The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-28 00:00:00

SHILLING EXHIBITIONS.

A shilling is just now we perceive the open sesame
to—we don't know how many remarkable public
exhibitions. To the picture gallery of the British
Institution—to the Portland Gallery hard by the
spiked church at Langham Place—to the collection
of the British Artists Society, now on view in
Suffolk-street—to Roger Fenton's 350-odd photo-
graphs taken in the East for the Messrs. Agnew,
of Manchester, and for the most part representing
scenes and incidents within gun-shot of Sebastopol.
Besides these—any one decently clad can for one
shilling gain admission to the scientific wonders of
the Polytechnic—to the geographical marvels ga-
thered together under the dome of the Great
Globe, erected in Leicester Square, by James
Wyld, late M.P. for Bodmiia—to the various splen-
dours of the Panopticon with its gigantic organ, its
aspiring fountains, its dissolving views and its
oxyhy dr)geu micron ape—to the magical effects pro-
duced upon all kinds of materials by the society of
Photographers—to the wax- work-wallialla of the
late Madame Tussaud's executors—to the fairy-like
Crystal Palace, raised by au ingenious wizard of
the name of Paxton, among the green fields and
sylvan scenery of Sydenham ! One shilling (and no
more than one shilling if we so please) inducting
us ad libitum to the polygraphic versatility of
that very clever young man, who is literally " a
host" in himself, to wit W. S. Woodin—to the
Switzer chat, and Rhine gabble, and Parisian
patter of that inimitable polyglot lecturer and
humorist, Herr, Signor, Monsieur, Albert Smith,
long since undisputed monarch of the monarch of
mountains, a delightful gentleman, whose manifold
admirers have " crowned him [as such] long ago"—
" On a throne of rock,
Ina robe of cloud,
With a diadem of snow 1"
A shilling, too—nowadays—will it not enable you
to hear the übiquitous Love ventriloquise himself
" before one's werry eyes". as Sam Weller would
have it—into a deal box ! or up the chimney! any-
where, in fact—;into places the most impossible, or
the most preposterous?- Does not anyone very
well know that for a

"He or she,
I. or N., as the case may be,"
can feast eyes and ears by the hour, simply by
noting the phases passed through by Miss P. Hor-
ton-that-was, in her protean entertainment at the
Royal Gallery of Illustration ? For a shilling,
within as brief an interval we can watch Miss
Stanley through, one after another, of the Seven'
Ages of Woman—we can saunter with the pe-
rennial Burford, round the rails of his flying pano-
rama—we can accompany Charles Okey all the way
to Paris and back, without budging an inch from
the Regent's Quadrant—we can go a-Lion-Slaying
with the mighty hunter Gordon Cumming, in the
far wilds of Africa, chasing not " the wild deer," or
"following the roe," but careering down upon the
lair of the bison and hippopotami ! A shilling will
carry us ghoul-like through all the ghastly,
grizzly, lonely, loathsome length of the anatomical
museum of Dr. Kahn, attended at the elbow by—
(name most appropriate!)—Dr. Sexton, who whis-
pers a sort of post-mortem clinical prelection upon
the subjects under examination. A shilling again—is
it not the visible, tangible, shining, ringing,
Pass-word, admitting us within the porch of God's
Temple ?—within the Gothic gloom of Westmin-
ster Abbey, or into the lordly basilica of St.
Paul's Cathedral, carrying us, in the latter, if we
list, up into the whispering gallery, or higher still,
inside the gilded ball under the gilded cross, or
into the throbbing " heart of London," as Boz
has called it, the famous Clock Tower, with its
swinging monster of a Pendulum. A shilling!—
it is another form assumed by the wishing-carpet
of the Arabian Story—it enables us to dive down
under the Thames, along the arcades formed by its
gas-lit Tunnel, or to flit up far above the smoke and
din of the great city, until we are perched close by
the mimic pharos of its Monument. It introduces
whoever cares to bear the brunt of every imaginable
and unimaginable stench collected together into one
grand animal-bouquet in the Zoological Gardens,
from the dirtiest little vagabond of a monkey up
to that sagacious behemoth the elephant, from the
villainous ourang-outang, looking for all the world
like a brutalised carricature of humanity, to the
leathern hulk of the rhinoceros, and the pig-like*
shape of that scaley beast of au armadillo. If we
don't mind rubbing shoulders with Tom and Harry
in their Shirt sleeves, or risking the splitting
of the drums of our ears by close conti-
guity to the " eat's triumphant call" up in
the Gallery of the Gods, there where the ginger
pop is flying, and the " fruitage of Seville"
is being peeled and sucked abundantly as if
the lives of people in fustian depended upon the suc-
tion of so much orange-juice—we can, if we so will
it, make "the round" of the noblest as well as of the
humblest of our London theatres—for the small
charge (as the BartTmy-Fair showman had it) of
one shilling ! Laughing at Buckstone in the Hay-
market, at Wright in the Adelphi, at Mathews in
Drury-lane—beholding Kean in his glory at the
Princess's, Creswick at the Surrey,. and Phelps
at Sadler's Wells—wondering at the fitful genius of
Robson at the Olympic, at the " blood
and thunder," the murders and the blue fire, the
broadsword exercise and the comic business, fami-
liar to every one who happens to be at all ac-
quainted with the regular legitimate melodrama
of your regular legitimate hockly-in-the-hole arena
of dramatic wonderment, say the Wictoria, or the
City of London, or (until that lamentable fire the
other day which appears now almost, so to speak,
to have been something like a premonitory
symptom of the grander conflagration at
Covent-garden) the Pavilion ! For a shil-
ling we can inhale every evening that mingled
flavour of sawdust, ammonia, and orange peel
which seem to make up the exceedingly suggestive
atmosphere of Cooke's Batty's Ducrow's Astley's
Royal Amphitheatre ! Nay, more, for this same
wonder-working " coin of 'vantage" (if we may be
allowel the pun)—we can at any time, according
to our own good will and pleasure, in the very
act of going from one of those sights to another, or
(otherwise to express it) in going from one of their
sites to another—travel " for one shilling"—in a
cab—the distance of exactly. two statute miles.
Measuring them out, and cutting them down with
a most fine precision, even to the length of a hairs-
breadth, or rather to the width of abarleycorn —and
he blackguarded to the roots of our hair by the driver
while we are handing over to him one " Bob" (may
be in the presence of another) as his sole lawful
fare by Act of Parliament. Eureka ! The sign-
manual of the age is found—it is a Shilling !