420 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

required to build a screw frigate, or a tubular bridge, as a hall of glass;-all these are works characteristic of the age; and all, in their several ways, deserve our highest admiration, but not admiration of the kind that is rendered to poetry or to art. We may cover the German Ocean with frigates, and bridge the Bristol Channel with iron, and roof the county of Middlesex with crystal, and yet not possess one Milton, or Michael Angelo.

5. Well, it may be replied, we need our bridges, and have pleasure in our palaces; but we do not want Miltons, nor Michael Angelos.

Truly, it seems so; for, in the year in which the first Crystal Palace was built, there died among us a man whose name, in after-ages, will stand with those of the great of all time. Dying, he bequeathed to the nation the whole mass of his most cherished works; and for these three years, while we have been building this colossal receptacle for casts and copies of the art of other nations, these works of our own greatest painter have been left to decay in a dark room near Cavendish Square,¹ under the custody of an aged servant.

This is quite natural. But it is also memorable.²

6. There is another interesting fact connected with the history of the Crystal Palace as it bears on that of the art of Europe, namely, that in the year 1851, when all that glittering roof was built, in order to exhibit the paltry arts of our fashionable luxury-the carved bedsteads of Vienna, and glued toys of Switzerland, and gay jewellery of France³

¹ [That is, in Turner’s own gallery in his house in Queen Anne Street. The disposition of his pictures under his will, long litigated, was not settled till March 1856.]

² [The MS. continues:-

“The Florentines exiled their Dante, and whitewashed the paintings of their Giotto. Five hundred years passed by, and they scrape the whitewash away in crumbs, bring to light the faded portrait of the exile, to exclaim in triumph ‘I’ abbiamo, il nostro poeta.’ Is this indeed the course of nature? Must it be so for ever?”

For the discovery of Giotto’s portrait of Dante, see Vol. IV. p. 188 n.]

³ [In the MS. there is an additional passage-a digression on the Great Exhibition of 1851-which is of interest:-]

“I cannot help noticing with some surprise the conclusions said to have been arrived at by the thinking portion of the English public, in the course

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