The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-21 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MON DAY EVENING, MAY 21, 1866.

MARKETS.—This Day.

1,116 Sydney, 3,363 Adelaide, 6,535 New Zealand, 4,121
Cape of Good Hope, and 664 bales from Monte Video.

_ . -- • •
Current prices of English wool per lb.

_
Fleeces—South Down hogets 1 9f 1 10f
Half-bred do 2 0 2 1
Kent fleeces
South Down ewes and wethers 1 71 1 8
Leicester do
Sorts—Clothing
Combing
TALLOW.
The market is heavy, and prices are still drooping. P.Y.C.
on the spot is selling at 44s 3d per cwt.
Particulars. 1863. 1864. 1865. 1866.
Stock this day 58,673 49,520 31,988 26,495
Price of Y.C. 543 s 3d to 40s 3d 40s 6d 44s 3d to
t—s 03 —s 03 —s 03 Os Od
Delivery last week 909 577 1,418 805
Ditto from June 1 78,139 73,269 92,5,43 101,595
Arrival last week
Ditto fr( in June 1...... 78,533 84.942 79,510 95,607
Price of Town

Liverpool Cotton Market. —This Day.

The market opens dull, Sales, probably 4,000
or 5,000 bales.

LAW INTELLIGENCE—(This Day.)

COURT OF BANKRUTCY.
(Before Mr. Registrar Brougham.)
HEAVY MERCANTILE FAILURE.-I\ RE JAMES HASTIE.
This bankrupt was a merchant, of 11, Pancras-lane, and
Essex, and to-day was appointed for the first meeting.
The debts are over £60,000, and the cause of the failure is
thus set out by the bankrupt, who comes up on his own
petition :—" Liabilities incurred by me in connection with
the formation of certain companies."
The following list of creditors is singularly interesting
and instructive at the present time :
Agra and Masterman's Bank, £13,600 ; Joint Stock Dis-
count Company, £7,582 ; Merchants' Banking Company,
£3,500 (secured) ; Loudon Monetary Company (holds bills),
£747 ; National Bank (holds shares), ..£12,500 ; Joint
Stock Discount Company (holds bills and shares), £12.327 :
National Bank (ditto, ditto), £15,000; European Bank
(holds security), £8,000; London Bridge Land Company
(calls), £18,500. Debts were proved and a day named for
the next meeting.

A PLEA FOR BURLINGTON HOUSE.

Mr. Beresford Hope recently writes to the Times :
—Your paper contains the intimation of danger im-
pending over one of the architectural monuments of
London. In the precis of the correspondence be-
tween the Office of Works and the Royal Academy
you state that on the option having been offered to
the latter body of the Piccadilly or of the Burling-
ton-gardens end of the Burlington-house area they
chose the former. Of course they did, for they
thereby obtained the better frontage and the better
approaches. But the offer of the choice (which I
think ought not to have been made) was signing the
death-warrant of Burlington-house, which must
either be pulled down or mutilated, if a picture 'gal-
lery is to occupy the Piccadilly end. The general
public is, I fear, not sufficiently aware that Bur-
lington-house is worth keeping. Built early in the
last century, together with the villa at Chiswick, by
that famous amateur architect the Earl of Burling-
ton for his own residence, it was shut to the world
till a few years since, when it became national pro-
perty, and it is still bounded on the street side by a
solid screen, which, being built of brick, has in the
course of generations become grimy. Accordingly,
the uncritical first judgment of the hurried crowd
that hustles to and fro along Piccadilly is that
the screen of Burlington-house is ugly. The dog
having thus got his bad name, nothing remains but
the ceremony of his hanging. The screen being
" ugly," that which the sereen covers is, of course,
" ugly" also, and the square yards of London ground,
which are to the Office of Works like shares to a
finance company, stand ready for allotment. This
would, however, be a great loss to London architec-
ture. Burlington-house is, like other stately " houses,"
" hotels," or " palaces," as different nations variously
called them, in which great families lodged themselves,
in important cities—a building entre tour et jardin,
with its courtyard in front and its open space behind.
That courtyard is in many cases the result of
haphazard. In the present instance it is a work of
careful and refined architectural study. The "ugly"
facade to Piccadilly is no doubt massive—it may
be too massive—but it is only ugly to those who
have not the capacity or the patience to apprehend
what the architect meant. The central portal of
stone is rich and picturesque, and the flanking brick
screens are designed with a regard to proportion,
divided as they are into carefully measured panels,
defined by the stone globes which smile above the
cornice line upon Piccadilly in comfortable cleanli-
ness. Inside this barrier the architect has avoided
the possible hardness of a right-angled courtyard
by cutting off the corners adjacent to the central
portal with two curved open colonnades or cloisters.
Beyond these colonnades are the flanking buildings,
well known to Fellows of the Royal or the Geogra-
phical Society, and in face of, and parallel to, Picca-
dilly stands the main edifice of Burlington-house.
What the Royal Academy, I presume, proposes to
do is to take possession of the ground covered by
the screen, 'the curved colonnades, and the inter-
mediate courtyard, there to build its galleries, and
either demolish Burlington-house proper (having
destroyed the courtyard, which is part of the com-
position), or else degrade it into back premises.
This, I say, would be an unnecessary act of Van-
dalism. Burlington-house, screen, court, colon-
nade, and mansion are together an example of that
of which a city like London, in which space is
costly, is necessarily very deficient—quiet, broad,
architectural picturesqueness. A building may often
be picturesque in itself. It does not, however, always
group picturesquely with its own adjuncts. Bur-
lington-house is, I contend, worth keeping for its
own sake, and it is also capable of being utilised for
the benefit of the public. Lord Burlington was a
great peer and a great architect, but he was not
infallible, and the weakest point in the whole com-
position is that he made his central and principal
building too low. I should have little hesitation in
recommending the main structure to be pushed upby
another story, to the advantage of the office or of
the society which would gain the additional rooms
thus created. Then we come to the treatment of
the portion of the mass towards Piccadilly. This, as
I have pointed out, and as every one knows, is exter-
nally composed of the brick screen, with the central
portal of stone. Inside there are the curved colon-
nades between which and the screen on two sides
and the boundary walls on the third we find on either
flank a sort of triangular clustre of rooms. I should
boldly pierce the solid screen at its panels, filling
the openings with rich grills, and I should sweep
away the two nests of rooms, thus disengaging the
curved colonnades. The result would be a very
picturesque and original example of what London
much wants—pictorial architecture, made up of the
grouping of the pierced screen, the curved lines of
columns, the courtyard, and the Palladian mansion
beyond. The spaces laid bare by the demolition
which I have advised would not be lost. London is
already full—every generation will make it fuller—
of eminent men, of bronze, grim, disconsolate effigies,
eagerly pleading for a little footing. Here, then, in
these two spaces will be room for two of the sons of
whom Briton may happen to be proud. The Royal
Academy might then with a clear conscience expand
itself over the northern space of Burlington-house
garden. Perhaps it might even obtain an entrance
through Burlington-house itself.

I have left to the last the only material obstacle
to this arrangement. It is an obstacle newly created
by the wilfulness or the weakness of the Government,
and which there is still time to remedy. The Univer-
sity of London—not University College in Gower-
street, butthe fountain of honours for that and many'
other colleges—is in want of a fixed habitation, and
the Government very properly means to give it
one; but not so properly, and as if with the pre-
intention of making any full discussion of the use
which might be made by the whole Burlington-house
property impossible, the Government lately hurried
through Committee of Supply, against the protest
of your correspondent and of other members, a vote
towards the construction of a University of London
building upon the northern portion of the garden
itself, with an entrance from 'the street we call Bur-

Eington-gardens. Once let this scheme be consum

mated, and once let the Academy be turned out—
as it is to be—from Trafalgar-square and planted
on the Piccadilly side of the Burlington estate, then,
of course, Burlington-house must go. I do not now

ask whether it might not have been cheaper to have
kept the Academy in Trafalgar-square, left St.
Martin's Workhouse unbought, and planted a

National Gallery in the Burlington-house-gardens.

I assume the present arrangement, in its broad fea-
tures, but I then claim that Burlington-house shall
not be recklessly ruined, and that the habitation
which the University of London requires shall not
be wantonly planted where it will stand in the way
of buildings of larger area, grander aspect, and more
popular use.

THE CANNON-STREET MURDER.—Since Smith's
imprisonment in Newgate he has written several letters to
his relatives at Eton. In these he strongly asserts his
innocence, and in a confident tone looks forward to an ac-
quittal of the capital charge. There are, it is understood,
some half dozen reliable witnesses to prove that on the
night of the murder Smith was in their company from
half-past eight o'clock till a quarter past eleven, and
thence in the company of another witness till twelve
o'clock. Their recollection of the date is said to be fixed
by an entertainment taking place at the Mathematical
School at Eton College. These witnesses were in attend-
ance at the magisterial investigation, but it was thought
advisable by the prisoner's counsel that their evidence
should be reserved for the trial.

NEW SOUTH WALES.—The Registrar-General
estimates the population of New South Wales at the close
of the year 1865 at 411,390 persons—viz., 227,201 males
and 184,189 females:

THE LATE MR. JOSEPH PARKES.—A monument
with the following inscription has been placed over
the remains of the late Mr. Parkes, at Hastings :—This stone
is erected as a memorial of the useful and honourable life
of Joseph Parkes, born at Warwick January 22, 1796, died
in London August 11, 1865. He was earnest, truthful, wise;
so he won the confidence of powerful men, and his name will
stand on the list of British worthies who promoted the
great measure for the reform of Parliament, the reform of
the municipalities of England, the reform of charitable
foundations, the reform of the Court of Chancery. These
were his chief public services. How kindly and generous
he was in private life, how dear to many friends, how
deep the sorrow for his death, can only be known to those
who have caused this stone to be erected as a lasting memo-
rial of their own grief and his great worth."