The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1874-09-26
Cur @lo.
From Harper's Aagafiss for October.
Decorative Art and Architecture in
England

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Decorative Art and Architecture in
England.
The PAVILION AT BRIGHroN.-There
Is no doubt that the barbaric element in
English taste received fresh accession
Of yigor with the advent Of the Georges 70
England. What 1t was capable Of, and
what it found pleasing to the aristocratic
butterflies who fitted around him whom
they adOrsd as the first gentleman in
Europe" may be discovered in the Pavil-
ion at Brighton. That building may be
regarded as the physiognomical monument
of George Nv. It is his interior projec-
ted into stone and decoration. The secret
stairwAys and passages leading up to 6cti-
tious wardrobes, really door-ways to rooms
which his majesty desired to visit, repre-
sent the prince who sent horsemen TO
trample down laborers at Peterloo whose
only guilt was to discuss their wrongs ;
the bizarre carvings, which make fine stone
look like terra Gotta, illustrate the fop who
has come TO prefer fgment to fact. The
interior decorations do not represent so
well the monarch whom Thackeray analy-
zed, and found in his hands only heap Of
pad, paint, gold-lace, but no man at all.
Those freseoes were made during the first
furor which occurred in England about
Chinese and Japanese art and, though
ludicrously gorgeous, they are not without
certain interest, arising from the bound
less freedom Of their design and colos.
How this can be il win be difficult for my
reader to imagine, when he Is told that the
walls are covered with large dragons, (life
size, one might say, If dragons existed,
serpents, wild cormorant-like birds, all
having grand feld-day amidst ladies and
pleasure-grounds. The pillars are like
BARRIERS poles, with the archaeological ser.
pent twined around each instead Of the
red stripe. The Pavilion is said 10 have
found in Mr.. P. t. Barnum its only ad
mirer. English critics have been rather
hard upon it. Sydney Smith said that the
structure looked "as if the dome Of Saint
Pauls had come down to Brighton and
pupped." William Cobbett thought that
"a good idea Of the building might BE-
formed by placing the pointed half of q
large turnip upon the middle Of board
with four smaller ones at the corners.
The main intent Of the building is to ini-
tate Chinese pagoda, and |, was with that
aim that the Prince Of Wales (for he
seems to have been mainly his own archi
tect) committed this enormity. Two yeari
ago the British Association for the Ad-
vancement Of Science gathered for il,
charming summer seances at Brighton, anG
the rooms ofthe Royal Pavilion were placed
at their service Never we're the sessions
Of the association so well housed, but It wal
amusing to witness the difficulty which
even eminent savants had in the rivalr,
between the attractions on the walls anc
those Of their papers. On the whole, it i
to be feared that the grotesque ornaments
left by the Regent carried the day. On
one occasion when . discussion occurred
in the anthropological section on serpent
worshiper, the dragons and serpents Oh
the wall were 50 appropriate that the room
had the appearance Of being frescoed fol
the archaeological purposes of the society
But the ordinary contrast between the Sc.
we're disquisitions Of the scientific men and
the luxuriant and barbaric colors and form,
Of the place was not so great as I witnessed
recently in the same place. In the room
which above all the rest might be regarded
as the temple of vanity, a hundred ritual
istic gentleman and ladies had gathered "a
hold a prayer-meeting! In the evening
there was ball in the same room, and
then it appeared plainly what had been the
final cause Of the Brighton Pavilion. |
may add that large building which
George Nv. erected for his stable, and
whose roof Is vast dome, is now the chiel
concert room of Brighton, and that an.
other outlying building Of the place is oc.
cupied by fair picture gallery, good
museum, and capital library.