Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 17.] SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

THE GHOST OF ART.

I am a bachelor, residing in rather a dreary set of chambers in the Temple. They are situated in a square court of high houses, which would be a complete well, but for the want of water and the absence of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles and sparrows. Like the little man in the nursery-story, I live by myself, and all the bread and cheese I get—which is not much—I put upon a shelf. I need scarcely add, perhaps, that I am in love, and that the father of my charming Julia objects to our union.

I mention these little particulars as I might deliver a letter of introduction. The reader is now acquainted with me, and perhaps will condescend to listen to my narrative.

I am naturally of a dreamy turn of mind; and my abundant leisure—for I am called to the bar—coupled with much lonely listening to the twittering of sparrows, and the pattering of rain, has encouraged that disposition. In my “top set,” I hear the wind howl, on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor believes it is perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which our Honourable Society (supposed to be as yet unconscious of the new discovery called Gas) make the horrors of the staircase visible, deepen the gloom which generally settles on my soul when I go home at night.

I am in the Law, but not of it. I can’t exactly make out what it means. I sit in Westminster Hall sometimes (in character) from ten to four; and when I go out of Court, I don’t know whether I am standing on my wig or my boots.

It appears to me (I mention this in confidence) as if there were too much talk and too much law—as if some grains of truth were started overboard into a tempestuous sea of chaff.

All this may make me mystical. Still, I am confident that what I am going to describe myself as having seen and heard, I actually did see and hear.

It is necessary that I should observe that I have a great delight in pictures. I am no painter myself, but I have studied pictures and written about them. I have seen all the most famous pictures in the world; my education and reading have been sufficiently general to possess me beforehand with a knowledge of most of the subjects to which a Painter is likely to have recourse; and, although I might be in some doubt as to the rightful fashion of the scabbard of King Lear’s sword, for instance, I think I should know King Lear tolerably well, if I happened to meet with him.

I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every season, and of course I revere the Royal Academy. I stand by its forty Academical articles almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. I am convinced that in neither case could there be, by any rightful possibility, one article more or less.

It is now exactly three years—three years ago, this very month—since I went from Westminster to the Temple, one Thursday afternoon, in a cheap steam-boat. The sky was black, when I imprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and lighten immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in torrents. The deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went below; but so many passengers were there, smoking too, that I came up again, and buttoning my pea-coat, and standing in the shadow of the paddle-box, stood as upright as I could, and made the best of it.

It was at this moment that I first beheld the terrible Being, who is the subject of my present recollections.

Standing against the funnel, apparently with the intention of drying himself by the heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby man in threadbare black, and with his hands in his pockets, who fascinated me from the memorable instant when I caught his eye.

Where had I caught that eye before? Who was he? Why did I connect him, all at once, with the Vicar of Wakefield, Alfred the Great, Gil Blas, Charles the Second, Joseph and his Brethren, the Fairy Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of Boccaccio, Tam O’Shanter, the Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Adriatic, and the Great Plague of London? Why, when he bent one leg, and placed one hand upon the back of the seat near him, did my mind associate him wildly with the words, “Number one hundred and forty-two, Portrait of a gentleman?” Could it be that I was going mad?

I looked at him again, and now I could have taken my affidavit that he belonged to the Vicar of Wakefield’s family. Whether he was the Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or the Squire, or a conglomeration of all four, I knew not; but I was impelled to seize him by the throat, and charge him with being, in some fell way, connected with the Primrose blood. He looked up at the rain, and then—oh Heaven!—he became Saint John. He folded his arms, resigning himself to the weather, and I was frantically inclined to address him as the Spectator, and firmly demand to know what he had done with Sir Roger de Coverley.

The frightful suspicion that I was becoming deranged, returned upon me with redoubled force. Meantime, this awful stranger, inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying himself at the funnel; and ever, as the steam rose from his clothes, diffusing a mist around him, I saw through the ghostly medium all the people I have mentioned, and a score more, sacred and profane.

I am conscious of a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself—I know not how—to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I crossed the deck, and said:

“What are you?”

He replied, hoarsely, “A Model.”

“A what?” said I.

“A Model,” he replied. “I sets to the profession for a bob a-hour.” (All through this narrative I give his own words, which are indelibly imprinted on my memory.)

The relief which this disclosure gave me, the exquisite delight of the restoration of my confidence in my own sanity, I cannot describe. I should have fallen on his neck, but for the consciousness of being observed by the man at the wheel.

“You then,” said I, shaking him so warmly by the hand, that I wrung the rain out of his coat-cuff, “are the gentleman whom I have so frequently contemplated, in connection with a high-backed chair with a red cushion, and a table with twisted legs.”

“I am that Model,” he rejoined moodily, “and I wish I was anything else.”

“Say not so,” I returned. “I have seen you in the society of many beautiful young women;” as in truth I had, and always (I now remembered) in the act of making the most of his legs.

“No doubt,” said he. “And you’ve seen me along with warses of flowers, and any number of table-kivers, and antique cabinets, and warious gammon.”

“Sir?” said I.

“And warious gammon,” he repeated, in a louder voice. “You might have seen me in armour, too, if you had looked sharp. Blessed if I ha’n’t stood in half the suits of armour as ever came out of Pratts’s shop; and sat, for weeks together, a eating nothing, out of half the gold and silver dishes as has ever been lent for the purpose out of Storrses, and Mortimerses, or Garrardses, and Davenportseseses.”

Excited, as it appeared, by a sense of injury, I thought he never would have found an end for the last word. But, at length it rolled sullenly away with the thunder.

“Pardon me,” said I, “you are a well-favored, well-made man, and yet—forgive me—I find, on examining my mind, that I associate you with—that my recollection indistinctly makes you, in short—excuse me—a kind of powerful monster.”

“It would be a wonder if it didn’t,” he said. “Do you know what my points are?”

“No,” said I.

“My throat and my legs,” said he. “When I don’t set for a head, I mostly sets for a throat and a pair of legs. Now, granted you was a painter, and was to work at my throat for a week together, I suppose you’d see a lot of lumps and bumps there, that would never be there at all, if you looked at me, complete, instead of only my throat. Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably,” said I, surveying him.

“Why, it stands to reason,” said the Model. “Work another week at my legs, and it’ll be the same thing. You’ll make ’em out as knotty and as knobby, at last, as if they was the trunks of two old trees. Then, take and stick my legs and throat on to another man’s body, and you’ll make a reg’lar monster. And that’s the way the public gets their reg’lar monsters, every first Monday in May, when the Royal Academy Exhibition opens.”

“You are a critic,” said I, with an air of deference.

“I’m in an uncommon ill humour, if that’s it,” rejoined the Model, with great indignation. “As if it warn’t bad enough for a bob a-hour, for a man to be mixing himself up with that there jolly old furniter that one ‘ud think the public know’d the wery nails in by this time—or to be putting on greasy old ats and cloaks, and playing tambourines in the Bay o’ Naples, with Wesuvius a smokin’ according to pattern in the background, and the wines a bearing wonderful in the middle distance—or to be unpolitely kicking up his legs among a lot o’ gals, with no reason whatever in his mind, but to show ’em—as if this warn’t bad enough, I’m to go and be thrown out of employment too!”

“Surely no!” said I.

“Surely yes,” said the indignant Model. “BUT I’LL GROW ONE.”

The gloomy and threatening manner in which he muttered the last words, can never be effaced from my remembrance. My blood ran cold.

I asked of myself, what was it that this desperate Being was resolved to grow? My breast made no response.

I ventured to implore him to explain his meaning. With a scornful laugh, he uttered this dark prophecy:

“I’LL GROW ONE. AND, MARK MY WORDS, IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!”

We parted in the storm, after I had forced half-a-crown on his acceptance, with a trembling hand. I conclude that something supernatural happened to the steam-boat, as it bore his reeking figure down the river; but it never got into the papers.

Two years elapsed, during which I followed my profession without any vicissitudes; never holding so much as a motion, of course. At the expiration of that period, I found myself making my way home to the Temple, one night, in precisely such another storm of thunder and lightning as that by which I had been overtaken on board the steam-boat—except that this storm, bursting over the town at midnight, was rendered much more awful by the darkness and the hour.

As I turned into my court, I really thought a thunderbolt would fall, and plough the pavement up. Every brick and stone in the place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. The water-spouts were overcharged, and the rain came tearing down from the house-tops as if they had been mountain-tops.

Mrs. Parkins, my laundress—wife of Parkins the porter, then newly dead of a dropsy—had particular instructions to place a bedroom candle and a match under the staircase lamp on my landing, in order that I might light my candle there, whenever I came home. Mrs. Parkins invariably disregarding all instructions, they were never there. Thus it happened that on this occasion I groped my way into my sitting-room to find the candle, and came out to light it.

What were my emotions when, underneath the staircase lamp, shining with wet as if he had never been dry since our last meeting, stood the mysterious Being whom I had encountered on the steam-boat in a thunderstorm, two years before! His prediction rushed upon my mind, and I turned faint.

“I said I’d do it,” he observed, in a hollow voice, “and I have done it. May I come in?”

“Misguided creature, what have you done?” I returned.

“I’ll let you know,” was his reply, “if you’ll let me in.”

Could it be murder that he had done? And had he been so successful that he wanted to do it again, at my expense?

I hesitated.

“May I come in?” said he.

I inclined my head, with as much presence of mind as I could command, and he followed me into my chambers. There, I saw that the lower part of his face was tied up, in what is commonly called a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly removed this bandage, and exposed to view a long dark beard, curling over his upper lip, twisting about the corners of his mouth, and hanging down upon his breast.

“What is this?” I exclaimed involuntarily, “and what have you become?”

“I am the Ghost of Art!” said he.

The effect of these words, slowly uttered in the thunderstorm at midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than alive, I surveyed him in silence.

“The German taste came up,” said he, “and threw me out of bread. I am ready for the taste now.”

He made his beard a little jagged with his hands, folded his arms, and said,

“Severity!”

I shuddered. It was so severe.

He made his beard flowing on his breast, and, leaning both hands on the staff of a carpet-broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my books, said:

“Benevolence.”

I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment was entirely in the beard. The man might have left his face alone, or had no face. The beard did everything.

He laid down, on his back, on my table, and with that action of his head threw up his beard at the chin.

“That’s death!” said he.

He got off my table and, looking up at the ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry; at the same time making it stick out before him.

“Adoration, or a vow of vengeance,” he observed.

He turned his profile to me, making his upper lip very bulgy with the upper part of his beard.

“Romantic character,” said he.

He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it were an ivy-bush. “Jealousy,” said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his fingers—and it was Despair; lank—and it was avarice; tossed it all kinds of ways—and it was rage. The beard did everything.

“I am the Ghost of Art,” said he. “Two bob a day now, and more when its longer! Hair’s the true expression. There is no other. I SAID I’D GROW IT, AND I’VE GROWN IT, AND IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!”

He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark, but he never walked down or ran down. I looked over the bannisters, and I was alone with the thunder.

Need I add more of my terrific fate? It HAS haunted me ever since. It glares upon me from the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when MACLISE subdues it to his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at the British Institution it lures young artists on to their destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally working the passions in hair, and expressing everything by beard, pursues me. The prediction is accomplished, and the Victim has no rest.

THE WONDERS OF 1851.

A certain Government office having a more than usual need of some new ideas, and wishing to obtain them from the collective mind of the country, consulted Mr. Trappem, the official solicitor—a gentleman of great experience—on the subject. “A new idea,” said he, “is not the only thing you will want; these new ideas, to be worth anything, must be reduced to practical demonstration, by models, plans, or experiments. This will cost much time, labour, and money, and be attended through its progress with many disappointments. The rule, therefore, is to _throw it open_ to the public. Let the inventive spirits of the whole public be set to work; let them make the calculations, designs, models, plans; let them try all the experiments at their own expense; let them all be encouraged to proceed by those suggestions which are sure to excite the greatest hopes and the utmost emulation, without committing the Honourable Board to anything. When at length two or three succeed, then the Honourable Board steps in, and taking a bit from one, and a bit from another, but the whole, or chief part, from no one in a direct way, rejects them all individually and collectively, and escapes all claims and contingencies. A few compliments, enough to keep alive hope, and at the same time keep the best men quiet, should finally be held out, and the competitors may then be safely left to long delays and the course of events. That’s the way.”

Too true, Mr. Trappem—that _is_ the way; and many a Government office, or other imposing array of Committee-men, and Honourable Boards, have practised this same expedient upon the inventive genius and collective knowledge and talent of the public. The last instances which deserve to be recorded, not merely because they are the most recent, but rather on account of their magnitude and completeness, are the invitations to competitors for models and plans, issued by the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers,—and by the Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations.

In order to supersede prevaricating denials and evasions of what we have to say concerning the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers, it may be as well to premise that they have for some time adopted the cunning “fence” of a “_Committee_ of Commissioners,” behind which the Commissioners make a dodge on all difficult, alarming, and responsible occasions. When all is safe, and clear, and sunshiny, it is the Commissioners who have done the thing; directly matters look awkward, and a bad business, the diplomatic bo-peeps leap away from the bursting clouds—and the Committee of Commissioners have done it all, for which the main body of the Right Honourable Board is by no means responsible. A similar manœuvre has been adopted by the Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry, who have got two Committees to screen them.

Now, in the name of all worthily striving spirits,—of all those who have devoted their talents, time, and money to the production of models, designs, or plans,—of all those who have laboured hard by day or by night, perhaps amidst other arduous and necessary avocations,—in the name of all those, who, possessing real knowledge and skill, have naturally and inevitably been led to indulge in high hopes, if not of entire success, at least of fair play and of some advantage to themselves in reward, remuneration for reasonable and necessary expenses incurred, or, at any rate, in receiving honourable mention,—and, finally, in the name of common justice, we do most loudly and earnestly protest against all these and similar appeals to the collective intellect of the public, unless conducted upon some liberal and definite method of compensation for all eminently meritorious labours.

That one great prize—either as a substantial tribute, or in the exclusive adoption of an entire plan—should be awarded to one man, and that the half-dozen next to him in merit, perhaps equal or superior, should derive no benefit at all, is manifestly a most clumsy and unjust arrangement. But when we find great appeals to the public, nobly answered, and yet _no one_ work selected as the work desired,—no one rewarded—but every one _used_ and got rid of—then, indeed, we see an abuse of that kind which ought to be most fully exposed, so that it may serve as a warning in future “to all whom it may concern.”

It is curious to observe how much more quickly some nations, as well as individuals, take a hint than others. Among the models and plans sent in answer to the public invitation of the Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry, there are a great many, and of a most excellent kind, from our sprightly and sanguine friends, the French—while, notwithstanding the chief originator and patron is from the _Faderland_, not one of those who are more especially distinguished as entitled to the highest honours, is from Germany! Out of the eighteen names thus selected, no less than twelve are Frenchmen; four are English; one Austrian; and a solitary Dutchman. In all Prussia, there was not found one man to venture. It would seem as though they were aware of these tricks. But how is it that so few of our own countrymen are thus distinguished and complimented? Is it because they are deficient in the requisite talent, or do they not take sufficient interest in the matter? Surely neither of these reasons will be satisfactory to account for the fact of our native architects and designers having been so palpably beaten at this first trial of skill. We shall probably be told that the best men of France have entered the lists in this competition; whereas our best men have stood aloof. Why is this? May it not be that “old birds are not caught with chaff?” Our best men are generally well employed, and it is not worth their while to waste their time in competitions which almost invariably end in so unsatisfactory a manner. The same thing occurred, and may be answered in the same way, with regard to the hundred and sixty or seventy Plans sent in for the Drainage of London. Our most eminent civil engineers stood aloof. A few very able men, it is true, entered into the contest with enthusiasm, at great expense of time, labour, and money, (one of them, Mr. J. B. M‘Clean, spent nearly 500_l._ in surveys, &c.) but very few of them will ever do this again. Out of the two hundred and forty-five competitors who have sent designs and plans, in reply to the equally vague and formal invitation of the Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851, not a single name of the hundred and sixty or seventy engineers, surveyors, architects, builders, &c., who sent in designs for the Drainage of London, is to be found either in List A, or List B, of those whom the Commissioners of the Exhibition have mentioned as entitled to honorary distinction. They were, no doubt, very thoroughly sickened by the previous affair.

We have said that, at the very least, those who have sent in excellent designs should receive honourable mention. This is liberally bestowed by the Commissioners of the Exhibition on eighteen individuals; but that is not sufficient. Neither is the longer list of names, thus honoured, perfectly just, inasmuch as it excludes many whose plans display very great merit. As for the Commissioners of Sewers, the report they issued concerning the plans sent to them, was meagre and mean to the last degree. Its timidity at a just and decent compliment, absolutely amounted to the ludicrous. If they thanked anybody at all, the thanks seemed warily pushed towards the parties by the Solicitor of the Commission at the end of a long pole. They had not even a word of commendation to offer to two or three men who had sent in designs of the most comprehensive and original character,—designs which were, at least, as practicable as any of the “tunnel schemes,” or others which they ventured, in their caustic way, to applaud. We would more especially mention the plans of Mr. Richard Dover, Mr. John Martin, Mr. John Sutton (_The Margin Sewer_), Mr. Jasper Rogers, Mr. William H. Smith (_Second Series_), and the one signed “_Nunc aut Nunquam_,” which latter, for grandeur of conception, equals the very greatest works of ancient and modern times. Placed beside such unmannerly treatment as this, and comparing the two reports, that of the Commissioners of the Exhibition reads like the production of gentlemen and scholars, beside the penurious reservations and dryness of the Commissioners of Sewers.

With regard, however, to the great superiority of foreign artists over our own in the present matter of competition, and our utter defeat in the first trial of the respective strength of Nations, some very excellent remarks have been put forth by the “Athenæum.” “Let us see,” says the writer, “if the men who did come up to this architectural battle have been fairly dealt with. It is essential to the integrity of a combat that it should be fought with the weapon prescribed. If one of two combatants bring a sword double the length of his adversary’s, or a rifle to his rival’s pistol, we should scarcely hold that the defeat of the latter is proof that he is inferior in fence or in aim.” This is closely and fairly put. The answer must be, that our artists have _not_ been fairly beaten. The advertisement of the Committee requested “information and suggestions” on the general form of the building in plan, &c., and they laid down rules and regulations to which “they earnestly requested the contributors to conform,” declaring that they would not recognise any plans which were “sent in a form inconsistent with these rules.” They were clearly defined. For instance—they directed that the communications must consist of a single sheet of paper of given dimensions; that the drawing should be a simple ground-plan, also of limited dimensions; and that it should _only_ contain “such elevations and sections of the building, on the same sheet, as might be necessary to elucidate the system proposed.” Surely all this is clear enough.

Let us now see how some of the most successful of the competitors have attended to these conditions on which they were to enter the arena.

What extensive pleasure-grounds are those?—and adorned with such architectural displays? They are the work of Monsieur Cailloux. But, a little further on, we behold pleasure-grounds and architectural structures yet more ornate and refined. They are from the hand of Monsieur Charpentier. Further on, another, by Monsieur Cleemputte; and another by Monsieur Gaulle—a complicated work of thoughtful elaboration. Yet even these are destined to be surpassed by the luxurious fancies of other artists.

So far from denying or doubting that many of these designs are beautiful, we close our eyes, and see in imagination the exquisite magnificence of the structures, into which no coarse and profane hands should dare to wheel or carry rude raw materials of any kind; there, everything must be finished to the highest degree of polished art and refined taste. Also, no lumbering pieces of machinery or mechanism must risk doing injury to the walls, and pillars, and profusion of glass—no uncouth agricultural implements, or other tools of horny-handed Industry. Hither, let no enthusiasts in smoke-jacks, patent capstans, door-hinges, dock-gates, double-barred gridirons, humane chimney-sweeping apparatuses, peat-charcoal, bachelor’s broilers, fire-annihilators, patent filters, portable kitchens, or electric telegraphs, dare to send their uncouth machinery and compounds; but only such things as are delicate of texture, rainbow-coloured, and exquisite to the smell, while the visitors (none of whom will be admitted except in full dress, and great numbers of whom will always appear in court dresses) perambulate about, gazing now on this side, and now on that, to the sound of the seraphine and Moorish flutes.

Let us awake from this charming vision; but it was natural to fall into it on such suggestions. Again we are in danger. For who can contemplate the elegant originality of Monsieur Jacquet (No. 25) without emotion, or a “wish to be there?” His ground-plan resembles a section of some enormous fan-light of painted glass, or like part of a gigantic Oriental fan, made of the plumes of some fabulous peacock. Nor must we pass over the suggestion of our countrymen, Messrs. Felix and White (No. 72), because they are not equally imaginative, for they certainly manifest very much and excellent thought in their architectural display; though, like our foreign friends, no thought at all of the cost of such a work. The same may be said of the beautiful pleasure-grounds designed by Mr. Reilly (No. 102), with circular, oval, and serpentine garden-plots, flower-beds, and shrubberies, and labyrinthine walks or covered ways of glass.

But there are more—yet more of these delightful and deliberate violations of the terms on which competitors were to enter the lists—one vieing with another, not in producing the most excellently useful and economical structure for the purpose required, but the most perfect exhibition of the artist’s especial taste, “regardless of expense.” Yes, there are more of these deserving notice. One competitor—nay, three of them—propose that the entire building should be made of iron, domes and towers inclusive; another, that it shall be all made of glass, such as we might find in an Arabian Nights’ Tale. Monsieur Soyer, the mighty cook (No. 165), begins the synopsis of his design by proposing to take up, and remove the great marble arch from Buckingham Palace, as though it were a “trifle,” and serve it up for a grand entrance opposite the Prince of Wales’s Gate. Here, also, is a structure which arrests the attention even amidst the surrounding wonders, and appears to be several conservatories and libraries on a colossal scale of glass frame-work, delightfully intermingled with domes and turrets, and observatories, with here and there minarets and pagodas, of the delicious character presented by those fragile structures which make such a tempting figure on the festive board, standing erect among the dessert-plates. Yet, once more, behold the prodigal laying out of palace-gardens, not to speak of the ante-industrial palace itself (which reminds one of Thomson’s “Castle of Indolence”), gardens with alcoves and aviaries, and fountains, glass temples, green labyrinths, flower-beds and flower-stands, vases and _jets-d’eaux_, sculpture, shrubberies, shaded lovers’ walks, public promenades, with lords and ladies and princes and princesses, of all nations, sauntering about, and the clouds and sky of an Italian sunset lighting up and colouring the whole. For this, and similar _chateaux_, we are quite at a loss to conjecture the principle on which they present themselves on this occasion; but we have no doubt that they all belong to that munificent patron of art, and great landed proprietor, the Marquis of Carrabas.

Now, that our own architects are able to compete successfully with the best of our foreign friends in works of imaginative design, we do not affirm; neither, for the reasons previously adduced by the “Athenæum,” do we consider ourselves justified in denying it, from the result of the present struggle. But for our own artists and others, who have confined themselves to the terms and preliminaries announced by the Commissioners, have they succeeded?—that is the question. Not satisfactorily, we think. Our architects are, for the most part, impracticable, from the expense required, and the wilful forgetfulness that the building is to be of a temporary character; while our surveyors and builders have been thinking too much of railway-stations, not of that sober, simple, and sufficient kind which the occasion requires, but (according to the error in these stations) of that large, ornate, and redundant kind which is meant to be admired as much as used, and also to last for ages. This latter mistake is very characteristic of our countrymen. They do not feel, nor comprehend, the act of knocking up a temporary structure; they are always for something that will endure.

In certain matters requiring great skill and many forethoughts, most of these plans are not very successful. For instance, the prevention of terrible confusion and danger in the constant arrivals and departures of visitors—carriages, vehicles of all sorts, horsemen, and shoals of pedestrians. This relates to the approaches and entrances outside; and the position and approaches of the exit-doors inside; also, the best means of directing and managing the currents of visitors within. It seems pretty clear that everybody must not be allowed to follow his “own sweet will” in all respects, or there will be many a deadlock, and perhaps a deadly struggle, with all the usual disastrous consequences. Many of the plans seek to direct the current of visitors (indicated by shoals of little arrows with their heads pointing the same way) not so much for the convenience and freedom of the public, as in accordance with the architectural points to be displayed. Others appear to intend that the direction of the current shall be forced by the pressure from the column constantly advancing behind. This might be dangerous. The current might surely be managed so as to combine direction on a large scale with a considerable amount of individual freedom; and, in any case, the amount of pressure from the masses behind should be regulated by sectional barriers.

How to find your way out? This may be a question well worth consideration. Of course there will be a sufficient number of exit-doors; but if you have to walk and struggle through several miles of bazaar-counters or winding ways, amidst dense crowds, before you can discover a means of egress, your amount of pleasure is not likely to induce a second visit. Mr. Brandon for instance (No. 207), has beautiful domed temples and libraries (so they appear) or other “glass cases,” while the ground-plan presents a series of circuitous batches of stalls, or bazaar-counters, not unlike large circles of sheep-pens, except that there is a free passage between them. Hence, the currents, or rather, the “rapids,” of visitors must inevitably be going and coming, and jostling, and conflicting; and others arriving at a dead stand, and having no chance of progression, or retreat, without a “trial of strength,”—the whole producing of necessity an inextricable maze and confusion, with an impossibility for a long time of finding a way out, even when able to move.

This question of the current of visitors, and of movement in general, is ingeniously settled by one gentleman, who proposes to have a railway along the grand central line, for the conveyance up and down of all sorts of goods and articles, heavy or light. We presume that the progress of the carriages and trucks would be very slow, so that the visitors, when fatigued, might, at their pleasure, step up to a seat, and be quietly conveyed along to any part of the line. This notion has, of course, been laughed at, and we confess to having amused ourselves considerably with the “train” of thought induced by it; but we are not sure, in the present state of mechanical science, whether something very commodious might not result from a modification of the idea. The fares, if any (and we think there should be a trifle paid to check reckless crowding), should not exceed a penny. The inventor will thus perceive that, if we have laughed, we have also sympathised, and are quite ready to get up and have a ride. One gentleman (Mr. C. H. Smith) proposes to erect three octagonal vestibules, communicating with all principal compartments; the roof to be upheld by suspension chains. Cast-iron frames are to hold rough glass, laid in plates lapping over each other, like tiles. This is certainly a sensible provision against a hail-storm, which has occurred to no one else, amidst their prodigalities in glass.

But, amidst all these wonders of 1851, are there no plain, simple, practical plans sent in? There are a good many. Some of these are certainly not very attractive, presenting, as they do, the appearance of a superior kind of barracks, hospitals, alms-houses, nursery-grounds; and one of these plans is laid out entirely like a series of cucumber-frames, with shifting lights at top. There are, however, several of these sober designs which possess great practical merit, and have preserved a due consideration of the terms on which the competition was proposed. Of these, the Commissioners and Committees have availed themselves in all respects suited to their own views and wishes; and out of all these, combined with their own especial fancies, they seem likely to produce an interminable range of cast-iron cow-sheds, having (as a specimen of the present high state of constructive genius) an enormous slop-basin, of iron frame-work, inverted in the centre, as an attraction for the admiring eyes of all the nations.

But other problems have to be solved. The classification and arrangement of the raw materials, the manufactured articles, the machinery, and the works of plastic art, is a question of very great importance. It not only involves the things themselves, but their respective countries. Should the productions of each country be kept separate? This appears the natural arrangement, or how should any one make a study of the powers of any special country. Prince Albert, it seems, wishes otherwise. He thinks that a fusion of the productions of all nations will be more in accordance with the broad general principle of the Exhibition—more tending to amalgamate and fraternise one country with another. This feeling is excellent; but we fear it would cause an utter confusion, and amidst the heterogeneous masses, nobody would be able to make a study of the productions of any particular nation. An eminent civil engineer suggests that the productions of the respective countries should be ranged together from side to side of the entire width of the edifice—thus you can at once see the works of industry of England, France, Germany, America, Switzerland, &c., &c., by walking up and down from one side to the other; and you can obtain a collective view of the works of all these countries by walking longitudinally, or from end to end of the building. To some such classification and arrangement as this, we think, the Committee will be compelled to have recourse at last.

The other problem to which we adverted, is one which is not so liable to be solved as saturated with hot water, and then dragged from one quarter of the metropolis to another before it is settled by some arbitrary decision. We allude to the spot on which the buildings of the Exhibition are to be erected. Hyde Park is not unlikely to be a subject of much contest. The latent idea of preserving the most important part of the “temporary” structure has alarmed all the drivers and riders in Hyde Park, and all those whose windows overlook it. And no wonder;—to say nothing of the crowds and stoppages outside the park, and the slough within, produced by the enormous traffic of heavy wheels, long before the Exhibition opens. Battersea Fields was next mentioned, and thought advantageous, not only from the open space they present, but the facilities of water-conveyance for goods and passengers. Still, the distance is rather against such a choice. It would probably reduce the number of times each visitor would go to the Exhibition, and, consequently, be a check upon the money taken at the doors. Hundreds of thousands flock daily to Greenwich during the Fair; but the argument will not hold good, in all respects, as regards the present question. Regent’s Park has been named as more appropriate; but there is a strong and manifest objection to any interference with that much-used place of public recreation. To cut up its green turf, and gravelled roads, would be even more monstrous than any spoliation of Hyde Park. No locality could be selected, perhaps, for such a purpose that would be perfectly free from all objections. Still we are so convinced of the multitude of inconveniences inevitably attendant on such an Exhibition in the midst of the metropolis—and we feel so strongly the cool, high-handed injustice of parcelling out the public property at Court, and stopping up the public breathing-places, for any purpose—that we urge its removal to some spot out of the town, easily accessible both by railway and river.

“I WOULD NOT HAVE THEE YOUNG AGAIN.”

I would not have thee young again
Since I myself am old;
Not that thy youth was ever vain,
Or that my age is cold;
But when upon thy gentle face
I see the shades of time,
A thousand memories replace
The beauties of thy prime.

Though from thine eyes of softest blue
Some light hath passed away,
Love looketh forth as warm and true
As on our bridal day.
I hear thy song, and though in part
’Tis fainter in its tone,
I heed it not, for still thy heart
Seems singing to my own.

LITTLE MARY.

A TALE OF THE BLACK YEAR.

That was a pleasant place where I was born, though ’twas only a thatched cabin by the side of a mountain stream, where the country was so lonely, that in summer time the wild ducks used to bring their young ones to feed on the bog, within a hundred yards of our door; and you could not stoop over the bank to raise a pitcher full of water, without frightening a shoal of beautiful speckled trout. Well, ’tis long ago since my brother Richard, that’s now grown a fine clever man, God bless him!—and myself, used to set off together up the mountain to pick bunches of the cotton plant and the bog myrtle, and to look for birds’ and wild bees’ nests. ’Tis long ago—and though I’m happy and well off now, living in the big house as own maid to the young ladies, who, on account of my being foster-sister to poor darling Miss Ellen, that died of decline, treat me more like their equal than their servant, and give me the means to improve myself; still at times, especially when James Sweeney, a dacent boy of the neighbours, and myself are taking a walk together through the fields in the cool and quiet of a summer’s evening, I can’t help thinking of the times that are passed, and talking about them to James with a sort of peaceful sadness, more happy maybe than if we were laughing aloud.

Every evening, before I say my prayers, I read a chapter in the Bible that Miss Ellen gave me; and last night I felt my tears dropping for ever so long over one verse,—“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” The words made me think of them that are gone—of my father, and his wife that was a true fond mother to me; and, above all, of my little sister Mary, the _clureen bawn_[1] that nestled in her bosom.

Footnote 1:

White dove.

I was a wild slip of a girl, ten years of age, and my brother Richard about two years older, when my father brought home his second wife. She was the daughter of a farmer up at Lackabawn, and was reared with care and dacency; but her father held his ground at a rack-rent, and the middleman that was between him and the head landlord did not pay his own rent, so the place was ejected, and the farmer collected every penny he had, and set off with his family to America. My father had a liking for the youngest daughter, and well become him to have it, for a sweeter creature never drew the breath of life; but while her father passed for a _strong_[2] farmer, he was timorous-like about asking her to share his little cabin; however, when he found how matters stood, he didn’t lose much time in finding out that she was willing to be his wife, and a mother to his boy and girl. _That_ she was, a patient loving one. Oh! it often sticks me like a knife, when I think how many times I fretted her with my foolishness and my idle ways, and how ’twas a long time before I’d call her “mother.” Often, when my father would be going to chastise Richard and myself for our provoking doings, especially the day that we took half-a-dozen eggs from under the hatching hen, to play “Blind Tom” with them, she’d interfere for us, and say,—“Tim, _aleagh_, don’t touch them this time; sure ’tis only _arch_ they are: they’ll get more sense in time.” And then, after he was gone out, she’d advise us for our good so pleasantly, that a thundercloud itself couldn’t look black at her. She did wonders too about the house and garden. They were both dirty and neglected enough when she first came over them; for I was too young and foolish, and my father too busy with his out-door work, and the old woman that lived with us in service too feeble and too blind to keep the place either clean or decent; but my mother got the floor raised, and the green pool in front drained, and a parcel of roses and honeysuckles planted there instead. The neighbours’ wives used to say ’Twas all pride and upsetting folly, to keep the kitchen-floor swept clean, and to put the potatoes on a dish, instead of emptying them out of the pot into the middle of the table; and, besides, ’twas a cruel unnatural thing, they said, to take away the pool from the ducks, that they were always used to paddle in so handy. But my mother was always too busy and too happy to heed what they said; and, besides, she was always so ready to do a kind turn for any of them, that, out of pure shame, they had at last to leave off abusing her “fine English ways.”

Footnote 2:

Rich.

West of our house there was a straggling, stony piece of ground, where, within the memory of man, nothing ever grew but nettles, docks, and thistles. One Monday, when Richard and myself came in from school, my mother told us to set about weeding it, and to bring in some basketsful of good clay from the banks of the river: she said that if we worked well at it until Saturday, she’d bring me a new frock, and Dick a jacket, from the next market-town; and encouraged by this, we set to work with right good will, and didn’t leave off till supper time. The next day we did the same; and by degrees, when we saw the heap of weeds and stones that we got out, growing big, and the ground looking nice and smooth and red and rich, we got quite anxious about it ourselves, and we built a nice little fence round it to keep out the pigs. When it was manured, my mother planted cabbages, parsnips, and onions in it; and, to be sure, she got a fine crop out of it, enough to make us many a nice supper of vegetables stewed with pepper, and a small taste of bacon or a red herring. Besides, she sold in the market as much as bought a Sunday coat for my father, a gown for herself, a fine pair of shoes for Dick, and as pretty a shawl for myself, as e’er a colleen in the country could show at mass. Through means of my father’s industry and my mother’s good management, we were, with the blessing of God, as snug and comfortable a poor family as any in Munster. We paid but a small rent, and we had always plenty of potatoes to eat, good clothes to wear, and cleanliness and decency in and about our little cabin.

Five years passed on in this way, and at last little Mary was born. She was a delicate fairy thing, with that look, even from the first, in her blue eyes, which is seldom seen, except where the shadow of the grave darkens the cradle. She was fond of her father, and of Richard, and of myself, and would laugh and crow when she saw us, but _the love in the core of her heart_ was for her mother. No matter how tired, or sleepy, or cross the baby might be, one word from _her_ would set the bright eyes dancing, and the little rosy mouth smiling, and the tiny limbs quivering, as if walking or running couldn’t content her, but she must fly to her mother’s arms. And how that mother doted on the very ground she trod! I often thought that the Queen in her state carriage, with her son, God bless him! alongside of her, dressed out in gold and jewels, was not one bit happier than my mother, when she sat under the shade of the mountain ash near the door, in the hush of the summer’s evening, singing and _cronauning_ her only one to sleep in her arms. In the month of October, 1845, Mary was four years old. That was the bitter time, when first the food of the earth was turned to poison; when the gardens that used to be so bright and sweet, covered with the purple and white potato blossoms, became in one night black and offensive, as if fire had come down from heaven to burn them up. ’Twas a heart-breaking thing to see the labouring men, the crathurs! that had only the one half-acre to feed their little families, going out, after work, in the evenings to dig their suppers from under the black stalks. Spadeful after spadeful would be turned up, and a long piece of a ridge dug through, before they’d get a small kish full of such withered _crohauneens_,[3] as other years would be hardly counted fit for the pigs.

Footnote 3:

Small potatoes.

It was some time before the distress reached us, for there was a trifle of money in the savings’ bank, that held us in meal, while the neighbours were next door to starvation. As long as my father and mother had it, they shared it freely with them that were worse off than themselves; but at last the little penny of money was all spent, the price of flour was raised; and, to make matters worse, the farmer that my father worked for, at a poor eight-pence a day, was forced to send him and three more of his labourers away, as he couldn’t afford to pay them even _that_ any longer. Oh! ’twas a sorrowful night when my father brought home the news. I remember, as well as if I saw it yesterday, the desolate look in his face when he sat down by the ashes of the turf fire that had just baked a yellow meal cake for his supper. My mother was at the opposite side, giving little Mary a drink of sour milk out of her little wooden piggin, and the child didn’t like it, being delicate and always used to sweet milk, so she said:

“Mammy, won’t you give me some of the nice milk instead of that?”

“I haven’t it _asthore_, nor can’t get it,” said her mother, “so don’t ye fret.”

Not a word more out of the little one’s mouth, only she turned her little cheek in towards her mother, and stayed quite quiet, as if she was hearkening to what was going on.

“Judy,” said my father, “God is good, and sure ’tis only in Him we must put our trust; for in the wide world I can see nothing but starvation before us.”

“God _is_ good, Tim,” replied my mother; “He won’t forsake us.”

Just then Richard came in with a more joyful face than I had seen on him for many a day.

“Good news!” says he, “good news, father! there’s work for us both on the Droumcarra road. The government works are to begin there to-morrow; you’ll get eight-pence a day, and I’ll get six-pence.”

If you saw our delight when we heard this, you’d think ’twas the free present of a thousand pounds that came to us, falling through the roof, instead of an offer of small wages for hard work.