The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-21 00:00:00

MR. TILLEY'S ECCENTRICITIES.

The Dublin correspondent of the Times writes :—" It is
a great privilege to be a native-born American. His lot
is enviable, at least out of his own country. Mr. G. F. Train
is at present enjoying to the full the superior advantages
which belong to such a condition. He is ' stumping the
country,' as he says, and with a vengeance, too, speaking
and agitating with a freedom which makes him an
object of wonder and delight to the Fenian audiences who
throng his lecture' rooms. His actions are a strange com-
mentary upon the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act and the
Press prosecutions in Ireland. He was lately in Dun-
garvan , and treated the inhabitants of that little port
to some original and agreeable views of the Jacmel
expedition and other kindred topics which have re-
cently. been brought before them under less pleasing
circumstances. He thought it extraordinary, he said, that
Nagle and Warren, who, as he assured them amid cheers
and laughter, only came to the town to `shake hands'
with the people, not to capture it as Cromwell did, and
threaten to slaughter its inhabitants, but ' merely to see
if they had got a good harbour where vessels could land
without cannons, re volv ers, or muskets,' should have met
with such an unfavourable reception from the British
Government. Now, the sooner those two American citi-
zens were given up the better it would be for England.
He entertained the assembly by relating in a characteristic
manner how he had ' snubbed' Charles Francis Adams. It
was he who had raised the cry which earned Mr. Adams's
recall. He would shew them, he said, that England was
going down and America going up. She was 'ruled by dotards,
octogenarians, septuagenarians, nonagenarians - - arians
whose white hairs had no wisdom, and who had grown old
without arriving at maturity so far as judgment went.'
They were so busy babbling about other places they had
no time to busy themselves about Ireland. The next place
they would think of if they got into a war with America
would be `the place where they did not rake the fire.'
The British Parliament, he informed them, so far as
representation was concerned, was a perfect farce. Of
500 members, 450 were landowners. It was absurd to
expect a Tenure Bill from them. He declared that
' hell would be a divine institution for England.'
He referred to some commentaries which had been made
in the Conservative press respecting the language which
he had been allowed to utter in other places, ar.d
declared that he was not a Fenian, but head and shoulders
above the Fenians."
The Cork Examiner, which has recorded the sayings and
doings of Mr. Train, con amore, ad.ls :—" Mr. Train con-
cluded by a brilliant rampage over the social and political
morality of England. At the conclusion of his lecture he
was escorted to his hotel by a vast throng of the towns-
people, who carried him upon their shoulders amid the
most enthusiastic cheers."
Mr. Train delivered his first lecture in Dublin on
Thursday night to rather a tbln audience. The only part
of the room that was filled was that to which admission
was cheap. His language was cautious, but humorous,
and his hits at England were loudly cheered. Some
persons who expressed dissent were ejested. As a specu'
lation the lecture was a failure.

MR. PUGIN ON THE NEW ROUSES OF
PARLIAMEN I.

However imposing may be the array of counter-
evidence this pamphlet contains, in reality it is of
little value by the side of a few simple facts, which
are in no way touchedby it, and cannot be obliterated.
My father's diary cannot be disposed of in the
summary way adopted by Dr. Barry. The very
irrelevance of a portion of it only makes the rest

more striking and indisputable. Sir Charles
Barry's repeate3 visits to Salisbury before the com-
petition, one of them apparently extending over
a whole week, cannot lose their significancy.
The lists of drawings made by myfather, their nature
and subjects, and Sir Chas. Barry's four letters, in
which these drawings are spoken of in such exalted
terms of praise, they cannot be explained away--
a meagre amount of evidence, indeed, but suffi-
ciently strong to show how overwhelming it would
have been had I the same advantages as my anta-

gonists. Some additional facts also are produced
by them which confirm my account in many of its
details—such as that of Sir C. Barry having taken
the very unusual precaution of " turning his nur-
sery into a private office to keep his designs secret."
I have no intention of going into any detailed exa-
mination of Dr. Barry's pamphlet, because, if I
succeed in taking the ground from beneath the fa-
bric he has built up, it is more than enough to
demolish it. I have in my possession 13 volumes of
my father's original compositions made in 1833-4,
which not only actually delineate, with more or less
exactitude, whether in ground-plan, outline, or de-
tail, many of the principal portions of the Houses of
Parliament, but evince the same spirit and feeling,
sense of form and proportion, finesse and delicate
perception, of which the building itself is the out-
ward expression. They seem rather to be etchings of
the completed work than drawings made to realise,
though bnly on paper, the ideas with which his brain
was teeming. About this very time Sir Charles
Barry was completing a church which was not, in
any single respect, an advanc3 on his buildings of
1825 and 1826. How the same man who, in
Gothic work, had been standing still for ten years,
could suddenly imbibe a feeling to which he had pre-
viously been an utter stranger—how he could have
been, all but simultaneously, designing a structure
so atrociously bad as St. Peter's, Hatton-garden,
and one (of its kind) so perfect as the Palace of
Westminster, is absolutely inconceivable, except
that they were produced under different conditions.
They are both in the late third-pointed style, but
they have nothing whatever in common. The one
has been described as possessing " all the faults
that an utter absence of Gothic feeling could crowd
into one building ;" the other is strikingly con-
tained in the original compositions of the man with
whom Sir Charles Barry was in constant commu-
nication for months before the competition draw-
ings for Westminster were sent in, Sir Charles
having extemporised a private drawing office to
keep his designs secret from all but his wife and the
"chief witness" (p. 21) in the present case. If these
facts are taken in connection with certain entries in
my father's diaries, which receive no notice from
Dr. Barry, they have a significancy of which nothing
can deprive them. It may be perfectly true that
the drawings made in May, 1835, were drawings
of fittings and furniture for the Birmingham Gram-
mar School, but what about those described as
" compositions for Mr. Barry " in September ? It
may be equally true that my father saw Sir C.
Barry respecting "designs for furnishing Dr.Jeune's
house on September 24, but after sending off five
drawings to Mr. Barry on the 25th, he was working
all night on the Parliament Houses on the 27th, and
sent off fourteen drawings on the 29th (apparently
of the central portion), with a south-east view, and
two elevations on Oct. 9. These could not have
been, as Dr. Barry implies (p. 17), drawings of Dr.
Jeune's furniture. May I ask then why, when so un-
important a matter as Dr. Jeune's furniture is noted
in Sir Charles Barry's diary, no allusion seems to
be made to the " compositions" made by my father
immediately before that time, or to the numerous
drawings forwarded to Sir Charles immediately
afterwards ? Dr. Barry throws no light at all on
these particular entries, two of which, at all events,
ahally cyo,nanlesoctemdaywlitahsk,
was Sir Charles's
hrleo usaecst.u"
visit to my father on September 24 kept a secret
(as it appears to have been the case) from Mr.
Talbot Bury? Secret visits, and secret offices,
and secret drawings ; for (as far as I can make out)
Salisbury. lisNlfe knew
blurory.At thlenasotining of the
hisevid drawings
enceh sent from
eorilyspeaks
ofTaltbhoo st eB mu
rayd, ea l atiti
uSgi rh Ct
e.s
tßi
fayrirnyg' s t
hoaffit cv‘e,
h;ilsatndbe Mwas.
at Salisbury, working on Mr. Gillespie Graham's
designs, my father was engaged at that very time
in making drawings for the Birmingham Grammar
School, he offers no proof of this ; whereas the
diary informs us that it was on " compositions"
for Sir C. Barry that he was principally occupied,
sitting up a whole night working on the Parliament
__ouses.

Again : Dr. Barry has made some mistake in
stating (p. 16) that I assert that " Mr. Barry was
at Salisbury on Sept. 1, 1835," A reference to my
pamphlet (p. 15) shows that the entry is—" Mr.
Barry all day, composition ;" ani this is the entry
in my father's pocket-book.
Dr. Barry is also in error in supposing that I have
made any confusion between the diaries, or wrongly
copied the entries for Nov. 2d and 9th, 1835. In
the diary for that year the former entry is—" Mr.
Barry arrived ;" the latter, " Mr. Barry left, paid
99 ; " and that for Nov. 3d is, " On river front,
five compartments."
It is, of course, impossible to dispute the authen-
ticity of Sir Charles Barry's diaries, and, therefore,
if it appears from them that he was in London
from Nov. 2d to Nov. Bth, 1835, there is an un-
doubted discrepancy between his entries and my
father's, requiring to be cleared up. I thought it
not improbable that I had inadvertently read
" Barry" for " Bury," but Mr. Bury has not once
intimated that he paid a second visit to Salisbury in
that year, and a reference to the pocket-book itself
leads me to conclude that I am not mistaken ; espe-
cially as throughout the whole year the one gentle-
man is always alluded to as " Mr. Barry," the
other simply as " Bury." In the two entries now
discussed it is " Mr. Barry" who is named. The
discrepancy is certainly singular, for the previous
visit Sir Charles paid to Salisbury, when my father
met him at the White Hart, is recorded in Sir
Charles's diary ; and it is immediately after this
visit that my father was working all night on the
Parliament Houses, and sending off 14 drawings
(central portion) to Sir Charles on Oct. 2d, although
it would seem that no entry of my father's assist-
ance appears in Sir Charles's diary until Oct. 12th.
How is all this to be accounted for, and what
bearing have the various facts on each other?
The original composition's in question also en-
tirely disprove the oft-repeated assertion that my
father was incompetent to design large masses, and
that the Palace of Westminster in particular, " as
a whole, was beyond his grasp, and differs in every
particular from what would have been expected
from him." On the contrary they pourtray Palaces,
Churches, Colleges, Castles, with ground-plans,
sections, &c,, complete. And in one facade the
disposition of the parts is exactly that of Sir C.
Barry's River Front.
If I represent all this truly, and I think that any
one examining the books will testify that Ido so,
it is evident on the one hand that my father's
powers did extend to the capacity of designing a
large building like the Palace of Westminster ; and
on the other that the compositions contained in these
volumes—even supposing for a moment that no
design was actually made by my father similar in
character and detail—are the origin and source
from which Sir C. Barry drew his inspirations and
succeeded, when in constant communication with
my father, in producing a design, in no small mea-
sure a reproduction or adaptation of the composi-
tions themselves. Moreover, unless the Messrs.
Barry can produce designs or compositions made
anterior to them by Sir Charles, the whole mass of
evidence they offer loses its entire value, and no
self-depreciation by my father, no apparent incon-
sistency of after-events, no antagonism of details,
can dislodge me from my position. I hold in my
hand the indelible test of my father's powers. I