The Sun.
London, England, 1854-06-07 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

A Shilling Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park at
Sydenham. George Routledge and Co.
Londoners, and many others besides Londoners,
are perfectly well aware by this time that on Satur-
day next, the 10th of June, 1854, the People's
Palace and Park at Sydenham are to be opened
with all the pomp and ceremony of a royal inau-
guration. It is important news, therefore, for the
majority of the great multitude to hear that there
has already appeared a Shilling Guide to those
wonderful grounds and that marvellous structure.
What, we doubt not, will increase the satisfaction
created by that announcement, is the significant
fact, that this timely Guide to the Crystal Palace
appears, in a great measure, authoritatively—being
the compilation evidently of one eminently quali-
fied to act on the occasion as master of the
ceremonies, interpreter, cicerone, or dragoman.
It is the result manifestly from the first page to
the last, from the "title" to the "finis", from the
preface to the closing paragraph, of no superficial
knowledge of that vast and comprehensive enter-
prise which has elaborated in the midst of the
verdure of the Surrey Hills, in the bosom of a
beautiful English landscape, what may be termed,
without exaggeration, a veritable microcosm. It
epitomises with admirable lucidity all the wonders
accomplished by the different officers of this gi-
gantic establishment. Everything accomplished,
for example, by Sir Joseph Paxton, as the Director
of the Winter Garden, Park, and Conservatories.
It affords us an opportunity of anticipating through
obvious inferences the brilliant hand-books—
shortly to be given to the world under the super-
vision of Dr. Samuel Phillips, the Director of the
Literary Department. Naturally, we might almost
say inevitably, the public could scarcely fail to have
the highest expectations as to the value and splen-
dour of the Crystal Palace collection—remember-
ing the importance of the names of the men selected
to supervise the labour of its accumulation and
arrangement. The probability of the success which
has already been secured to the whole undertaking
might have been recognised through the names consti-
tuting the Board of Directors—Anderson, Calvert,
Farquhar, Geach, Scott-Russell, Lushington—with
Francis Fuller as Managing Director, and S. Laing,
M.P. for Wick, as chairman. The excellence of the
mechanical part was insured from the outset by the
appointment of Heard Wild, as the engineer. The
loveliness of the interior effects of colouring was ren-
dered at once matter of tolerable certainty by the
association of Owen Jones, and Digby Wyatt, as
the joint-directors of decorations. Professor
Ansted, moreover, consented to superintend the
arrangement of all the illustrations of natural his-
tory, relating to mining, to geology, and to phy-
sical geography. Beyond all this it cannot be
overlooked even on the most hurried glance
through all the bewildering wonders of the
Crystal Palace, that over its zoological de-
partment there have presided together Forbes,
Gould, and Waterhouse. Neither can it
be forgotten that Dr. Latham has watched
over the Ethnological—Wilson over the Agricul-
tural—Thomson over the Natural History—and
Fothergill over the Machinery department.
Nothing indeed would seem to have been over-
looked that could tend to insure to the enterprise
the merit of minute completeness. As testimony of
which we have only to turn over the 200 pages of
this shilling index to the Contents of the Crystal
Palace a cheap and most acceptable guide,
for the issue of which, in the very nick of
time, we are indebted, as usual in such in-
stances, to the enterprise of Mr. George Rout-
ledge. The volume is appropriately enough intro-
duced to the reader by a lively description
of the Great Exhibition of 1851, commemorative
of its most remarkable facts and results. The au-
thor of the Guide, in this introductory portion of
his work, reminds us, agreeably enough under the
circumstances, of the opposition at first raised
against the Great Exhibition, describing soon
afterwards the removal of the building from Hyde-
park, and recounting the occurrences which gradu-
ally led to the ultimate salvation of the Crystal
Palace from destruction. Subsequently the reader
is carried from the pulling down at Hyde-park to
the building up again at Sydenham. In this por-
tion of the narrative we are treated to the following
lively account of—