The antecedent of this great work—the parent construction, of which it is the offspring, nobler than its sire—had more than a dash of poetry about it. The building we refer to is the glass conservatory at Chatsworth, contrived for the preservation of the gigantic water-lily, found on new-year’s day, 1837, on the river Berbice, in Demerara, and sent to England by sir Robert Schomburgh. The arrival of the extraordinary plant, with its six-foot leaf, shaped like an elegant salver, and adorned with broad rims of green and crimson, was warmly welcomed by that patron of botanical science, the duke of Devonshire, and forthwith committed to the charge of Mr. Paxton, then and still the scientific and tasteful horticulturist-in-chief at the far-famed paradise of the Peak. Improving upon all his former improvements in the arrangement of glass-houses, he contrived a fitting receptacle for this new specimen of the western flora, surnamed the “Victoria Regia,”—and “so well had everything been prepared for its reception, that it flourished as vigorously as if it had been restored to its native soil and climate. Its growth and development were astonishingly rapid, for on the 9th of November a flower was produced a yard in circumference. In little more than a month after the first seeds ripened, some of them were tilled; and on the 16th of February succeeding, young plants made their appearance. The extraordinary lily obeyed nature’s law of development with such unexpected rapidity, that it outgrew the dimensions of its home in little more than a month.” This circumstance gave rise to a new conservatory of much greater extent, out of which has grown the idea of the present, and much vaster one, for receiving the world’s industry—one which throws its predecessor into the shade, and which, in addition to its other wonders, included within its vitreous walls some fine old trees, above a hundred feet in height.
To return again to Chaucer; we cannot help thinking how much there is in this glass palace, and in what is connected with it, which would have seemed even to his credulous fancy, more strange and startling than any dream. Whence all the glass could come, needful for a building composed chiefly of such material, and of length more than quadruple that of St. Peter’s Abbey at Westminster, would have sorely puzzled our architect and poet to divine, in days when glass windows were so little used, that his great contemporary, William of Wykeham, who built Windsor Castle, was hard put to it to find twelve glaziers to do the work there, and actually had to press men into the service from different counties! The unity of principle, too, pervading the whole construction—everything in the great building being a dividend or multiple of twenty-four [14]—so different from the bold, yet not inharmonious, irregularity of the cathedrals, churches, and castles which Chaucer had seen; and the variety of uses sub-served by one and the same member of the edifice; columns serving the purpose of water-drains, and the floor being at once a ventilator and a dust-trap, securing conveniences of which he never thought, and strangely different from the cumbrous contrivances employed for such simple and necessary ends as were then contemplated,—would have startled and discomposed him with a long-enduring surprise. And, then, the haste with which the beautiful dream has been wrought out into well-compacted wood and glass and iron, the few months taken for its completion—rapid as the growth of the Victoria Regia; and the thousands of men engaged in its erection,—the preparation of the parts before they were brought together,—the strange machinery employed in the preparation,—the fact of the structure serving as a scaffold for itself—and the small expense of the whole, not amounting to more than one halfpenny per cubic foot,—these items in the history of the building would surely have made him open his eyes and lift up his hands in wild astonishment.
But the strangeness of the dream ends not here. We must think of what is included within this vast area, what is exhibited in its long aisles and galleries where are gathered and arranged the productions of every art in every clime—arts which five hundred years ago had no existence, and climes then undiscovered. Articles, a list of which will fill a portly volume; the handiwork of man and woman in every sort of usable material. Works of strength and skill for necessity and convenience—for comfort and luxury—for ornament and display—things carved, and moulded, and woven—vast and minute, bold and elegant, simple and elaborate, running through all the conceivable departments and grades of inventive industry! Groups, heaps, masses of all manner of cunning work!
And the whole of the contents in this hive of the world classified according to the clime from which they come! At the extreme east of the edifice one sees the productions of America, our young and ardent rival in ingenious toil. Next are the fruits of rising art in Russia, with specimens of skilful labour sent by Norwegians and Swedes. There are found rich stores from the shops of German craftsmen. The Zollverein exhibits its treasures in close vicinity to these; and beyond are seen contributions from the provinces of Austria. The Dutch, the Belgic, and the French vie with each other further on; and close to them, Portugal, Spain, and Italy also appear in friendly contest for the palm of pre-eminence. Switzerland, in the contiguous space, spreads out her various wares, beside which Brazil and Mexico deposit their rich freights; and then Egypt, Turkey, China, Greece, Persia, and Arabia, in close neighbourhood, exhibit a harvest of oriental taste. Crossing the transept, at once a garden and a refectory—where, beneath over-arching trees, and beside sparkling fountains, the spectator of this the world’s great horn of plenty may refresh himself with various delicacies—he is forthwith introduced to the products of the distant “Ind,” and the numerous ramifications of our colonial dependencies, to terminate at length this tour around the globe, performed under a case of glass, with a sight of the immense assemblage of our home manufactures, gathered from almost every town and village in the British Isles. Nine miles of table-room are thus passed in review; and it would require days and weeks to circumnavigate this epitome of the manufacturing world, and only to glance with anything like intelligence at the various divisions of its affluent stores. A traveller who has visited in detail the chief manufactories of European countries must feel himself to be in a kind of dream, when looking on these achievements of human industry brought together, not merely from the English provinces, and the European continent, but from the remotest regions of this and the other hemisphere. A dream, then, indeed, would it have seemed to the father of English poetry, with his limited knowledge of geography and art, could he have paced along these spacious alleys, lined with the peaceful spoils of all the earth.
The sight of these interesting objects is suggestive of important reflections. Imagining oneself left alone in the vast building—permitted to tread in silence the deserted halls—what musings might arise relative to themes awfully beautiful, which the giddy portion of the daily crowd within the walls have never entertained!
This repository of art, with all its varied contents, is the production of the human mind. Its constructive skill is singularly exhibited in the edifice itself; not such constructive skill as can be confounded with the instinct of the bird or bee, not a blind impulsive power; but a clear-eyed intelligence, which can survey, and consider, and contrive, and adapt, and fashion, according to the exigency of the case, in ways more various than art can classify. Of the power of human discovery, the detection of latent qualities in nature, a remarkable example is afforded in the history of the material out of which the building itself is chiefly wrought.—That the vitrification of sand and nitrium, noticed accidentally by the Phœnician mariners, according to the once generally received account by Pliny; or that some other occurrence at a much earlier period, as is now commonly believed, should have led men to perceive, in materials perfectly opaque, capabilities of transformation into a substance perfectly transparent; that out of dingy masses of mineral could be spread forth sheets of liquid diamonds, broad as the awning over the Coliseum at Rome; that it was possible to mould this brittle material, as if it were so much wax or clay; that, hard as rock, it might be blown into a bubble soft and light as a drop of water; that, white as the sunbeam, it could receive and retain all the dyes of the rainbow; constitute a series of marvels, forming but one out of a thousand chapters included in the annals of human discovery. The plastic power of the human mind is also here displayed in the almost infinitely diversified forms which, under its touch, the rude materials of nature have received. Timber and stone, cut into elegant shapes for useful purposes, or with astonishing truthfulness made to resemble the most delicate expressions of animated nature, even to the feather of a bird and the petal of a flower! Earth moulded by hand or machinery, and metals wrought or cast in a thousand mimic fashions!
Nor should we omit to notice, in these objects of art, a deep desire to embody in material things the beau idéal, to rise above the dull purpose of mere utility and convenience, to give a touch of beauty to the commonest aids and implements of life, to lift art to a lofty sphere, and to surround it with a brilliant halo. Man is seen as the lover of artistic perfection, tasking his powers to conceive and execute what shall at least approach a standard too lofty for him yet to measure, but of the existence of which he has the consciousness, deep though dim. He may be said to fight a battle with the obstinate resistance of material nature, and though oft defeated, still struggles for the victory! The spiritual takes possession of the physical, as a foreign realm, which it seeks to subdue to its own purposes. The distinct essence of the soul is also asserted. Its attempt to rule over all around, and to enrich itself with the spoils of the conquered region, is not a contest with a co-ordinate and equal power, but it is the effort of a kingly nature so formed by God, created in his image, and inaugurated into regal office, at the beginning when the charge was given, “Replenish the earth and subdue it.” The superiority of the mind over all material nature is thus unequivocally proclaimed.
And amidst all this, does he not catch glimpses of things purer, nobler, and more enduring than the things of earth? Does he not feel at times that there are objects existing somewhere, incomparably more beautiful than any work of art? Has he not raised within him a conception of invisible and spiritual realms more wonderful than the material? And is there not also to be recognised, in the ambition of the artist who strives to produce a work which his admirers vainly call immortal, a strong craving for some after-existence—a flinching from the thought, that death is to put an end to all—a wish, at least, to impress some characteristic idea of his own on some portion or particle of the great whole of things, so that he may live by representation if not in consciousness.
Yet, while such musings on the works of men open up to us deeps of power and beauty in the soul, they only reveal a small division of the vast world of human nature. We visit but a single province of the intellectual realm: we leave unexplored the vast domains enriched by the growths of literature and science; while the emotions, social affections, moral feelings, and religious capacities of the soul remain untouched. No account is here taken of conscience, and of the capability of knowing, loving, and serving his Maker, which form the highest distinction of man’s nature. Yet even from our partial and limited view of the subject, we derive no slight conviction of the immortality of that nature to which such attributes as we have described belong. Great as may be the mystery of a future existence, most certainly the mysteries connected with the denial of this truth are greater still. It involves the supposition that what in nature, power, and capability is perfectly distinct from the material form in which it dwells, and by which it works, is to perish with it:—that the inmate is to die with the decay of his dwelling, the artist expire with the breaking of his implement;—that a being possessed of unbounded capacities of improvement is destined to advance only a few steps in his proper career, and then be arrested in his course for ever;—that a life of thought and feeling, which contains the germs of higher thoughts and feelings, awaiting, as essential to their full development, other influences than those which are shed on earth, is to be succeeded by eternal unconsciousness and oblivion;—and that a soul which finds in the present life a range too narrow for the full and vigorous scope of its nascent powers and feelings, is to be disappointed in its earnest longings and deep-seated hopes. It involves the supposition of a Divine design intimated, and then thrown aside—a Divine promise pledged and broken. The Great Architect would appear constructing a portico as if introductory to a magnificent temple, and then, suddenly stopping short in the work, breaking it down, and scattering its beauty in the dust.
The construction of the Crystal Palace, with its contents, is a monument to the superiority of mind over matter; and that superiority indicates some great destiny hereafter. Immortality rises upon the eye of reason in the hazy distance: but confidence in relation to the future state must come from another quarter, through the exercise of faith. “Life and immortality” are brought “to light through the gospel.”