The Sun.
London, England, 1852-04-17 00:00:00

as' ,a ,
1 builai
ng more marvellously offers the requfred
space and light than the Crystal Palace. We
all witnessed the advantages under which the sculp.,
tures were seen which were there exhibited last
year; the lights and shades being beautifully varied
jas the sun travelled from east to west, and, in the ma-
ority of instances, sufficiently contrasted to bring
out adequately the charactetistics of each subject.
But there are arrangements in the Crystal Palace pe-
culiarly favourable for the finest display of some of
the noblest examples of the Phidian epoch of the art.
Were the bas-reliefs from the frieze of the Parthenon,
for example, arranged along the front of the gal-
lery, they would be vie wed by the spectators on the
floor, and be seen for the first time in this country, at
that angle and under that flood of light for which
their immortal producer espaesany
designed them.
Beauties and effects would be manifested which will
never be appreciated while those marbles remain as
they now are, stuck against the wall of a confined
room in the building in Great Russell-street: -
In addition to the original series of the Assyrian,
Egyptian, Lycian, 2E4inetan, and Athenian sculp-
tures, with the Townley Collection, other requisite
links in the progressive or deseensive scale of the art
might, alai the ample space afforded by the Crystal
Palace, be supplied by means of casts. Sculpture
has this great advantage over the sister art, that her
masterpieces can be more precisely, and at less cost,
repeated and reproduced. It is thus that at the Louvre
the finest examples of our Elgin Marbles are repre-
sentsd. The Selinuntine series is in like manner
illustrated by casts in the Briish Muscurn. Casts of
all ,the finest examples or every scheel and period of
the art might be assembled and plac-d in their natural
and most instructive relative position in a building
spacious enough to admit of that only rational mode
of displaying a national collection of sculpture.
In such a building, the evidence of the art as it
existed—rising, stationary, or declining—among the
ancients, would be followed by the different schools
of modern sculpture. Already some attempts have
been made to assemble together the illustrations of
such schools in this country. The Taylor Institu-
tion at Oxford contains a series of casts of the
chief productions of the chisel of Chantrey ; and in
University College, London, there has lately been
assembled a similar series of the works of Flaxman.
Nu one can doubt that the proper locality for such
illUstrations of modern art should be in the national
Glyptothek, where their characteristic beauties or de-
fects might be tested and understood by a ready com-
parison, with juxtaposed typical excellences of the
art. And, since 1i: ester casts can be multiplied, it by
no means follows that the completion of the public
or national series should necessitate the spoliation of
halls already adorned by such copies of the original
marbles.
With a locality offering ample space for such addi-
tions to our contemplated collection, encouragement
would be given to add to the schools of Flaxman and
of Chantrey casts of the best productions of Bailey
and Gibson, and similar illustrations, readily obtained
from abroad, of the excellences of Canova and Thor-
waldsen. Casts of the best productions of Roubillac,
such as the Newton in Trinity College, Cambridge,
his Shakspere, Seo, might be obtained, and the ornate
style of that period, so seen, might operate by way of
warning, and instruct by contrast with the purer and
severer styles.
The Crystal Palace affords adequate space for the
realization of this idea ; it alone offers the essential con-
ditions for making a right use of the treasures we al-
ready possess, and for the relief of an overburdened and
heterogeneous museum, where the sculptures are now
scattered in separate apartments, and isolated from the
other fine-art collections belonging to the nation.
If a commission, with a foregone conclusion, were
desirous to impress the public with the impracticabi-
lity of such a plan of utilizing at once our national
collection of sculptures and the Crystal Palace, they
would call before them no eminent artist in that
branch, but the respectable antiquary to whose care
those sculptures have hitherto been assigned, and
whose not uncomfortable domestic arrangements (to
which, with those of other keepers and librarians, the
architectural effect of the British Museum has been
sacrificed) might possibly be disturbed by any con-
templated removal of a large proportion of his present
charge from their present unfit and inadequate loca-
lity. The commission would select the gravest of his
objections and incorporate them in their damnatory
report ; and what the value of Mr. Hawkins's argu-
ments may be, the public can judge by the sample
so selected. Statues, according to him, cannot be
dissevered from vases, coins, and mummies ;t and,
therefore, were the sculptures arranged in the Crys-
tal Palace, it would be necessary to have the same
protective forcer as during the Great Exhibition, in
order to prevent the abstraction of portable and
pocketable objects of antiquarian reverence ! The idea
is simply absurd ; but it has become rooted in the
worthy keeper's mind, by long contemplation of the
heterogeneous assemblages of objects which are
crowded in the rooms and cellars of his department.
His objection is chiefly of value as a sample of those
that the commission has put forward as being strongest
and most conclusive against the obvious application of
the Crystal Palace to accommodate in a natural, or-
derly, and instructive sequence of arrangement, the
unrivalled collections of sculptures which Great Bri-
tain already possesses.
Most of the chef d'auvres of ancient sculpture
were designed to stand exposed to the free light of
Heaven. Our climate does not admit of such
exposure ; but that building comes nearest to the ori-
ginal conditions under which the masterpieces of
Plaidias were intended to be seen which affords them
the requisite shelter with the most expanded environ-
ment of light and space. That a building of glass
and iron is adequate to the due protection and display
of sculpture, we have, besides the evidence of last
year's success in the Crystal Palace itself, the much
longer experience of the conservatory at Sion-house,
to prove. Many must have witnessed, through the
large-minded facilities freely afforded by its present
1 noble and kind-hearted possessor, the fine examples
of Gibson's art, which ere so beautifully placed
in that miniature Crystal Palace ; and all.__ who
Duke of North-
umberland's admired the
us Om b availedel nd, s themselves
liberality
be sure
marbles stood By
against which the pure
y arranged
pleasing effect of themouf
must
tvergreenrelieved. background
teamenaltpictaulrlea
and
dh
parbnpacekogyroduisnpdlamyeigdht our systematically . .
toits
combinaation moreof delightfuleculpture
idea of
imagine a winter garden carried out
reeuitishtoul elevating spectacle, than the
rnoautnnrcl,sedbianprthye Crystal Palace, were its gifted origi-
nations
beautiful class of God's works, asso-
ciated promenade,t
Crystal would
Palace,b be
a difficult
sofshae highest and noblest productions of
and foliage—the ever graceful and endless varieties of
human
ihuaemt
efadonr
with ma r t .
I have often had occasion to study the effects which
produces
familieso n
whichthe
throng
spectacle of our sublime collections of nature and
theirgrt crowds
of
ctabreewmornuseaurtmisannns and
customary holidays that are interposed, few and
far between, to relieve the routine of daily
recurring toil. It is while contemplating
the works of
sculpture that the too common
aspect of lowering discontent and malaise most
generally changes to an expression indicative of a re-
cognition of an art and a class of mind superior to
their own. The idealized beauty of the human form,
and an instinctive appreciation of the skill which pro-
duced it, seem to engender a transient revival of that
sentiment of reverence which the low weekly news-
papers, that mainly supply the intellectual sustenance
of the weekly-wage class, systematically endeavour
to extinguish.
The means of innocent reerAn4inn. psporially earn-
Emma with any elevating influences, at the command
of the multitudes who live by wage-paid labour in
this overgrown and over-populous city, are fearfully
few. Can it be any part of the duty of a wise or good
Government to wantonly destroy what might, with
singular economy and dispatch, be added to those
much-needed sources of healthy and improving en-
joyment ?

~~~r`

, ~-
,-"'

-Is there any fine art in which a great nation ought
to take more interest than in sculpture ? Is there any
kingdom which already possesses such rare and varied
illustrations of that noble art as England ?
Is there any capital in Europe which can boast of
an edifice so amply and beautifully adapted, not
only for the reception and due display of our present
treasures, but for future accessions, as London at
present possesses in the convenient locality which the
Crystal Palace adorns ? It seems incredible that
any but those whose foolish vaticinations this time
last year have been so signally unfulfilled, should
harbour the idea of wantonly destroying the building
which is at hand, and which, if it be not, by the pro-
fessed architect, deemed worthy to compete with St.
Paul's or Westminster Abbey, would be equa
lly
visited so long as it was suffered to remain, as oneec of
t e
the wonders of London. The rumour its
sl rproidiculej d
destruction has already excited the scornful
oufs ourwCe o
kn
et ienpe nu tpa I
tnueei g buontlrdse.c r
ileVd
strosity, and pull down the Crystal Palace
hat
f cisuhea
ibaen saimdono.f

together, and the
* The glass was temporarily put in, puttied only on
one side.
library t
Antsowoe! the E h. • a Exhibition
Building in Hyde-park.
Answer No.
Evidence of
cAolnal mmuissstiogao
on
I Answer No, 534.—" Then, again, we
Want some
parts very strongly fortified, where the coins, and me-
dals, and gold ornaments things of intrinsic
protected," , and other
value, would require to be well
which the Commission reports_,' &c.; upon
head of the department or anti Mr. Hawkins, the
museum, thinks it objectionable to divide the collection,
while he observes that
safely dopesited in this articles of value could not be
unless
the precautions resorted[the Exhibition] building,
to during
were again the time of the Exhi-
bition Commission, & adopted !"—Report and Evidence of the
c, P. vi.

The Earl of Durham has arrived in town from
Lgnbton Cantle, en routs to Brighton