The Sun.
London, England, 1857-08-10 00:00:00

THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

The Crystal Palace shares with railways and with
other glories and delicim of England the inconve-
nience of not answering as a speculation. A Com-
mittee of Shareholders has just sat upon the affairs
of the Company, and issued its report. The public
will inspect with some curiosity the outgoings and

incomings of its favourite, anti will be -ready with
its condolence at the balance being so much on the
wrong side. It will cause a little surprise to hear
that the gardens of the Palace at present employ
146 gardeners. The committee not unreasonably
thinks this rather too large a staff, and considers
that a less number, with more supervision, will do
as well. But it is not so much the expenses of the
general management, which are not considered ex-

cessive, as those of the "frequent novelties and
varied attractions," which incur censure. These
latter, it appears have been great failures. The
Handel Festival does not come into this report—
why we do not know. But the otherj" attractions"

have been all but universally losses. The "Peace
Festival" cost the Company 1,9081. and onlybrought
in 6281.,- making a loss of 1,2801. to the Company.
The Poultry Show cost 9391., the single article of
coops being 1961., and only just cleared its ex-
penses. The Flower shows were a b_tter specula-
tion, bringing in a balance of 4821. But
now comes the formidable head of "Opera Con-
certs," under which the commmittee considers
the Company a loser of 5,0001. It seems that for
12 Opera Concerts the agreement gave Mr. GYE
10,0381., which sum various other items swelled
to 11,4611. Then the Committee complains
generally of the carelessness of the Directors in
the contracts made, "which have been onesided
" and much against the interests of the Company."
The Company e. g. has lost 2 401.-6 d. per dozen
—in the course of the year by sodawater, the cal-
culation beiug that it ought to have gained 3,000/.
The difference, of course, has been in favour of the
contractor.

The conclusion which the report points to is one
which any person of common sense could have
prophesied,—that the " attractions" are not the
attraction at the Crystal Palace. People go there
for an " outing," for fresh air, a fine view, and a
magnificent garden. A jaded Londoner does not
want to see sights,—be is sick of sight-seeing,—
he wants to get out of their way. They are part of
London ; he is glad to leave them with the smoke
and toil of the city behind him, and to go to
somewhere where there there is nothing to see
but what he can see by simply opening his eyes.
There is all the difference between sights ; we
see some sights by simply oi,ening our eyes ; we
see others by "screwing" them. The connoisseur
looks at Dante describes his tailor locking when
he threads his.needle—squeezing his eye into the
smallest compass. The organ is stimulated by
compression, and shoots its sharp arrows out of a
corner of itself—a sort of essence of sight. iiut
to look through a tenth part of one eye, or even
to fix both with a constant tension upon curious
objects, is not so healthy or pleasant or cheering
a process as to look with two good open uncon-
strained eyes upon land or sea or sky. The
reason why flower shows are such popular sights—
for they appear to have succeeded even at the
Crystal Palace—is because nine people out of ten
hardly look at the flowers. There is just a hasty
glance thrown round two or three tents—we look
at the banks of azaleas, and pimeleas, geraniums,
and calceolarias, and then the eye reposes with
dreamy pleasure upon the successive waves of the
well dressed and brilliant crowd, or we listen in
" a wise vacancy" to the strains of music from the
band. The Londoner, then, goes to the Crystal
Palace for the fresheuer which the air and the land-
scape give him. He eats his cold dinner and drinks
pale ale with the heartiness of a rustic, and goes
back to
.his work again. This is his attraction. A
concert is no more to his taste than a gallery of pic-
tures or statutes. He can hear concerts enough in
London. He does not go out of London to sit still
on a chair, with only moderate room for his legs.
It is quite true the Crystal Palace is more liberal
of room to the knees than Exeter-hall ;it is possible
to sit out even a concert there and not feel yourself
in the stocks. This is a great undoubted merit; it
is almost a revolution in the musical world. It, at
any rate, deserves to be marked as an era in the
history of music. The Handel Festival gave the
satisfaction it did principally from the fact of the
i
perfect comfort n which the performances were
heard; We throw no reflection on the vocalists or
the orchestra, on the choruses or the solos, but no
music can possibly entrance when the space between
the
ebacbhk of your own chair and that of your neigh-
bour's eaf:rienade you is less than the length which
nature from the knee to the hip joint.
There is an insurmountable obstacle to anythinglike ecstacy under such circumstances. No man
was ever enraptured in the stocks. It is ono of
the remarkable consequences of the new Crystal
architecture that it enables music to be heard
unduewithout
compression.pain,
Space and profit--those old and gives room for numbers without
and mortal enemies—iare at last decently recon-
ciled. But, with all the superior resources
which the Crystal Palace possesses for concerts,
concerts are not the attraction to bring the
masses out of London. Everybody knows
Sidney Smith's opinion of concerts. They
require singular patience, and they impose an
unnatural stagnation of your limbs for some three
hours, The masses want something much, mere