THE SYDENHAM CRYSTAL PALACE.
As these lines fall under the eyes of our earliest readers, the new Crystal Palace will be opening or opened. The Queen may be delivering the words whereby the fact is to be accomplished, or the Archbishop of Canterbury uttering his prayer, or the choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus to Mr. Costa's leading, or a final "God save the Queen," demon- strative in its loyalty, resounding against the glass vaulting of the great transept. Or the stroll of the visitors, following upon the Queen's de- parture, may have commenced, and Greece may be invaded by silks and satins, and sphinxes of Egypt and human-headed bulls of Nineveh buzzed round by critics of the complacent or the small funny order. The sun promises to have set a glory on the whole, flashing along tran- septs and across aisles and nave, making the Alhambra "twinkle into green and gold," and the rhododendrons change their purple into crimson,. and leaving one little to wish for but that the fountains without and within were all playing to profit by his splendour ; though perhaps some passing cloudy chill may yet give the structure an extempore roof of slate beyond its glass. But in any ease, opened the Crystal Palace will be.
There is a consideration more important than any question of fair wea- ther or foul affecting the opening of the institution. It is very far in- deed from being finished. We all remember that the same was the case with the Hyde Park Exhibition—how far that was from being finished when it opened, how much farther still it had been just before, and yet how fast it filled and got itself to rights. We do not despair of finding that the Sydenham Palace on this its opening-day is in a state of com- parative completion, such as our last visit on the Monday could scarcely warrant the idea of. Nevertheless, whatever amount of energetic labour may be compressed into the few remaining days, the fact remains that the Crystal Palace opens in a decidedly incomplete state. Something is to be said on both sides of the case, in approval and in demur. Ab- stractedly, a great undertaking like this should be presented in its in- tegrity—nothing should be omitted or unexplained; the Crystal Palace should be launched by Queen Victoria in no less thorough a condition of efficiency than the "Royal Albert." But the abstract will not always answer for this workaday world. The opening is already over-due. It was originally. to have taken place in May 1863, and, after it had been more than once intermediately postponed, here we are in June 1854- True, the keeping time is not so much a point of honour as it was in 1851; yet a promise is always a promise. Then the season of this year cannot be taken advantage of if the step be not made at once. Further, though we do not believe casual fluctuations in the contents can influence the attendance much either way, it may perhaps be rather politic- than otherwise in the directors to open while the works are still in progress. No one probably who would go at first under any cir- cumstances will wait because something remains to be done; while some who might not come twice to see merely the same may re- peat their visit as fresh sources of interest present themselves. It is moreover to be expected and hoped that such fresh sources will always be recurring, and the Palace never in a final state. The plan is constant, but the details should ever be gaining in richness and variety. Indeed, we think it will be very desirable that each successive season should be distinguished by the prominence of some particular feature; desirable in order to keep up the interest of the public and to benefit the company as a consequence. On the whole we say, 'let the plunge be made at once, and anyhow ; things will get on the faster for it afterwards.
And, if there is not yet everything to be seen that will be, surely there is enough and to spare. The man has good legs who, after looking carefully through the interior, makes as much of a tour about the grounds as he would otherwise be minded to. Classify the visitors in three divi- sions,—those sightseers who come to ramble over the terraced gardens, and to wonder at the building, theowing in the objects of art which it contains as so much pretty ornament ; those who find a great deal to ad- mire or be surprised at in the details, a great deal to talk over with more or leas intelligence and information, but to whom the general result of fulness and contrast is the great thing, and, lastly, the students, who are there to investigate and reflect, probing the first court before they think of the second. The third class can make an adequate beginning if one sec- tion is complete ; the first will be satisfied, and the second satiated, with what they find.
Enough of these speculations as to more or less : let us enter, and see what is actually ready. We leave the Anerley station ; and a pleasant country-road, thick and abundant just now in the green of its borders at both sides, brings us, with a turn in the path, to the Western entrance of the vast central transept. We have passed on our route the enormous Crystal Palace Hotel, still hideous in its under-coating of red paint, and ugly at best as architecture. As we enter the Palace, we have a sense of greater spaciousness, as well as greater beauty, than in the Hyde Park building ; and yet the eye suggests that the length of the transept is less, and the vista down the nave, to either side less also. And so indeed it
; the latter by 240 feet. , It is the increased height, the vaulting of the roof, and the more nu4rous galleries, as well as a more artistic ma- nagement of effects, which give the greater spaciousness ; in aid of which material facts comes the teethed° impression of the art which forms the primary character of this collection against the industrial tone of the other. The glass fountain which is to adorn the central transept does not appear yet., nor are the parterres planned by Sir Joseph Paxton yet ordered there : but the Horses of the Sun from the Vatican already loom gigan- tic and noble through their scaffolding. Turning to the left, we begin to thread the architectural courts, occupying the whole floor North of the great transept; along the West aisle, the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Al- hambra, and Assyrian Courts ; along the Eastern, the Byzantine, Medite- val, and Renaissance, with their subdivisions. Modern sculpture and portrait sculpture, not yet thoroughly settled in their arrangement, have their apportioned sites; and the nave will be peopled with distinguished works of various ages.
To begin, then, with Egypt—but Egypt was not to be begun with. Painters and plasterers? more sternly dissuasive than those grandest of sculptured lions, as ummpressible as that deaf horizon-gazing guard of sphinxes, withstood the entrance ; an opposition which ceases, however, with the opening-day. And Greece is as impregnable as Egypt, and Rome as Greece. No matter : investigation is to come ; `guania e passe" is the word now. Glimpses through entrances, and glances from the gallery above, must suffice. Gaze with reverence on that stern and mighty uniformity of Egypt, who has strained everything to one mould against the measured heavings of her grand deep breast. Gain thoughts of free glorious life from the Greeks at the acme of their best develop- ment, when the highest activity found its expression in heroic repose, as of gods "girdled with the gleaming world,' whom there was a Phidias to petrify into vitality. Watch the next stage of that power in the Ro- man period of Greek art, when form still at its purest and expression still at its most consummate begin nevertheless to hint of a coming fall by the
more obvious ideal to which they are made to conform. In the Alhambra see the essence of a luxury which has not yet become enervation; a flame-like grace and lightness, an intertangled luxuriance of colour, bril- liant and gleaming, but subdued by the nicest contrasts and proportions into harmony and wholeness. The Assyrian Court, metered in colour, has something oppressive in its barbaric gorgeousness. Idol-worship and despot-worship are stamped into the brow of Nineveh. She is a cruel queen over fierce slaves. We cross the nave being at the Northern extremity of the building, and
are at the entrance nave, Byzantine Court. Perhaps no other compartment affords so much scope for independent study ; a study of the union of pon- derobity with intricate richness, of effete classicism with barbarous rudeness and effort, of servile conventionalism with latitude and individuality. The Medireval Court exemplifies the contrasts and affinities of the German, the French, the Italian, and the English art of that period of modern cul- mination. Tread heedfully the Renaissance Court, with mind and eyes open to the reception of truth. Banish alike academic dogmatisms and a half-perception of Ruskinian denunciations, and walk with reverence in the presence of mighty souls ; a Ghiberti, a Donatello, a della Robbie— the evening stare of a glorious day that is passing, the morning stars of a feverish and sickly day that is coming. And in the Italian Court, which continues and closes that of the Renaissance, stand face to face with Michel Angelo.
The Northern half of the building is traversed, the central transept crossed, the Southern half entered ; and with it commence the Manufac- turing Courts. On the East side are the Mixed Fabrics Court, erected from Mr. Semper's designs; the Printed Fabrics Court, from Messrs. Banks and Barry's, in a "shop-front" style of architecture; the Musical Instruments Court, from Mr. Thomas's, decorated on the cornices with busts of great composers and other representative details. On the West side lie the Sheffield Court, from Mr. Stokes's designs ; the Birmingham Court, in iron-work from Mr. Tite's; and the Stationery Court, from Mr. Cram's. Here also is the Pompeian House - and, at the Southern ex- tremity, the ethnographical collection, prepared under the superintend- ence of Dr. Latham. This division comprises, not only models of the various human races, but arms and implements, brutes and vegetation, illustratively arranged ; and, truth to tell, the humanity itself looks brutal enough in some instances to console the disciple of the ape-theory, and depress or elate the perfectionist, according as he may reason backward or onward. The botanical collection, which forms one of the most beautiful as of the most instructive features of the institution, is Temperate to the Northern half of the transept, Tropical to the Southern. We have surveyed the grc rnd-floor ; but the galleries remain. These
are to be chiefly devoted to counters of manufactures but, save the first gallery, they were desert and forbidden ground on 'Monday. In the first gallery of the Northern division are ranged on double counters two series of elaborate French photographs—Egyptian at the Western side, Gothic and French chiefly on the Eastern.
The Western door of the central transept was our entrance; our exit
shall be by the opposite one. Before us lies the vast and variegated ex- panse of terraced garden-ground; the terraces surmounted with statues, first of the various great nations, afterwards more miscellaneous in sub- ject The Italian garden lies at the foot of the first terrace; the English garden succeeds it, extending to the outer boundary, and containing the great fountain, 1200 feet in circumference, dry now, and innocent of its thousand jets, whose highest stream:1%s to leap 230 feet skywards. The valley follows a range of granite steps ; the lake is approached from the valley ; the geological island stands within the lake, colonized by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins with a band of immigrant monster-ghosts—igua- nodons, and megalosaurus, and ichthyosaurus, and plesiosaurus, and labyrinthodon.
Thank Heaven that their a3ra preceded yours, as Dante did for Nimrod and the Titans- " Natura carte, quando leach; Parte Di si fatti animali, aasai fe bane." Return to the terraced slope, if you have energy enough, that you may enjoy a last prospect of the gorgeous gardens and magnificent hill-clasped panorama ; visit the quadrangle at the South end, if you need refresh- ment; and back again to your railway-carriage.
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