WHAT TO DO WITH THE EXPOSITION SURPLUS.
A suarrus The Chancellor of the Exchequer did not know how to dispose of it, no doubt for want of practice ; and how should the Royal Commissioners of the Exposition ? Their expenses all co- vered, and revenue still coming in ; the Exposition made self-sup- porting, with a redundancy of the golden props : how should it be applied ?
Imprimis, the Commissioners might feel the usual impulse of a newly-filled purse, to do something handsome withal. For in- stance, the exhibitors, especially the foreign pilgrims to this trading tournament, have been rather shabbily treated. They come from the uttermost ends of the earth, and are put to muoh inevitable expense by the way—the natural penalty of living in such outlandish places. But when they come, they are dismayed at the prodigious charges for fittings and appliances in the Crystal Palace. We know that even native-born exhibitors have felt keenly on the score of any charge for preparing the place of ex- hibition ; and the Japanese, nay even the German mind, must rise with difficulty to the sublime altitude of carpenters' estimates in England. Perhaps the grumbling is not perfectly reasonable ; but our reputation for hospitality is at stake. We are not universally considered to have done what is handsome in the matter. Then the exhibitors were excluded from the show themselves had made : the actors were not admitted, the property-man could not get an order for the play. It was desirable to make the Exposi- tion self-supporting, after once beginning on that plan ; but now perhaps is the time for doing something handsome. The working classes do not so much complain that they are ex- cluded, as speak in very grudging terms of that which they cannot see, partly on the sour-grapes principle. Multitudes, indeed, have gone, but multitudes also have staid away ; and the absentees have been precisely of those orders whom it is most desirable to win—the poorest classes of mechanics and artisans, those out of work or partially employed—orders which are far from being pro- portionably low in intelligence. Something handsome might be done in that direction. Still, probably, there would be a surplus ; and the question re- curs, what to do with that P In the first place, we note, not only that the general feeling is reconciled to the Crystal Palace, even among those who doubted and opposed, and is reconciled also to the site, but that the feeling also is strongly in favour of retaining the edifice—so strongly, that it amounts to a tolerably fixed expec- tation. Secondly, we note a very general acquiescence in the idea of establishing a " winter garden." Thirdly, there is a vague but far from unreasonable idea that the building may be wanted for some future expository purpose—another " exposition d'industrie "; partial expositions, of particular commodities ; an art congress ; trials of new inventions needing great space ; vast music meetings, which our variable climate forbids to be, like those of Germany, in the open air, and which are therefore sent, not appropriately, into cathedral buildings ; grand national festivals, or civil reviews, &c. &c. Now, many such uses would not be at all incompatible with the use of the building as a winter garden. But what is a " winter garden "—how is it to be laid out ? We have a vague idea that it might be a conservatory on a gigantic scale, only less crowded. The design furnished by Dick Steele's friend is out of date. All these questions, therefore, are proper subjects for inquiry and de- liberation ; and with them, as a question touching the surplus, might be taken that of an endowment fund for repairs and at- tendance.
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