the old building, and once having secured the ground, we do not believe that, considering the ever increasing difficulty of getting a west-end site, it will be deemed expedient to displace it. Moreover, it is valued at 430,000l., a sum which would decline to a very insignificant figure if represented by the proceeds of old iron and timber carted away at second-hand. If these facts will not permit us to look upon Captain Fowke’s building as a packing-case, what shall we say of it as a casket, as a jewel-case prepared to receive, for perhaps a century to come, the decennial congregations of the wealth of the globe? When the secret power presiding at the South Kensington Museum undertook to create this structure destined to be the cynosure of foreign eyes, and when the behest went forth from the very cradle of art design in this country, the world anticipated some triumph of artistic skill. In 1851 a palace sprang from the scrawl upon a blotting-book, and the Commissioners were justified by the world in their unanimous selection of a gardener’s design, in preference to those of the professed architects who sent in drawings. Apparently a distrust of professional aid has become ingrained with the Commissioners; at all events, such assistance was not even sought, and lo! a captain of Engineers by some occult influence suddenly found himself standing in the shoes that Sir Joseph Paxton once filled so well. As far as we know, this gentleman had never done anything of an architectural kind before he designed the south arcades of the Horticultural Gardens, but his star at once placed him in possession of possibly the most valuable uncovered piece of ground in Europe, and the country placed in his hands half a million of money to cover it with a fitting place of meeting for the civilised world to stand in open fight for the palm of the victory of peace. We are afraid the unanimous verdict of the public will agree with those who have a right to give an opinion upon the matter, that England will not present to the world a favourable specimen of her architectural ability. Supreme ugliness is stamped upon every inch of it; not only is the general design monstrous, but all the details are worked out in such a manner as to insure adverse criticism.

The site is, we confess, unfavourable to a fair view of the building. On three sides it is bounded by roads lined with houses, which will only permit the visitor to catch a glimpse of its façades by straining his eyes upwards. The only place that is open is that fronting the Horticultural Garden, a private ground to which the public has no access. The Picture Gallery, a rather heavy structure of brick, is to be hereafter enriched with mosaic work and wall-pictures by our first artists; the Society of Arts, to whom the gallery is leased for ninety-nine years, agreeing to spend £50,000 on this part of the building alone, provided the profits of the Exhibition will permit of the outlay. Strictly speaking, the Picture Gallery is the only architectural feature of the building, the remainder being nothing more than a series of railway sheds, greatly inferior in design to those of the Great Western and Great Northern Termini.