The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-12 00:00:00

THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

No 111.
Its Vast and Symmetrical Proportions.

Familiar though many may imagine themselves
to be with the magnitude and the harmony of the
proportions upon which this Aladdin's Palace of
modern ciation has been constructed, we loubt
very muoWdeed whether to this du either the
vastness or the symmetry of those proportions have
(saving by a very few) been mo:e thin proximately
appreciated. It may be even that the very fact of
the visitor's familiarity with the edifice may of
itself be foremost among the many reasons why
he has hitherto failed to realize either the
scope of its dimensions, or the concordant
effect produced by their geometrical arrangement.
Symmetry, for one thing—as experience has often
demonstrated—tends very appreciab!y to conceal
vastness. Hence, Byron in his wonderful description
of the first impression produced upon his imagine.
tion upon passing under the great porch of St.
Peter's, at Rome, exclaims in a sort of amaze-
ment—

"Enter—its grandeur overwhelms you not I"
Accounting for this, immediately afterwards, by
the suggestion that your own capability of
appreciation must needs have been affected by
" the genius of the spot," must have in a man-
ner, upon crossing the threshold, "grown colossal."
Again—size of itself is a something purely
relative. To an animalcule a flea is a behemoth.
Compared with the Sun "the great Globe" itself is
but as a currant to a melon. And so—the mere cir•
cumstance that the Palace and the Gardens have
been, respectively end together, contrived through-
out (as they have been) with an especial regard to
ttie exqniiite balance or symmetry of their proper•
tions, may account, in a great measure, for the
fact of the vastness of many of those proportions,
certainly of the whole resulting from them having
as yet been no more than just partially appreciated
or realised.

We would here, however, simply with a view to the
better realisation, at last, of the siz3 of The Crystal
Palace itself and of the Gardens surrounding it—we
would here, we say, purely to that end, set forth with
the statement—that the Grouuds embrace within
them upwards of Two Hundred Acres, and that,in the
shape of the Crystal Palace itself, one continuous
length of very nearly Three-Quarters-ot-a-mile, has
been covered over with a transparent framework of
iron.and-glass ! More than Two Hundred Acres,
the Gardens and Park ! Nearly three quarters of a
mile, the Palace itself, with its wings and its colon.
nade !

Remembering, however, that size is in itself, as
already remarked, a something purely relative, we
may yet further realise to the general apprehension
the size of both Gardens and Edifice, but more espes
cially the size of the latter, by the enumeration of
a few particulars, or, still better, by one or two
carefully selected comparisons.

Everyone who knows anything about either,
knows perfectly well that St. Paul's Cathedral, of
London, could, so far as the size of it gees,
very readily indeed stand within St. Peter's
Cathedral at Rome. In the same way, it might
be said, not only that the Glass Fane,
of 1821—that then world wonder of The Crystal
Palace at Hyde Park—might easily, so far as its
size went, stand within the Crystal Palace at
Sydenham, but that, really and truly, the fact of
the matter stands thus, that the greater part of the
one is, in a manner, the lesser part of the othert!
In other words, the Nave of the Crystal Palace
As It Is—is the exact height of the Centre Transept.
(in reality the one only Transept) of the Crystal
Palace As It IV as. Here, in cffict, precisely as,
according to Wordsworth, " the child is father to
the man," the acorn has grown to be the oak, the
stripling has expanded into the Colossus.
The whole of the materials of the original Cry.
stal Palace having been employed in the construc-
tion of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham—the lovely
original has, by that simple arrangement, been ef-
fectually preserved ant perpetuated. But, together
with those historical materials, how much more ma-
terial of the like kind, glass and iron for ihe
most part, has been employed in the carrying
out of this magnificent labour of development
—a labour at once Cyclopean and Fairylike !
Consisting, as the Palace does, of a main building
1,608 feet in length, supplemented by wings
stretching forth 574 feet additional, the southern
wing being connected, moreover, with a colonnade
extending down, by a slope of 720 feet, to the plat-
form of the local railway station—the extreme
length of the edifice is, as already remarked, as
nearly as possible three-quarters of a mile—or, to
be precise, exactly 3,746 feet—three-quarters of a
mile of that beautiful transparent order of archi-
tecture henceforth to be known, for want of a better
title, as Modern English!
As to the scale upon which the materials of the
Crystal Palaee have been put together, let this be
illustrated, here, very briefly, by a few impressive
calculations. It has been estimated, then, to begin
with, that the mere superficial quantity of glass
byfty aide, they they would extend a
may be set down atTwenty five Acres! That,
from London
to Oxford ! That put end to end they would reach
distance laying
th
oe fp anneeasr sidel
nearly two hundred and fifty say from the
Thames to the Tees. A calculation no less inge-
nious has been made again that the iron columns
alone would, if laid end to end, cover a distance
of sixteen miles and a quarter—that the weight of
iron is nearly 10,000 tons—that the nails alone
weigh over a hundred tons and the bolts and
rivets nearly two hundred !

Illustrating the size of the building, how.
ever, by comparisons rather than by parti.
culars such as the foregoing—the two compari-
sons here immediately after subjoined will be
accepted, we should imagine, as of themselves
sufficiently suggestive. First of all, that the height
from the centre of the arch of the middle transep t
to the flooring of the Palace is more (by six feet) than
the height .of the Monument on Fish-street-hill
And, secondly, that the diameter of the Orchestra
erected within the building, under the span of the
western extremity of that same Central Transept,
is exactly double the diameter of the dome of St.
Paul's Cathedral !
As for the geometrical symmetry of the propor-
tions, alike of the Palace and of the Gardens, that
is in truth as readily explicable as it is in itself at
once simple and beautiful. Taking eight feet as
" the" UNIT regulating the whole of the measure-
ments of the buildings, and gardens, and
fountains, and gravel-walks, and flower.
beds, horizontally—you have, upon the instant,
within your grasp, the clue through all the
apparently elaborate mazes of this seemingly most
intricate labyrinth ! Fur example—bearing in mind
al says that a multiple or submultiple of eight feet
is there in every horizontal measurement, alike
in the Gardens and in the Palec3—you
find, for instance, that the wings are
four times eight feet wide, or thirty-two!
Chat thq colonnade is twice eight, or sixteeen !
chat the nave is nine times eight or seventy-
two! That the Centre Transept is fifteen times
eight, or one hundred and twenty 1 Outside the
Palace, along the terraces, among the parterre,
flown the gravel paths, in the midst of the fish-
ponds and the fountains and the rosaries—every-
where, regulating the proportion of each horizmtal
measurement, there is the same mystical unit of
eight—as the primary figure, as the germ of the
various multiples and submultiples. Tne effect con.
sequent upon an adherence to this one marvellously
simple arrangement being, that the vastness of the
proportions is in a manner lost sight of in the
geometrical symmetry by which these proportions
are regulated.

Viewing the surrounding landscape from the