The Express.
London, England, 1865-12-25 00:00:00

oalusviss AMUSEMENTS AT THE CRYSTAL
PALACE.
The neater of the Sydenham revels hid, on
Saturday, • grand rehearsal of his Christmas programme
and everything went off to the satisfaction of • very
numerous audience. Had there been nothing else to see but
the Palace itself, the attraction would
any have been grate
them amid, perhaps, be produced in other part of the
world. It ill an established " thing of beauty," and if it
be also " a joy for ever," its joyounens is never more con.
venous than at Christina time, when everything else looks
so dull and sombre. The idea of the➢spectator on Saturday
lees was that all the leaves and greenery which had disap
peared from the face of the land outside had taken shelter
under the crystal roof, there to flourish until summer time
comes round again. There ere flowers, too, everywhere, and
golden fish and trickling fountains--everything, in fact, to
eradicate the impression that we are in the middle of an
English winter. But the master of the revels is not satis-
fied with all this ; be ransacks the world of rarity sad
monstrosity, and his reward is that the whole world of
metropolitan cariaity consider it a moral dut shish him
• Christmas visit. He his never been MOT* la
his search after novelty than this present Name. To bate,
there is Signor Ethardo, whose complete SWAM on Samm-
day fully justified the commendation we ventured to give
him in a former notes. His audience was ten times more
numerous than on the ocossios of his debel, and the en-
thusiasm fifty times greater. There was but one opinion,
and that wee that • more elegant, dare& sod novel gym-
nastic feat than his was never exhibited to the public.
Next there is, " The Bologna family," who with
ladders make " impossibilities " the meet things in the
world, after which cornea Mx. Stead, and when he has mak-
fied the most incredulous spectator of the existence of •
perpetual motion, the duologiste Duriah sad Davies take
the stage, and treadles the elegant Mandarin Chinese el
Chang and Chow into exceedingly comic "pigeon" English.
We have seldom seen • better managed joke than the won-
derful performance of the Woodenheed Fancily, which
should certainly entitle Signor Bevani to the gold medal
of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Acrobats, and
sa for Herr Preskow, the Danish gymnast, we defy Pre-
facer Owen himself to prove him • vertebrate animal. The I
comic pantomime is by Nelson Lee, an announcement 11
which we conceive supersedes crism, and if any
one be dubious as to the way is whith it went off at
the dress rehearsal, we refer hint to the 2,000
little boys and girls who made the crystal roof ring
again with their merry laughter from the begionisg to the
end of the performance. If there leas • point at which the
juvenile enthusiasm culminated, it was when the bull-dog
beat the policeman, another proof of the wideepread popu-
larity of Sir Richard Mayne's interesting family. Finally,
the was the great organ with its sacred, and the Palace
band with its well-selected sealer music, and the pork pies
and the barons of beef, sad the liquid nourishment of the
refreshment department, the resource of which have all
been called out in tremendous force this year to meet the
appetites of the quarter of • million or so of holiday visitors
who are confidently expected to pay at the Palace turnstiles
during the present week.