The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-01 00:00:00

ART AND NATURE.

The principle of diversity in unity has been carried out
in all portions of this building—even in the presumably
temporary painting of the ironwork ; in certain forms of
leafage in the capitals of the shafts that constitute the
arcades ; in the corbels; and, as we observe, oven in the
seemingly unimportant details of cabinet and carpenters'
work, such as the fittings of the doors leading to the lec-
turers' rooms and the theatres. The carvings of no two
windows are alike ; indeed, beyond the bare shell of the
building, the utmost variety—soul of true Gothic as it is,
for variety means freedom in art—has been sought after.
It has been the object to leave to the power of each highly
skilled artizan, as appears to have been the mediEeval prac-
tice, to whom aught of the decorative work was intrusted,
an opening for his own idiosyncrasy to develop itself; so
that, subordinate only to certain, general rules, every car-.
ving, each point of ornament, may be called a labour of
sheer love, in which the' carver's heart was allowed
.to re-
joice, and the man bent himself heartily and intelligen.tly
to do a good thing affectionately. A very different. thing
this, the realer will see, from the. endless pointing of me-
chanical acanthi or torus mouldings fitted with a template
of iron, or the dreary chiselling of endless rows of the so-
called ram's-horns of the lonic capital! Not such are the
carvings here. The artizan has sought in the lush re-
cesses of the neighbouring river-bank for crisp water plants,
or those that love the margins and whip the stream ; in
the shady woods dank ferns have been found to be models
of loveliest form ; the humblest field weed has yielded up
her shy beauty, and stands immortalized here in the stone ;
the lillies have an unchanging glory; the hillside-loving
pine has bent her sturdy branches and been found delight-
ful ; while the wide-blooming marsh-mallow that tottered
before the wind is here steadfast for ever. It requires very
little consideration to recognise the infinitely greater de-
light there must be in such a building, not only to the
spectators, but the workman himself, than is like to be
found in any endless series of acanthi, ram's-horns, or the
like. Can we conceive a carver coming back to his work,
after completion with templates, or machinery of that sort.
with any satisfaction ? There could be nothing to call him
out of himself in such toil. But might not a carver come
back to look at these tottering marsh .mallows, or dwell with
a cunning satisfaction upon the artful way in which he
dealt with that aloe which so skilfully dodges the angle in
the north-m, est corner of the lower arcade ? It is true that
none of this work is entirely satisfactory. Mere imitation
and reproduction, however exquisite, is not the end of art—
least of all, of architectonic decoration; and we miss a
little of the needful conventionalizing suitable to architec-
ture. But that in its best quality, must come, and, in-
deed, only can come, through a course of study such as
that here shown to have been worthily begun. Thf, reader
will see that the word " conventionalizing" is used in a
sense other than the vulgar one.

London Society.
The opening article in the new number called
"The Cost of Amusing the Public," gives a curious
and interesting account of theatrical statistics.
" The whole number of theatres in the United King-
dom is 133," and of these London contains 25, Scot-
land, it seems, has only 9, and Ireland but 5. The
annual receipts of the London theatres are calcu-
lated at £350,000, whilst the amount annually spent
on amusements throughout the kingdom is upwards
of a million: We extract from it this account of

DRAMATIC AUTHORS.
There is another class of persons who derive an income
from the organised business of amusing the public—we
mean the dramatic authors. This class, though perhaps
but little esteemed by managers and actors, may neverthe-
less be truly said to be the mainspring of the whole
theatrical machine. What could managers and actors do
without pieces ? And good pieces, as a rule, can only
come from skilled hands. Amateurs may occasionally
write good novels or good verses ; but an amateur author
who had not previously made the stage a close study never
yet wrote a good play. There are technicalities and arti-
fices in stage writing which nothing but experience and
observation can teach. It requires almost an apprentice-
ship to be a good playwright. It might be said that any
one of ordinary ability, with pen, ink, and paper in his
hand, could write a play. But so it might be said that any
one with leather and lanstone, wax-ends and an awl to his
hand, could make a pair of shoes. So he could, perhaps,
but both the play and the shoes would be rather clumsy,•
and the one would be no more likely to draw an audience
than the other to attract a customer. Dramatic writing is
not so much a regular profession in this country as it is in
France; but still it is to some extent a profession,-and its
members are so far banded together as a class, that they
have a sort of guild for the protection of their mutual in-
terests. This guild is known as the Dramatic Authors'
Society, and almost every recognised author of repute is
a member of it. Its object is entirely a business one.
The members register all their pieces in the books of the
society, and the management, for a certain percentage by
way of commission, collects the fees for the performance of
their pieces in the provinces. The business of collection
is simplified in this way. The provincial theatres are rated
at so much a-year. according to size. One pays, say £209 per
annum, another £l5O, another £ICO, and so on down to
the lowest
rate, and for these annual payments the ma-
nagers are entitled to play any pieces registered on the
society's list. The Whole receipts of the society are then
divided among the authors according to the number of
times their pieces have been played, and in shares in pro-
h portion to the class 9f piece. The system of disposing of