The Portland daily press., 1874-09-17
TERMS $500 PER ANNUM IN ADVANCE.
The Pavilion at Brighton.

There is no doubt that the barbaric ele-
ment IN English taste received fresh acces-
sion OF vigor with the advent of the Georges
to England. What it was capable of, and
what 1T found pleasing to the aristocratic but
terflles who fitted around him whom they
adored as ''the first gentleman in Europe"
may be discovered in the Pavilion at Brigh-
ton. That building may be regarded as the
physiognomlcal monument of George Nv. 1t
is his interior projected into stone and decor
alton. The secret stairways and passages
leading up to fictitious wardrobes, really doo,-
ways to rooms which his majesty desired to
visit, represent the prince who sent horsemen
to trample down laborers aG Peterloo whose
only guilt was to discuss their wrongs; the
bizarre carvings, which make fine stone look
like terra Gotta, illustrate the top who had
come to prefer hgment to fact. The interior
decorations do not represent so well the mon
arch whom Thackeray analyzed, and found
IN his hands only heap of pad, paint, gold
lace, but no man at all. Those frescoes 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 boundless freedom of their design and
co.ors. How this can be it will be difficult
TOR 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 hav-
ing grand field-day amidst ladies and pleas.
ure-grounds. The pillars are like BARRIERS
poles, with the archaeological serpent twined
around each instead of the red stripe. The
Pavilion is said to have found in Mr.. P. T.
Barnum its only admirer. English critics
have been rather hard upon it. Sydney Smith
said that the structure looked ''as if the dome
OF st. Pauls had come down to Brighton and
popped" William Cobbett thought that "a
good idea OF the building might be formed by
placing the pointed half of a large turnip up
on the middle OF board, with four smaller
ones at the corners" The main intent of
the building is to initiate Chinese pagoda,
and it was with that aim that the Prince of
Wales (for he seems TO have been mainly his
own architect) committed this enormity.
Two years ago the British Association for
the Advancement of Science gathered for
it charming summer seances at Brighton, and
the rooms OF the Royal Pavilion were placed
at their service. Never were the sessions of
the association so well housed, but it was
amusing TO witness the difficulty which even
eminent savants had in the rivalry between
the attractions on the walls and those Of
their papers. On the whole, it is to be feared
that the grotesque ornaments left by the
Regent carried the day. On one occasion
when discussion occurred in the anthropo-
logical section on serpent-worshipers, the
dragons and serpents on the wall were so ap-
propriate that the room had the appearance
of being frescoed for the archaeological pur-
poses of the society. But the ordinary con-
trast between the severe disquisitions CT the
scientific men and the luxuriant and barbar-
ic colors and forms of the place was not so
great as / witnessed recently in the same
place. In the room which above all the rest
might be regarded as the temple OF vanity,
hundred ritualistic gentlemen and ladies had
gathered toShold prayer-meetingl 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. 1
may add that large building which George
Nv. erected for his stable, and whose roof is a
vast dome, is now the chief concert-room of
Brighton, and that another outlying building
of the place is occupied by a fair picture-gal-
lery, good museum, and capital library
Fons ''Decorataue ART and architecture in
EtQland." By Moncure ID. Conway, in Har-
pel's Magazine for October.