CRYSTAL PALACE VICISSITUDES AND PROSPECTS. THE Crystal Palace is to
be opened in May, that is, as certainly as human calculation can make it. The huge arched palace of glass, containing the most wonderfully various specimens of art in all countries, ages, and schools, with the most perfect machinery of modern days, and all the resources of practical science as applied to the uses and adornments of life—its own architecture inter- mingled with the vegetation which it will enclose—will rear its glittering roof and admit admiring crowds in the fairest month of England's year.
But human calculations are fallacious and the Crystal Palace has already illustrated the truth. It lies been necessary to raise the capital by a quarter of a million; making a round million, and confirming the old axiom that estimates are always under the mark. The water-towers are imperfectly constructed, and have to be rebuilt; whence the fountains will not play on the first day. This is a small matter, considering that the public will be compen- sated by seeing Mr. interhouse llawkins's restored models of the great Prse-Adamite creatures of the geologic past. Amongst the examples of miscalculation, one which cuts both Ways is curious. Before the Crystal Palace was begun, Dulwich Wood, belonging to the Trustees of the College, was worth about 501. a year : the Crystal Palace Company did not foresee the want of the ground and neglected to take it; which they have now been obliged to do on an eighty-four years' lease, at 3000k a year. But even on these terms it is calculated that the purchase will pay, as providing a site for hotels and other enterprises in connexion with the Palace. The Company are luckier dogs than they thought themselves to be.
That is, if all goes well ; and we have no reason to suppose that it will be otherwise. Amongst the items, we noticed 6500/. for Ji increased staircase accommodation, strengthenings, and other ad- ditions to the main building." No doubt, every additional sove- reign laid out in securing the strength of the building will be a good investment. There is no fallacy of estimate more deplorable than an underrating of the strength required in a public building ; and the public will feel an interest in being assured oa this point. The trusses for the workmen were estimated to be sufficient—until the fatal accident proved that the estimate had underrated the re- quired strength ; and it would be awkward to make the same mistake with public as well as workpeople. One under-estimate we calculate upon with great confidence ; it is the under-estimate of the total effect produced upon the mind by the assemblage of working science, working industry, and ag- gregated art. The survey of art from the earliest Egyptian images, through Nineveh, Greece, and Italy, down to our own day— the survey through art of nature, in the animated creatures of a world buried beneath our feet, down to the cultivated creepers of Paxton's perfect gardening, enshrined in one of the most remark- able architectural inventions of our own time, and placed amid garden and forest scenery—will constitute an exhaustless picture. We are convinced that the authors themselves can scarcely " realize" it, until they shall have seen it many times.
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