Returning, another long ascent leads to the Whispering Gallery, below the windows of the cupola, where visitors are requested to sit down upon a matted seat that they may be shown how a low whisper uttered against the wall can be distinctly heard from the other side of the dome. Hence we reach the Stone Gallery, outside the base of the dome, whence we may ascend to the Golden Gallery at its summit. This last ascent is interesting, as being between the outer and inner domes, and showing how completely different in construction one is from the other. The view from the gallery is vast, but generally, beyond a certain distance, it is shrouded in smoke. Sometimes, one stands aloft in a clear atmosphere, while beneath the fog rolls like a sea, through which the steeples and towers are just visible "like the masts of stranded vessels." Hence one may study the anatomy of the fifty-four towers which Wren was obliged to build after the Fire in a space of time which would only have properly sufficed for the construction of four. The same characteristics, more and more painfully diluted, but always slightly varied, occur in each. Bow Church, St. Magnus, St. Bride, and St. Vedast are the best.
The Great Bell of St. Paul's (of 1716), which hangs in the south tower, bears the inscription, "Richard Phelps made me, 1716." It only tolls on the deaths and funerals of the royal family, of Bishops of London, Deans of St. Paul's, and Lord Mayors who die in their mayoralty.
THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE CRYSTAL PALACE [Footnote: From "Notes on
England." By arrangement with the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
I have letters of introduction and a ticket of admission to the British Museum. About the Grecian marbles, the original Italian drawings, about the National Gallery, the Hampton Court galleries, the pictures at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and the private collections, I shall say nothing. Still, what marvels and what historical tokens are all these things, five or six specimens of high civilization manifested in a perfect art, all differing greatly from that which I now examine, and so well adapted for bringing into relief the good and the evil. To do that would fill a volume by itself.
The Museum library contains six hundred thousand volumes; the reading-room is vast, circular in form, and covered with a cupola, so that no one is far from the central office, and no one has the light in his eyes. All the lower stage of shelves is filled with works of reference—dictionaries, collections of biographies, classics of all sorts—which can be consulted on the spot, and are excellently arranged. Moreover, a small plan placed on each table indicates where they are placed and the order in which they stand.
Each seat is isolated; there is nothing in front but the woodwork of the desk, so that no one is annoyed by the presence of his neighbor. The seats and the tables are covered with leather, and are very clean; there are two pens to each desk, the one being steel, the other a quill pen; there is also a small stand at the side, upon which a second volume, or the volume from which the extracts are being copied may be placed. To procure a book, the title is written on a form, which is handed to the central office. The attendant brings the book to you himself, and does so without delay. I have made trial of this, even in the case of works seldom asked for. The holder of the book is responsible till he has received back the form filled up when he applied for it. For ladies a place is reserved, which is a delicate piece of attention.
What a contrast if we compare this with our great library at the Louvre, with its long room, with half of the readers dazzled by the light in their eyes, the readers being packed together at a common table, the titles of the books being called out in loud tones, the long time spent in waiting at the central office. The French Library has been reformed according to the English model, yet without being rendered as convenient. Nevertheless, ours is the more liberally conducted; its doors are opened to all comers. Here one must be a "respecable" person; no one is admitted unless vouched for by two householders. This is said to be enough; as it is, those gain admission who are worse than shabby—men in working clothes, and some without shoes—they have been introduced by clergymen. The grant for buying new books is seven or eight times larger than ours. When shall we learn to spend our money in a sensible way?
In other matters they are not so successful, such as the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, for instance, which formed the building for the Great Exhibition, and which is now a sort of museum of curiosities. It is gigantic, like London itself, and like so many things in London, but how can I portray the gigantic? All the ordinary sensations produced by size are intensified several times here. It is two miles in circumference and has three stories of prodigious height; it would easily hold five or six buildings like our Palace of Industry, and it is of glass; it consists, first, of an immense rectangular structure rising toward the center in a semicircle like a hothouse, and flanked by two Chinese towers; then, on either side, long buildings descend at right angles, enclosing the garden with its fountains, statues, summer houses, strips of turf, groups of large trees, exotic plants, and beds of flowers. The acres of glass sparkle in the sunlight; at the horizon an undulating line of green eminences is bathed in the luminous vapor which softens all colors and spreads an expression of tender beauty over an entire landscape.
Always the same English method of decoration—on the one side a park and natural embellishments, which it must be granted, are beautiful and adapted to the climate; on the other, the building, which is a monstrous jumble, wanting in style, and bearing witness not to taste, but to English power. The interior consists of a museum of antiquities, composed of plaster facsimiles of all the Grecian and Roman statues scattered over Europe; of a museum of the Middle Ages; of a Revival museum; of an Egyptian museum; of a Nineveh museum; of an Indian museum; of a reproduction of a Pompeiian house; of a reproduction of the Alhambra. The ornaments of the Alhambra have been molded, and these molds are preserved in an adjoining room as proofs of authenticity. In order to omit nothing, copies have been made of the most notable Italian paintings, and these are daubs worthy of a country fair.