OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE 419

and sumptuousness of practice,-the great result, the admirable and long-expected conclusion is, that in the centre of the nineteenth century, we suppose ourselves to have invented a new style of architecture, when we have magnified a conservatory!

4. In Mr. Laing’s speech,¹ at the opening of the Palace, he declares that “an entirely novel order of architecture, producing, by means of unrivalled mechanical ingenuity, the most marvellous and beautiful effects, sprang into existence to provide a building.”* In these words, the speaker is not merely giving utterance to his own feelings. He is expressing the popular view of the facts, nor that a view merely popular, but one which has been encouraged by nearly all the professors of art of our time.

It is to this, then, that our Doric and Palladian pride is at last reduced! We have vaunted the divinity of the Greek ideal-we have plumed ourselves on the purity of our Italian taste-we have cast our whole souls into the proportions of pillars and the relations of orders-and behold the end! Our taste, thus exalted and disciplined, is dazzled by the lustre of a few rows of panes of glass; and the first principles of architectural sublimity, so far sought, are found all the while to have consisted merely in sparkling and in space.

Let it not be thought that I would depreciate (were it possible to depreciate) the mechanical ingenuity which has been displayed in the erection of the Crystal Palace, or that I underrate the effect which its vastness may continue to produce on the popular imagination. But mechanical ingenuity is not the essence either of painting or architecture,² and largeness of dimension does not necessarily involve nobleness of design. There is assuredly as much ingenuity

* See the Times of Monday, June 12th.

¹ [Samuel Laing (1812-1897), at that time chairman of the Crystal Palace Company, and also for many years of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. The words quoted are from the Address to the Queen.]

² [See Seven Lamps, ch. i. § 1 (Vol. VIII. pp. 27-28).]

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