24 MAY 1851, Page 14

VISITS TO THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF INDUSTRY. THE impossibility of

observing a synoptical treatment in our descrip- tions, which we foresaw from the first, becomes more palpable as we re- peat our visits to the Great Exhibition. One would have chosen, if at liberty, to begin with elementary products of our own country, and to follow each material from the sites of discovery or the regions of produc- tion, through the successive stages of manufacture, till the elaborated result were placed at the disposal of commerce : it would, for instance, have been most interesting to trace flax, from the sheaf of raw podded stalks, through the various processes by which it is con- verted into a delicate twisted filament, woven into a textile fabric, and at the end presented to you as a finished and ornamented material fit for conversion into the garment. But to this day even the arrangements for making this complete survey are not per- fected. In the case of flax, the machinery will perhaps be com- pleted, and your survey rendered possible, in a few more days ; and then, a similar survey in the cases of cotton and silk may be made by reference from one process to another, the gaps of one being filled up by the analogous parts of the others. The difficulties arising out of the incompleteness of the Exhibition were also, till yesterday, immensely in- creased by the worthlessness of the Catalogue as a reference for assistance. In a great many instances there was no number attached to the things ex- hibited; in more instances the references were wrong; and in a multi- tude more of cases, the information given by the Catalogue was nil—you meet simply a surname of a man, where you looked for a description of a thing.

Congratulating ourselves, then, on our original prudence in declining any attempt at a classified and progressive treatment of the Great Exhi- bition, we proceed with our descriptive visits. The French exposition is now, with the exception of the department of silks and velvets-from Lyons, so far perfected as to afford the oppor- tunity of a pretty complete view of French industry and art. We have already said, on a cursory view, that the display of goldsmith's and silversmith's work is not such as to make us despair at the comparison with our own works : this impression is deepened by fuller examina- tion. There is, however, in addition to the cabinet-table whose beauties we shadowed out last week, one work of surpassing merit—a magnificent fountain for tea, in silver : the design is unique, the workmanship most beautiful. It is a great pyramid of three tiers, reaching from the table

to the height of your head. Immediately under a rich finial are four brackets which support as many urns of beautiful shape : the urns, the brackets, and the architectural divisions between the niche of each urn, forming one contour. Underneath the tier of urns is a terrace on which are placed the principal and subsidiary pieces of the four tea-services- tea-pots, cream-jugs, sugar-basins &c. On the lowest range, corre- sponding with the level of the table, are placed a multitude of cups and- saucers of simple shape, exquisitely chased. The structure is harmonious in its general composition, and each part is beautiful both in form and workmanship. Its value must be very great, for it is solid silver. It would seem to have been prepared with reference to British taste and British command of purse. It might do convenient service, as well as form a beautiful object, in the house of some millionaire of taste, like.the late Mr. Hope, if the fashion should ever return that hostesses should personally do the honours of the tea-table at social reunions.

Of jewellery the French make a very beautiful and various display. There is a prevalent revival of comelian in combination with gold and jet : if in the German compartment, the revival might have had a po- litical moral ; but as these colours arc not those of the French Republic, one only sees in the revival a healthy return to what is a grand and rich combination of colours. The signet-rings of the French ap- pear to be infinitely more various, and more to combine beauty of form with convenience of use, than any collections ever seen in this country. In the display of filigree, one division is instructive and amusing—a division placing near each other the different styles of orna- ment manufactured for different markets. The supply for Monte Video, for instance, gives portraits of lovers, and enamelled scenes of a polite amatory nature, suitable to a more refined taste than one assumed to exist in any of the Southern States of America except perhaps at the capital of the Imperial state of Brazil. The supply for the ladies of colour in the colonies, both English and French, gives ornaments of a portentous size and glaring hues, which recall strongly to mind how few removes from the Guinea-coast savage is a large portion of the wealthiest colonial population. The French makers of artificial stones have been delightfully instruc- tive. They frankly place several cabinets before you containing in the uppermost compartments the raw composition which they make for their jewels : there it lies, as turned out of the melting crucible, looking like a mass of ice, of sugar candy, of green vitriol, or of petrified currant jelly, and not at all suggesting the brilliant little facetted stones into which it may be divided. On lower shelves you see it divided into smaller pieces, roughly cut, and already displaying the beauties of transparency and reflective brilliancy due to its crystalline structure. Then succeed bowls of the artificial jewels cut into the shape they bear in rings and other finished works, and showing the fullest lustre with which the skill of the producer is Ale to endow the material. Some of these jewels are so pure in their water, and so dazzlingly bright in their glancing reflec- tions, that the best professional eyes are tasked to discriminate them from the real gems. France sends an immense collection of works in bronze and enamel; docks, lamps, candelabra, and ornamental groups of figures. This is one of her specialties. She is here unrivalled in her general display; but you are surprised at the little endeavour made to give the cared lamps and the moderator lamps a more beautiful general design.

The immense display of French upholstery fully maintains the national reputation : throughout the multitude of beautiful specimens, some of them distinguished by magnificent size, others by exquisitely delicate workmanship, you again notice the frequent combination of the colours, black, red, and yellow. In some vast pieces of palatial furniture, the union of ebony inlaid profusely with red tortoise-shell, and marked out by golden mouldings round the panels, gives a general effect surpassingly grand. The wood-carving of much of the oak furniture is most skilful.

By the by, in front of one of the French compartments, jutting out into the nave, is an exquisite specimen of wood-carving. Three small panels are so devised that a landscape is shown to you in each, as it were through an open window. One of these consits of a rocky foreground with three foxes in different attitudes: one fox is crawling up a rock—to look over it into a dell on the otherside of it, with a gliding stealthy motion wonder- fully truthful; a second fox awakens strong dramatic interest by his atti- tude in reference to some rabbits which are barely out of his reach, outside the panel and nearer to the spectator. In the next panel a stag and two fawns are watched by two hounds which just raise their heads within sight of the timid animals. In the third panel a weasel, not admirably done, is discovered by a pheasant and partridge just before he can spring upon them : the plumage of the birds, and their position in running, is given with marvellous fidelity.

A very beautiful department in France is that allotted to the display of paper and paper-hangings. One of the paper-hangings you notice is very striking for its originality. It is a fanciful landscape, in which the middle distance is crowded with great sheets of paper-hangings suspended to poles, or across lines. There is a kaleidoscope variety of colours, so well arranged that the eye is charmed with the effect of colour alone: there is a certain purpose, too, in some of the hangings, which farm awnings here, a tent there, and a screen from wind in another place. But the mind is diverted from criticism on the naturalness or the object of much of the display, by the strong idea of motion which is conveyed through swelling the lines of all the suspended papers under the pressure of a brisk dancing wind. The general result is pleasing to the eye, and exhilarating to the spirits. Others of the paper-hangings imitate rich tapestries, with great success.

There is a display of cutlery : but in this department there appears but one group distinguished by marked excellence—that of pocket-knives. Good design is general, and a very high class of workmanship : one only wonders whether the price would stand comparison with our provincial Rogers, or metropolitan Lund and Weiss. Other sorts of hard-ware are very poor. The pins also seem drolly antiquated in form and finish. France is celebrated for her gloves : the display of gloves, and of the process of manufacturing them, is very interesting. You have presented to you a kid's skin, with the grey hair upon it, just as it is seen after the fell- monger has simply made it beautifully clean. Then you see the skin as leather, tanned, softened, and made ready to be cut into forms. Next you see a huge pair of scissors, and a skin cut into the curiously devised frag- ments—fingers, thumbs, palms, &c. —which when skilfully combined by the sempstress form the glove : you are surprised at the multitude of pieces which go to form a glove, and at the quaint shapes which the pieces take. Alongside of this, the old process, you see, however, a new mode which bids fair to supersede a world of labour and skill. This is an invention by which the powers of the die are applied to stamping out of the skin all the requisite pieces at one instantaneous blow—just as housewives stamp out the ornaments to their pie-crusts by little tin stamps. Surely this mode must promise economy to the millions of English wearers of kid gloves. In another place the French manufacturer places in juxtaposition a sheepskin, half of which bears the original wool perfectly bleached, the other half of which is tanned, and prepared for being turned into the binding of books. Close by are masses of woollen yarn ; and beneath all are some well-woven blankets : so that you see the wool in all its stages of manufacture, from the sheep's back to your own bed.

Such is the general range of matters exhibited on the South side of the nave in the French department. The real glories of France are, how- ever, to be discovered in a single room on the North side of the nave. We alluded last week to the salon which the French committee had arranged, in apparent rivalry of the Austrian suite of furnished chambers. We find that the rooms do not rival each other : they are on different plans, and each is supreme in its way. On your left, as you enter, the wall is hung with tapestry from the royal (national ?) factories of Aubus- son; opposite to you is a display of the unequalled china from Sevres ; and on your right are hung tapestries from Beauvais, and a carpet and numerous specimens of the unapproachable tapestries of Gobelin. The riches of this room must be seen to be at all appreciated. The por- celain is of course beyond anything that those among us who have but insular experience could conceive; in perfection of texture and surface, in formal design, and in picturesque illustration. Indeed, the point to which the painting has been carried seems to be too far advanced: the perfection of a landscape ornament becomes a defect when the point of illustration is passed—when the ornament overwhelms the article to which it should be a subsidiary, and claims the principal interest and admiration. It seems also a mere pedantry in art to waste all the re- sources of chemistry on devising how you shall paint portraits effectively on porcelain panels, when artists have for so many ages found wood and paper, better materials, ready to their hands. The high perfection of the landscapes on the vases, and the beautiful effect of the portraits on imi- tative picture panels, is therefore not without some drawback, to those who regard painting as something more than an art invented for the de- velopment of the china manufacture.

These objections do not arise when you turn to the tapestries of Beau- vais and Gubelin. There the imitative art is carried to a marvellous height, but there is no attempt at the miraculous : they don't attempt to turn worsted into anything else, better or worse; but show you what consummate taste and skill can accomplish with that most homely mate- rial. One of the pieces of Gobelin tapestry has beauties so various and deep that you study and admire them by the hour. It is just on your right hand as you enter : its principal feature is a vase of flowers and fruit, with game; the game is worked with a truth which made a passing Country Member of Parliament, of rural experience, stare agape with delight ; and our own eyes rested with an indescribable luxury on the soft aerial tone of a tree in massed green foliage, which was visible through an opening in the dispositions of the foreground landscape.

No person can go into the grand French salon without improving his taste, and feeling a higher respect for French art.