The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-13 00:00:00

Metropolitan and Provincial Working
Classes' Exhibition.

Last evening the Industrial Exhibition which has
been open in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, for
the last 10 weeks, and which has attracted more
than half a million of spectators, was formally
dozed. Lord John Manners, M.P., presided at
the ceremony, and was supported by the Council
and other leading promoters of the undertaking.
The floor and galleries of the vast hall were well
filled with an audience chiefly composed of the
working classes, but also including persons of other
social grades, as well as both sexes and all ages.
The building was tastefully decorated with flags
and banners, and altogether the scene presented was
one of a.truly animated and even imposing descrip-
tion. The programme for the evening was at once
ample and varied. It commenced with the perform-
ance, by Mr. C. F. Davies, on Willis's Great Exhi-
bition organ, of a pirited triumphal march, spe-
cially composed for the occasion. Then, on the
Chairman ascending the platform, the choir of the
Tonic Sol-fa Assoc tion sang the Old Hundredth
Psalm very impressively; after which the Rev. C.
Boutell proceeded to read the report of the adjudi-
cators. In this document these gentlemen state
that, in awarding the prizes, they based their judg-
ment " not on intrinsic merit alone, but also on the
circumstances and opportunities of the producer, and
the promise or suggestion of future improvement"
offered by his work ; and they thus sum up the
general character of the Exhibition .
" We feel bound to state that, with certain honourable
exceptions, the objects exhibited do not attain to great ex-
cellence. The chief deficiencies are in those important
qualities which result from well-directed study, and in ori-
ginality of design, the offspring of independent thought.
At the same time there are abundant evidences of patient,
laborious perseverance, of earnest assiduity, and particu-
larly of technical skill and manual dexterity, which give
promise of more decided excellence in future Industrial
Exhibitions."

Mr. W. J. WATTs, the secretary, next read the
report of the Executive Council, from which it ap-
peared that the undertaking had realised, with com-
plete success, the original idea of the promoters—'
namely, that it should be a Workman's Festival,
and become a means of providing rational recrea-
tion and profitable amusement for, the working po-
pulation of the metropolis at a merely nominal cost.
The report also stated that—
" Since the opening of the Exhibition, about 550,000
persons had entered the building, and of these upwards of
half a million have paid for admission. Of children ad-
mitted free there have been 3,092 belonging to the Sunday
schools, 401 to the parochial schools, 3,992 to the ragged
schools, and 1,559 to other schools. Concerts, oratorios,
organ performances,leetnres, gatherings of various societies,
a flower show, and other entertainments, have been given
in connection with the Exhibition. . . . Although the
Council are in a position to meet their estimated liabilities,
besides expending the sum of £BOO on prize medals, certi-
ficates, and mementos for exhibitors, it must be borne in
mind that a large proportion of the labour bestowed on the
undertaking has been rendered gratuitously, and that the
singers, musicians, lecturers, agents, and others have, in
most cases, tendered their services without remuneration.
One of the most pleasing features of the festival has been
the nightly influx of working men, who have brought their
wives and families to share their pleasures, for they knew
that here nothing would be permitted but what might be
seen and heard without raising a blush or offending the
most sensitive. There have been awarded special prizes in
money to a considerable amount, 81 silver medals, 175
bronze medals, and 185 certificates of honourable mention,
making a total of 441 exhibitors out of 1,455 who have re-
ceived marks of merit."

The next part of the programme was "An Ode
to Labour," written by Mr. J. Plummer, and set to
music by Dr. Spark, of Leeds, expressly for this Ex-
hibition, at the inauguration of which it was per-
formed by a very powerful choir. It was now re-
peated at the closing ceremony in a very effective
manner by about 1,000 voices. Both the music and
the words are productions of considerable merit, and
their execution, it need hardly be said, elicited warm
and even rapturous plaudits from all parts of the
hall.

Lord J. MANNERS then rose to address the vast
assemblage, and was received with vehement and
general cheering. He said he was painfully sensible
that from the " music married to immortal
verse" to which they had all just listened with so
much delight, to the feeble effort of one human
voice like his own in that huge gathering, the de-
scent was great indeed. (hear, and a laugh.) He
owned that when first invited to preside on that oc-
casion, he imagined that he was, perhaps, indebted
for that honour to some fanciful relation, in the
minds of the Managing Committee, between the
works of the department with which he was officially
connected and the works which lately had been in-
spected with so much pleasure and admiration by
thousands upon thousands within these walls. But
a little further reflection convinced him, as he trusted
it would convince them, that, after all, there sub-
sisted a very real and substantial relation between
the office over which he had the honour to preside
and the present purpose to which that hall was de-
dicated. (Cheers.) Only a few years ago, in this
country, all the coarser operations, as they might
be called, of construction were necessarily confined
to English and Irish hands ; but when a question
was raised of the finer, the more decorative and
ornamental arts, then in many quarters it was
thought that recourse must be had to foreign heads
and fingers. But a British school of art-workmen
had sprung up which might date from the da s of
Pugin and of Barry, and the New Palace at West-
minster. And how great had been the progress of
these decorative and constructive arts since then
Mr. Beresford Hope had proposed to the Royal
Commission which a year or two ago examined into
the constitution of the Royal Academy that a
school, so to speak—•a class of British art workmen
should be associated with that body, and that marks
of distinction and approval should be held out to
them. They all knew that reform and progress in
these matters marched but slowly. Yet he had lis-
tened with much gratification that evening to the
long catalogue of prizes which the adjudicators had
been enabled to bestow upon British workmen from
the profits accruing upon that Exhibition ; and
he thought that to any one occupying
his present position an undertaking like that
could not but be of the deepest interest.
Any one who walked round the interior of that
building, and noticed the various proofs it contained
of creative fancy, of imitative skill, of mechanical
ingenuity, of fidelity to nature, of respect for truth,
for temperance, for good sense, and good taste,
could not fail to perceive how real and close was the
connexion between the head of the Department of
Public Works and of Royal Palaces and Parks and
Gardens, and the objects of the present gathering.
Ile had referred to fidelity to nature. He remem-
bered a few years ago, on examining the fine new
hall of the University of Dublin, he was struck with
the beauty and perfection of the sculpture which
adorned its walls. Ile made inquiries into the sub-
ject, and was told that the Irish workpeople from
whose hands those sculptures came had not been
copying some dead inanimate design, but had had
real flowers and leaves before them which they had
imitated, with the happy results that he had men-
tioned. He recollected, also, what had lately oc-
curred in his own special department. Last year
his predecessor in office, instead of permitting the
flowers, as it had been the custom to do, to remain
in all the parks under his charge to be destroyed at
the end of each autumn, thought it would be well to
distribute them among
such of the working classes
as cared to ask for them l • and a great and gratifying
demand was the result. Something like 20,000
plants were then thus distributed. H
the utmost pleasure this year in followinge had
himself
so good
an example, and mark the consequence. The de-
mand
had risen from about 20,000 to 50,000 the
latter number of plants having been ,
recently distri-
bitted from the various royal parks and gardens
among the working population of that metropolis.
Of that quantity not less than 16,000 had gone, he
fejoiced to say, in the direction of the Victoria and
Greenwich parks, and he could not but think that
hereafter many a working man would find his model
of beauty in the plants so distributed. A certain
alertness and activity which characterised the French
more than any other European army was often attri-
buted by competent judges very much to the peculiar
opportunities which the French soldier had in time of
peace for employing his brain and using his fingers in
avocations other than those of war. Now, he could
not help thinking:that, in a similar manner, the great ,