The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-03 00:00:00

THE NETV 110 USES OF PARLIAMENT.

A report has been issued by the Royal Commis-
sion, at the head of which is the Prince Consort,
appointed in 1841 for the purpose of inquiring whe-
ther advantage might not be taken of the rebuilding
of the Palace of Westminster, for promoting and
encouraging the Fine Arts. With regard to paint-
ings, the commissioners have found that under the
existing conditions of lighting oil pictures prove
altogether unfit for the purpose, and they have there-
fore restricted the works now in progress to fresco
or to the water-glass process which has been for some
years practised with good results in Germany. They
report that there has been unnecessary delay in the
instance of the Peers' robing-room, to be painted by
Mr. J. R. Herbert, but they believe it is to be at-
tributed rather to repeated experiments and a con-
scientious study of the subjects by the artist than
to any feeling of indifference or interruption from
other occupations. • 11Ir, W. Dyce undertook to
complete the painting of the Queen's robing-room
by June, 1855 (afterwards extended to June, 1856),
and had at that time received the stipulated remu-
neration ; the commissioners have to state that the)
work is to their extreme mortification, still un-
finished. The delay now is understood to be from
ill-health. They regret the more any impediment
to the completion of this work, since the portion
already executed is in their judgment highly
creditable to the artist. In one of the large com-
partments of the Royal Gallery Mr. D. Maclise
is painting the meeting of Wellington and Blu-
cher after the battle of Waterloo; and, find-
ing fresco painting imperfectly adapted for a
multiplicity of details, he has adopted the stereo-
chrome or water-glass method of painting, of which
a full account is subjoined. The commissioners feel
bound to add that such is the encouragement now
extended to painting by opulent lovers of art that
the artists could in almost every case be more profit-
ably, though not more honourably employed in
other and less arduous undertakings. With regard
to statues, a committee, consisting of the Prince
Consort and Lords Stanhope and Llanover, have
recommended, in addition to Gibson's marble statue
of her Majesty, already completed for the Prince's
Chamber, a series of 37, comprising Edward
the Confessor, Harold, and then from William
the Conqueror downwards, to be placed thus :
In the Royal Gallery 12 (the. Sovereigns of the
Houses of Brunswick and Stuart), in the Queen's
Robing-room 5 (the Tudor series), 16 older S)ve-
reigns on the landing-place and in the adjoining
porch, and on the lower landing-place the four
most ancient of the series, selected as representing
the Saxon and Norman periods, the 20 on the land-
ing-places to be of metal, the other 17 of white
marble; and they recommended that Mr. W.
Theed be invited to undertake two of the latter
(William IV, and George IV.), and Mr. T. Thorny-
croft other two (Charles I. and James I.), at £BOO
each. Accordingly, the report proposes that the
vote this year be £3,200, instead of the usual
£4,000, for the balances of former grants in hand
for payment of works in painting are in advance
of those works.

SHOCKING TI?AGEDY AT ILKES'TON,
DERBYSHIRE..

A most determined and cold-blooded murder was
perpetrated at a late hour on Wednesday evening
last, at Ilkeston, by a young man, named George
Smith, aged 20, a twist hand, upon his father,
Joseph Smith, aged 40, a shoemaker, and a man of
property, residing in Bath-street, in that town.
The facts of the case are as follow :—On Wed-
nesday last, the son, George Smith, succeeded in
extracting his father's bank book from a drawer in
the house, and went to Nottingham with it. The
book contained entries of moneys paid into the
bank amounting to £l4O. He presented the book
at the bank in Nottingham, but the cashier refused
to give him the money, and he went direct to a
spirit vaults in the same town and pledged the book
for a sovereign. He returned by the last train from
Nottingham to Ilkeston on Wednesday evening, and
proceeded to a public-house in the latter town. He
then went home, and afterwards returned to the
public-house, and remarked to cne of his com-
panions that "he thought there would be something
amiss at his father's house that night." Smith left
the public-house about a quarter to twelve o'clock
on Wednesday night, and about 20 minutes past
twelve o'clock Superintendent Hudson was pro-
ceeding along Bath-street, and met two of his
officers close to Smith's house. They heard screams
of " Murder !" and on passing under the bed-room
window of the house, the younger brothers of the
murderer shouted out, " George has shot our
father." The police then went into the house, and
were horrified at finding Mr. Smith, senior, lying
on his back on the floor quite dead, his brains
being scattered about the room and the greater
part of his skull blown off. The deceased was
in his night-shirt, and had evidently come down
stairs to reprimand his son for staying out so late
and taking the bank-book, when the latter deli-
berately presented a
.pistol at his father's head
and shot out his brains. Mr. Norman, surgeon,
was speedily in attendance ; but death wasinstan-
taneous. As soon as the murderer had perpetrated
this horrid tragedy, he rushed out of the house in
his shirt sleeves and his coat off to a house of the
companion he had been drinking with, a distance
of 200 yards from his father's, where he knocked
at the door and said his father had just shot him-
self. He was at once taken into custody by Super-
intendent Hudson, who afterwards proceeded to
examine the house for the wadding, but it was
found to have been embedded in the brain of the
murdered man. They then searched for the gun
or pistol, and shortly after daylight yesterday
(Thursday) morning a policeman found a pistol at
a distance of about 50 yards from Smith's house.
It had been thrown over a hedge into a field, and
had evidently recently been fired out of. The pri-
soner was yesterday (Thursday) morning brought
before Mr. Radford, county magistrate, at Smalley,
and remanded. The inquest was opened yesterday
(Thursday) afternoon at the Queen's Head,
Ilkeston. As we said before, the murdered man
was well-to-do in the world, and the murderer
was " asked" in Belton Church, Leicestershire, to
a girl named Ellen Cox, for the first time on Sun-
day last. There is' not the slightest reason for
supposing that the prisoner is insane. He says
his father shot himself. The tragedy, as may well
be supposed, has caused the greatest excitement in
the neighbourhood.
On Wednesday morning the murderer wrote a
i
note in lead-pencil to his sweetheart at Belton, n
which he said he was afraid his father would
make away with himself before long. Detective
Davis has gone over to Belton to try to got PCPS
session of the letter.

EXPORT OF GOLD TO AMERICA.—The Liverpool,
New York, and Philadelphia Steamship Company's screw
steamer Kangaroo sailed from Liverpool yesterday. She
took out about N cabin passengers, and X 16,000 in gold
iA freight,