TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DEBATE ON THE KENSINGTON JOB.
]IR. STEERS, Purveyor to the House of Commons, is becom- i11 ing a national nuisance. He feeds the members so badly that they cannot bear to dine in the House, and resent a debate which threatens to keep them in Westminster as if it were a personal injury. At least, that is the only apparent explanation of the enthusiastic howling with which the House has a dozen times this session silenced anybody who threatened to offer an argument which might last over seven o'clock. Sir Henry Willoughby occupies it is true, the unique position in the House of always saying sensible things to which nobody wants to listen; but then there are limits even to conventional indecorums, and when members shrieked at him on Monday night those limits were almost passed. There were four hundred members present, of whom at least one-half had pledged themselves on the hustings to do their utmost to "secure the most rigid economy consistent with the efficiency of the public service." The subject afoot was a demand for the most extravagant vote yet proposed, even in this Parliament, which has voted for fortifications, for a new fleet, for a new artillery, and for military expenses to the tune of fifteen millions a year. One hundred and thirty-five members condemned the demand as irrational; those who voted for it did so with sulky discipline; the tone within the House was critical, not to say hostile, and yet the debate ended with three set speeches, only one of which was directed against the vote. Membet s were hungry and savage, the whips looked assured of success, the Government were known to be resolved on a division that night, and so rather than face Mr. Steers, the majority smothered the debate, the last speaker heard being the unlucky Sir Henry, who was received, as one report notices, with a "storm of derisive cheers," intended not for his arguments, but for his patriotic impudence in delaying their dinner. He gave way, of course, and the House, hurried and jubilant, voted with hungry decisiveness that it would give 120,000/. for seventeen acres at Kensington, and had the Premier had the hardihood to accept Lord Elcho's ironical proposal, might in its voracity have swallowed the whole job at once.
Mourning over spilt milk is seldom the favourite sentimen- tality of practical politicians, there must be an end of dis- cussion somewhere and a vote of the House of Commons, even when that body is hungry, is the most available ter- minus. We shall not, therefore, regret that the nation has secured a limited right in seventeen acres in a London suburb at a cost exceeding the produce of all Mr. Gladstone's petty taxes. The land is not dear at the price, though as the pur- chase is made under a contract that it shall be devoted to science and art, even an Act of Parliament cannot give the nation the fee-simple or make the tenure other than a per- petual leasehold under very oppressive conditions. Still, as those conditions would cover the conversion of the place into a dancing saloon, which is, of course, a temple of art—or a great music-hall, which is clearly a shrine for science—or a show-room for decorative upholstery which, in Wardour street, for example, happily unites them both— and as those are the purposes for which the largest prices .could be obtained, the bargain is not to be pronounced too dear. Nor shall we argue that Brompton is not the fittest place for a nationarinstitution, intended among other things to educate the two millions who dwell east of Temple Bar, whose vehicles are refused access to the place by the most direct route, and who still look upon the pretentious spot as an airy but hopelessly remote country village. Lord Palmerston's argument for the locality does, indeed, strike us as a trifle weak. He says, that as London has extended, land in the centre has become very dear, which, if trite, is also exceedingly true ; and that, to get space cheap Government must go further a field, which only begs the whole ques- tion. Cheapness is not a matter of price alone, but of price plus suitability, and a thing which fulfils every -condition except that for which it is bought is often dear at a gift. We might, for example, obtain land for a central museum very cheap in the Orkneys, but then even Lord Pal- merston would acknowledge that that was not exactly a bargain. If it is worth the nation's while to have its collec- tions housed in London among the poor and the professionals, instead of among the rich and the dilettanti, it is also worth while to pay the necessary price. Still we acknowledge that resistance is very probably useless. South Kensingtonis not too far off t) be more than inconveuicnt ; Parliament will not annoy the Court ; only the literary class of all the professiois cares to exert itself to laugh at the organized knot of art job-.
hers, contractors, and courtiers who misuse the Prince Con- sort's name to cover their own designs ; there is the land lying useless as an answer to all economists; it is as certain as anything in politics can be that a new department of science and art, vast as that of education, costly as that of public works, will be located at Kensington ; and sensible people, responsible to God for their time—as Lord Ellenborough said when asked to read India House despatches—had better at once give in.
Only, we venture to plead that if Lord Palmerston, and his majority, and the Times, and Mr. Cole, and the rest of the dictators who govern us are determined to buy their whistle, they shall see that, at least, it will blow. Moses buying that gross of green spectacles was ludicrous enough, but a collection of Moseses similarly employed would be in fiction regarded as an impossible farce. If we are to throw away our money let it, at least, be on a jewel, on something which will not tarnish or look dull when the hour of repentance and balance-making has arrived. If we are to have a temple erected to art and science while both are in their cradles, let it, at least, be a shrine in some faint and inadequate degree worthy of their maturity. Seriously, the time for a great industrial university in which art shall guide mechanical skill, and science make all labour effective —and this is what the few honest people concerned ultimately hope to attain—has not yet, we fear, arrived. Knowledge must precede taste, and such an institution will be useful only when ignorance has been driven a little farther out of the sun- light into the nooks and corners of the land. It is not while forty per cent. of the population are unable to write, and Par- liament grudges a vote of 600,000/. to enable them to acquire that faculty, that it ought to waste five-sixths of the sum in teaching some small section of the remainder how to illumi- nate. Even painters, whose avowed devotion is to the ideal, do not prepare the frame before the canvass is fairly stretched. Such an university. might be the fitting crown of another generation of effort, when the means of self-instruction have been forced upon every man, and tradesmen have recog- nized that leisure is as useful as toil, and one-third of the people have been delivered from the dens in which they now herd, and civilization benefits classes below the three hundred thousand who now pay income-tax, and knowledge has fil- tered down below the million to whom we entrust the mono- poly of political power. But if Parliament, under cover of housing national collections, like to begin the .experiment, let them, at least, be consistent. Let us not have the shrine of art set up in the temple of ugliness. Whether Captain Fowkes's structure be solid or weak, requires new flooring, or only new domes, will cost 284,000/. for repairs, as Mr. Hunt believes, or half a million, as Mr. Gregory says that Mr. Mallet said, is a matter of minor importance. The building stands condemned by the taste of cultivated Europe, and first of all, as the essential preliminary to any further votes, should cease to cumber the soil. To house the teachers of taste in a building whose one lesson is that Late has no value in England is an expensive fully. Lord Palmerston, with the tact which, applied to politics, has made him dic- tator, made much of the vastness which, in spite of all defects of design, lends something of grandeur to the interior, and light vastness should be the characteristic of any structure intended for such a purpose. But if the Industrial College is not to degrade instead of elevating the national taste, its exterior is as important as its halls, its elevation to be attended to as well as its marvellous length. No patching, or stucco, or domes, or frescoes, or pillars, or gates of filagree iron can ever make the present building fit for anything but an international dog - show, or a range of cavalry stables. Better lose another hundred thousand pounds than sacrifice the object for which we spend half a million. • Instead of a shed lighted by dish-covers, lot us have a vast and symmetrical building, designed on the principle that the nineteenth century recognizes other materials than costly granite or dirty brick, and so laid out that it can be erected piecemeal as the national wants increase, and the national purse grows plethoric. Parliament has purchased the site, and must put up with its own acts; but it can even now enrich Messrs. ICelk and Lucas by rejecting the proposal whose generosity they bemoan, send the wretched structure to the people who they say offer so much, clear the ground for an edifice worthy of its end, and insist that if they arc to spend millions on arts, Government shalt acknowledge that architecture is among them.
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