The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-03 00:00:00

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designs as it should deem best suit,
purposes for which a national musei
After a lengthened debate the former
unconditionally rejected. The Oak
which the Chancellor of the Exche,
moving the resolution for the purchase and
ear, base S
tion of the Exhibition Building of last y
the Government proposal were these : to purchase
the present structure would be cheaper than to,
build an entirely new one ; and to secure possession
of an existing building would enable the nation
forthwith to dispose of end arrange collections which
otherwise must remain for a much longer time hidden
from the public view. The opposition to the purchase
of the building rested upon equally broad grounds.
The economy of buying it was denied, because from
the nature of its construction the expei2eiture de-
manded for keeping it in repair would be infinitely
greater than that necessitated by a different 4esc
t
Lion of building; and although it was admittei.l tha
the erection of an entirely new structure wetla in-
volve a greater delay, still it was alleged that t;le
fp.arielsutetonyt:oheneuerrwemes entirely unadapted for the pnrpOt CS
to which it was sought to be applied. The main ob •
t
. ijpnbncoaeedssi tieseisedoodanlub,
ttipohtthloueeonwnr wledaat
abounding
nveoegeauEri
could
dxhrithyebtodihpebeteiplehrti
irredeemable
Exhibition
public
hypercritical
dispute
auibeseliurrin, niduldimd,
eii
objectionegrr n;
r.
buildings
irremovable
)smupottori
niovi
tenpaot
ihobacmsil
aesammvlioueowtignirlias
soi
obe
mne majority omr io
more
obfeiwrighicanddpeodssteosstnhoe
nclaimumb toer architecturalw bich m igb t
ef
vtahle of architectural Government
of
tdoubtless
the
seen con-
sideredhneemi s
connois-
seurs. The objecteioastiplysPers thaej
opponents
e
were in fact unanswerable.
er It
hwas perfectly useless
for the Chancellor of the E
designs to the house, andxe Exchequer to
d ur co-
louredexthibit
it that, if the opportunity was afforded,eavca to satisfy
r
spectable-looking building would be secured by the
country as a national museum. In the course of his
speech Mr. Gladstone was obliged to refer to the
domes, and in doing so avoided a disquisition upon
their merits, whether useful or ornamental, by say—
ing that it was the intention of the Government to
postpone the consideration of what should be done
with them " to the future." The House of Commons
evidently thought that what might be said of the
domes might equally be said of the building which
they surmounted. No part of the scheme was it
prepared to adopt, and no portion of the building
was it ready to purchase and redecorate. Parlia-
ment will not give £BO,OOO for the mass of iron,
glass, and bricks which constitute the late Exhibi-
tion Building, so the contractors may set to work as
soon as they please to reduce it to its component
parts, and find some other purchaser for them than
the British public.

PRICE..... —.4d.
STAMPED ...M.

word. We grieve to say we anticipate no such result,
The buildings which formed the subject of last
night's discussion will be carted away ; and there
will remain as we understand the buildings included
in the purchase of the site—that is, the garden
front, excepting the centre, which belongs to the
Horticultural Society. Denuded of the nave and
the northern courts, these refreshment rooms will
present anything but a graceful exterior to the
Cromwell-road. That exterior is all that the occu-
pants of the houses in Cromwell-road will see from
their drawing-rooms for many a long year to come.
Before long a lofty hoarding, with "Posters be-
ware !" at regular intervals, will surround the
doomed site. Inside will be mounds, holes, brick-
bats, weeds, unburied animals, and cutaway hu-
man raiment. Could that power which opened the
eyes of iEneas to the airy warfare over Troy do the
like for us, we should see all the schools and all the
styles, institutes, archeologists, engineers, fighting
for the ground. The Society of Arts, the South
Kensington Musenm, would be seen in mortal con-
flict with the outside world of Art and Science and
the public instincts of utility and economy. De-
bate after debate, commission after commission,
will stir the endless question, till the topic becomes
as familiar as the noise of street traffic and the cry
of the costermonger. Ten years hence, when many
of us have passed from the scene, and the rest of us
are not quite so keen after historical portraits, ma-
jolica ware, and patent steam engines as perhaps
we have been, the site will remain a howling wil-
derness. It will bi as the site for the Fleet
Prison has remained for a quarter of a cen-
tury, as the waste ground on the south side of
Downing-street has remained for half a century,
and as many other sites have remained for longer
or shorter periods. Could we hope that something
will at last be done, we cannot venture to hope that
it will give us what we want, or satisfy the taste
of the day, or even give us peace. In virtue of our
own position, we cannot throw ourselves into this
or that school with the enthusiasm which is not
only allowable but even very graceful in some other
quarters. Though disposed to prefer stone, and not
insensible to the charms of red brick, we cannot for-
get that no nation of antiquity scrupled to use stucco,
and that even the temples of Prestum were stuccoed
and coloured. Though we like to see a building
stand well, with a good open area before it, yet we
can only regard that as a rare fortune, not as an
absolute necessity. Though we should like to see
these 17 acres raised almost any number of feet
above the level of Brompton, yet we remember how
many great edifices we have walked down into, and
that the requisite elevations here insisted on would
cost several hundred thousand pounds. Though
we must confess to the usual craving for eternal
structures, yet we have seen mazy works of the
giants pulled down, and others come to grief.
Hungerford-market was a most classic and most
costly structure, but it has just been carted away.
The Pantheon at Paris exhausted one quarry for its
foundation, and another for its superstructure but
the latter has crushed the former, and half the
windows have had to be filled with masonry. The
south front of the British Museum is an eternal
structure and an eternal nuisance. Waterloo-bridge
is an eternal structure and has ruined the proprie-
tors. We are glad to find our opinion as to the
capable character of the exterior corroborated by
some eminent architects. The building is unfinished,
and there is an old and true saying about the class of
people who ought not to be allowed to see an un-
finished work. Every large building is sure to
present difficulties, for the plain reason that all our
theories of ornamentation are derived from a smaller
scale. If we will have a Flavian amphitheatre' or
an aqueduct forty miles long, or a Basilica to hold
ten thousand people, or any other huge thing, we
must have immense repetitions and accumulations,
orders piled one upon another, and " the Pantheon
mounted on the Temple of Peace." Wherever there
is exaggeration, as there must be in many cases, the
effort is sure to exceed the limits of tasteand sense.
The national Museum of France is Versailles, where
the greatest mass of architecture and the most am-
bitious flights of genius have produced the smallest
possible result. But we are told we may spare our
uity and husband our regrets, for that the truth is the
House of Commons has set its face against the
whole thing." It will stop the movement of art,
which, with some pardonable indiscretions and
some less pardonable foibles, has done so much for
us lately. Teat we hardly believe. We have not
yet come to such a pass that the richest aristocracy
in the world, which pays the highest prices for pic-
tures, makes the most costly collections, and in-
dulges in the most magnificent houses and furni-
ture, should begin to grudge the public its compa-
ratively cheap enjoyment of collections belonging
to all. That we do not believe. But it is a con-
clusion that the public will be driven to if they see
the Legislature more eager to shut up and pull
down than to open and raise. There is much to be
said for last night's decision, but not if it rests there.
POST —The House of Commons has refused, by
an overwhelming majority, to sanction the purchase
of the International Exhibition Building at South
Kensington. On the division, the numbers were
one hundred and twenty-one in favour of the Go-
vernment proposal, and two hundred and eighty-
seven against it. In the propriety of this decision
a still greater majority of the public will coincide.
Indeed, we doubt if ever a scheme was suggested
which was received with more universal disfavour
than that which last night was so decisively re-
jected by the Lower House of Parliament. A few
public organs supported it, and, as will be seen,
upwards of one hundred members of the Legisla-
ture sanctioned it with their formal approval ; but
we venture to say that very few of our readers can
call to mind one of their acquaintance who ex-
pressed himself in favour of the adaptation of the
temporary shed at Brompton to the purposes of a
museum which was to satisfy the wants of future
generations. Literally speaking, almost every one
who took the trouble of considering its merits was
opposed to the project. Nor is it surprising. The
International Exhibition Building was raised under
a contract by which the builders were bound to
remove it at the end of a year. As prudent men,
they very properly avoided all useless expenditure
in endeavouring to invest with solidity or
strength a building which it was intended should
bear the wear and tear of a few months. It was
not drained, because, for the purposes of an Ex-
hibition, drainage was unnecessary. The walls,
wherever bricks and mortar were employed, were
made of just sufficient strength to support a certaint
number of iron girders and a glass roof withime
crumbling to pieces before the end of a year.
flooring was—well, even for the purposes of a tame
tas
porary exhibition—shockingly bad, and the °I
trroucted
our readers can doubtless recollect,
on some reeondite principle which gay? frehowever,
sion to every falling shower. Irres
pective,
was conesadmis.
of its faults of construction, the InternationlExhi-
the most unsightly
this 'of
bition Building was certainly
these sieenh
failings Cit
the many unsightly edifices to
and its environs. And yet with a.1..t.
both physical and sesthetic, the pup" were asked
besides
to purchase it at a high price, PIO besides, as a first
instalment of the outlay
wards of a
necessary for putt- .
putting it in a
tolerable state of repair, Puvrar has quarter of a
million of money. been rejected,
as it deserved to be; and not only has the existing
representa-
tives This proposal
perpetuate Captain Fowke's
generation reason to be thankful to its
but posterity may
for refusing
the lucky chance which has
maiden effort at hones-building,_
the annoyance and the cost of keeping
in time to come bless
saved it from
in a state of repair _e
a tunable-down shed plastered
W
over with stucco.
have endeavoured on pre-
vious occasions p
to place before the public the real
issue involved in the adaptation of the International
• Exhibition Building to the purposes of a national
museum. Of the necessity
of possessing some
Which
building within not merely to collect but to
arrange the varied treasures of science and art
which the nation is
from year to year accumulating,
almost every one is satisfied, and the large majority
which a fortnight since in the House of Commons de-
cided on purchasing seventeen acres of land as a site
for such a building fairly represented the opinion of
the people upon this point. The museum in Blooms-
bury
is confessedly too small for the purposes to
which it is at present applied. A very consider-
able portion of its contents might, so far as the
public are concerned, just as well be at the Anti-
podes. The only question that ever was raised on
the subject of a change in the existing order of
things regarded the site of the building, which was
universally admitted to be absolutely indispensable.
Some suggested the enlargement of the existing
structure in Great Russell-street ; others advocated
the erection of an independent building ; some pro-
posed a central situation, whilst others, on econo-
mical grounds, expressed themselves contented with
a suburban site. All disputes on these matters
were however determined by the vote of the House
of Commons appropriating the sum of £120,000 for
the purchase of the grounds on which at present
stands the Exhibition Building of last year. Last
evening the issue was confined to the simple ques-
tion whether the country would avail itself of the-
building at present covering the ground which. it
has purchased,. or whether it would compel the.
owners to remove it, and then set about const
in an entirely new building according to snob

Naval and Military Intelligence.

THE NAVY.
Capt. R. S. Hewlett, C. 8., Superintendent of the
Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, and command-
ing her Majesty's ship Excellent, yesterday, for
the last time during his present period of command
at Portsmouth, superintended the trials of armour
plates at the practice range in Porchester-creek.
The plates on trial consisted of one from Messrs.
John Brown and Co., of Sheffield, for the iron•
cased ship Ocean, 15ft. in length by 3ft. 3in. in
width and 41in. in thickness, and one 41in, plate
6ft. by 4, made under the steam hammer in Ports•
month Dockyard from a special quality of iron,
stated to be foreign, supplied by Messrs. Walton,
Sons, and Yates, of London. This last plate was
virtually destroyed by the first shot, and utterly so
by the second. The plate furnished by Messrs.
Brown, for the Ocean, underwent a very severe
testing byl3 shots (nine of which were edge blows,
in three instances overlapping each other), very
successfully, and fully maintained the reputation of
its manufacturers. Tomorrow Captain Hewlett
will be succeeded in his duties as Superintendent
of the Royal Naval College and Captain of her
Majesty's ship Excellent by Captain Astley, C. 8.,
and will carry with him into his temporary retire-

DEAFNESS.—The SOUND MAGNIFIER
INVISIBLE VOICE CONDUCTOR, a newly in-
vented instrument for severe cases of deafness. It fits into
the ear, not perceptible, removes singing noises in the head,
and enables deaf persons to hear distinctly at church and at
public assemblies.-5. and B. SOLOMONS, 39, Albemarle-
street, Piccadilly.

S".—FELLOWS and CO., Shipbrokers, 127,
Fenehurch-street, E.C., require MIDSHIPMEN and
FOUR First-class APPRENTICES in an A 1 clipper India-
Alman, 1,509 tons. Premium moderate, returned in wages.
so stout Lads, without premium, for other ships. Wages

SEA.—VACANCIES for MIDSHIPMEN and
APPRENTICES In a first-class London shipping firm.
Premium moderate. Also apprentices without premium East—
. to SIMMONDS and Co., 38, St. Diary-at-hill, -
cheap, E.C. Third ufficers and Stewards wanted.

STEAM FIRE-ENGINES.

The trials of the three different machines were
continued throughout the whole of yesterday at the
gardens of the Crystal Palace. The tests were on
this occasion most severe, and devised to put the
strength and durability of each machine to the most
arduous proof. For this purpose each engine had
to work by itself for two hours without stopping,
drawing its supply of water up into the engine from
a depth of 18ft., and delivering it through a hose no
less than 400 ft. long, the hose being laid from the
lower basin of the fountains up the steep incline
along the bed of the cascades into the water temples
at the top. To raise its feed-water up from a depth
of 18ft., and afterwards deliver it up a very steep
hill through a 400 ft. length of hose, requires the
most powerful and perfect engines, and of course
only those of the large size were used. The wea-
ther was very unfavourable for the trial, especially
in the early part of the day, when the high wind
scattered a great deal of the water as it came from
the hose. The engine of Messrs. Shand and Mason,
which was tried first, was exposed to great disad-
, vantage from this cause, from 10 to 15 per cent. of
the quantity of its jet being blown away before it
could pass through the aperture of the target in the
water temple. The American engine was unable
to go through this ordeal, not being able to keep
up steam enough for the great force required to
raise and propel the water. Two other American
engines, however, which are to be tried to-day, will,
it is said, be able to accomplish the feat easily, one
of them especially being very powerful, simple, and
well put together. On the whole, the honours of
yesterday decidedly remained with Mr. Merry wea-
ther, his powerful three hose engine accomplishing
its two hours' task with great ease, notwithstanding
that the hose burst twice under the very great pres-
sure of the water. Several other engines have to
be tried in a similar manner to-day, when it is
hoped to bring the trials to a conclusion. The gene-
ral results of this competition, and the names of the
successful competitors, will not, however, be made
known until the committee make their report in a
few days.

Full benefit of reduced duty obtained by pur-
chasing Horniman's pure Tea ; very choice at 3s. 4d. and
4s. " High Standard "at 4s. 4d. (formerly 4s• Bd.), is the
strongest and most delicious imported. Agents in every
town supply it in packets.

ment general respect and esteem.
The Warrior, 40, iron frigate, Capt. Hon. A. A.
Cochrane, C. 8., in No. 10 Dock at Portsmouth, is
having a portion ofher bottom covered with Brown's
patent vitreous sheathing as an experiment. The
ship will be undocked about the 11th inst.
Yesterday Vice-Admiral Sir George Robert Lam-
bert, K.C.8., hoisted his flag, red at the fore, on
board Her Majesty's ship Cumberland, guard-ship
of the steam reserve at Sheerness, as Commander-
in-Chief at the Nore, vice Sir W. J. Hope John-
stone, K.C.8., whose term of office has expired.
The flag of Vice-Admiral Johnstone was hauled
down at sunset from the Formidable (flagship), and
the flag of the new Vice-Admiral was removed to

the Formidable.
The Alert, 17, screw steam sloop, 751 tons, 100
horse-power, Commander Henry C. Magendie, and
the Columbine, 4, screw steam sloop, 669 tons, 150
horse-power, Commander Thomas L. H. Ward,
arrived at sheerness yesterday to be refitted, after
which these vessels will proceed to the North for
the protection of the Scotch fisheries.
The Sphinx, 6, paddle, Commander Jones, arrived
at Spithead yesterday morning from China with the
crew of the despatch vessel Beagle (recently con-
demned in China) on board, and a few naval and
military invalids. She sailed from St. He lena on
the 11th of May, and called in at Fayal on the 24th
of June. Before she could let go her anchor, the
Sphinx was signalled to proceed round to the south
side of the Isle of Wight to the assistance of a small
passenger steamer on shore there. In the afternoon
she returned to Spithead, and to-day will sail for
officers have been re-
Woolwich, where she will be dismantled and paid
out of commission.
BoyalNavy by order of
The names of the following
F. Liliington, C. G. Harvey,
moved from the list of the
the Lords of the Admiralty ;—Lieuts. the Hon. C.
cadogau. ; Masters E. J. D. E.. H. Tracy, N. D.
Sab-Lieuts. E. S. Watson, the
and the Hon. A. C.
and W. E. Garnett ; Chief
Mait-
land and T. Oyler ;
reen ; Assist.-Surg. S. H. Knaggs
iphinstone,
er
Hon. G. J. E
mastsEAsnsgisint.e.pars E. Waymouth and W, S,
Whittaker,. II
appointments were made at the Admiralty
---ceY to the Russell.
ye:swiherdite
tfa.oyijloa.7tcuie.rugHo.on.Fa:
Commander R. 0. Leta'heeh,mtositchsteieL.iverpool.
Lieut. R
--. B, Cay, to

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