The Lord-Lieutenant has just laid the first stone of the
New National Gallery for Ireland as the northern wing to the premises of the Royal Dublin Society, which is intended as a " Dargan" testimonial. It will contain a library apartment for the reception of Archbishop Narcissus Marsh's li- brary, and a sculpture halite be called the. Dargan Hall, 114 feet in length by 40 feet in width, and 23 feet high, besides the great picture-gallery, 126 feet long, and 40 feet broad.
The Architectural Exhibition will be opened at the new galleries in Conduit Street on the 16th March, and the department for models, car- vings, decorations, specimens of manufactures and building inventions, will be elaborately and carefully arranged. Messrs. S. Smirke, J. H. Lewis, G. Street, F. P. Cockerell, and others, will deliver lectures on Tuesday evenings.
Both at Burslem, his native town, and at Stoke, public meetings of the inhabitants and neighbours have determined to erect memorials in honour of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, whose name is a household word wherever the exquisite developments of his art have penetrated. A school of art, museum' and library are proposed in Burslem, where the Earl of Carlisle took the chief part in urging the merits of the suggested memorial. At Burslem, Wedgwood produced the Queen's ware, and supplied candle cups to Queen Charlotte upon one of her confinements, by which service he first came into "fashion." I sum of 8001. its al- ready obtained. The scheme at Stoke is resolved into the erection of a statue but, probably ere long, it may be fused into the more sensible proposal at Ihuslem.
We have to thank the Critic for valuable aid in urging a public duty. "The retirement of Mr. Bally," says our contemporary, a sculptor whose classic works have gained European fame, from the practice of his profession, has induced many expressions of regret at the limited patron- age of sculpture at the present time, and of' sympathy with one of its best followers, who withdraws under circumstances the very opposite of those known to Chantrey and others, his contemporaries. It is felt that the decline of our most poetic sculptor should be eased by a grant from the Crown pension-fund. We wish that the appeal may be heard."