To-day being the first of the New Year, this Exhibition was as usual
opened to the public, and we think all true lovers of Art will agree
that it is a most satisfactory one, and displays more than the usual
average merit of our Exhibitions, whether we consider the aggregate
number of important works, their size, their execution, or the noble
prices they have realised to their authors; such prices having been,
according to the lately adopted custom, published in the catalogues
issued after the day of the Private View, when connoisseurs have made
their selection of the works not previously disposed of in the
_ateliers_ of the artists. This (which is, after all, the true test of
success) greatly enhances the interest of these catalogues, affording
a guide as to the degree of public favour in which the respective
artists are held. Reform in the Academy itself, so long demanded, has
been at last effected, in spite of all the obstacles thrown in the way
of the reformers, who desired to break down the monopoly so long
maintained by the painters and sculptors, who would only consent to
the admission of a limited number of architects and engravers into
their privileged body. Now, at last, the claims of all artists have
been recognised, and Decorators, Carpet-designers, Metalworkers and
Electrotypers, Wood Carvers, &c. &c., have been admitted within its
walls, and the magic letters R.A. may frequently be found attached to
the names of the leading members of many of our manufacturing firms.
In fact, we may say that Painting and Sculpture have found their
level, and now that the great canon of Art has been thoroughly
established, and it is acknowledged that _Utility_, not _Beauty_, is
its only legitimate aim, and Scientific Reality and Accuracy, not wild
attempts at attaining a so-called Ideality, its true goal of
perfection, the merits of these too-long unrecognised geniuses have
been found to surpass all others. The mechanical helps with which
Science has supplied us have rendered it possible to accomplish feats
of which our ancestors had no idea. Photography has enabled us to
reproduce all possible forms, thus securing, with great economy of
labour, the facile execution of stupendous works adapted for the
decoration of the outside as well as the inside of our buildings. In
this Exhibition, of course, these gigantic works cannot be seen, but
the smaller ones by the same artists give us good specimens of their
power. No. 3,004, for instance, is well worthy the attention of
visitors. It is intended, as the catalogue informs us, for the wall
decoration of the Terminus of the Great Central Balloon Station, and
gives a very wonderfully correct representation of the three Provinces
into which London is now divided, as seen from the distance of six
miles above the height of St. Paul’s. Every roof and chimney is
accurately represented, and every feature of the smallest interest, on
the scale of an inch to a mile. Portrait-painting may be said to have
been entirely superseded now that the Sun has been compelled to add
colour to form in the pictures taken by the photographic camera, and
Landscape Art has died out in its old inaccurate fanciful sense,
having been succeeded by a more scientific method of representing
Nature as she really is. The geological formation of every mountain,
the physiology of each tree and blade of grass, as determined by
expert geologists and botanists, will alone satisfy us in this age of
science, and we demand this accuracy from all who pretend to record
the aspect of our country. We find all these requirements met in the
works of the distinguished landscape painter of No. 60,072, “View of
the Great Smelting Works,” in the iron district, lately discovered in
the North of Scotland. We venture to affirm that none but a thoroughly
educated man of science could have painted the details of this
picture, and we cannot bestow higher praise. The “Interior of the
Factory,” No. 20,621, is also a work deserving of much commendation
for the minuteness of its detail, which must be examined with a strong
magnifier to be thoroughly enjoyed—the complicated arrangement of the
machinery escaping the naked eye; also the texture of the materials
which are being manufactured into webs of the most gossamer-like
lightness from heaps of rough coarse yarns and woollen threads. The
faces of the operatives are exquisitely rendered, and you seem to hear
the noise of the wheels and cranks.
The Sculpture Gallery is perhaps less attractive to the general public
than are the pictures; still it contains some interesting works, and
the tailors and milliners who were consulted by the art critics as to
the details of the costumes of the portrait statues, gave their
opinion that very few errors had been committed this year, thanks to
the advice tendered by them at sundry lectures delivered on the
subject last summer. Our statesmen and benefactors are no longer
represented in dress, or undress, in which they were never beheld, but
in the exact apparel which they actually wore; and future ages will be
afforded a correct idea not only of their features, but of any bodily
defects they may have laboured to conceal. Thus an archæological and
historical interest will attach to these effigies, and truth will be
upheld. Science has done much for this art also. Mechanical means have
assisted this accuracy of representation—notably in the application of
metal, which can now be applied to the dress, &c., where great
elaboration of detail is required, so as to admit, for example, of
stamping out patterns in lace ruffles, and imitating the very texture
of the materials, while the resemblance to marble is perfect.
Especially useful is this invention for the application of colour; and
we defy anyone to detect the difference of substance without the
closest observation, such as a skilful workman alone could bestow. The
advantages offered by this discovery are obvious in the case of veiled
statues, so much admired by the British public. (See Nos. 720 to
1,293.) We cannot bestow too much praise on the exquisite polish of
surface and delicacy of the workmanship of many of these works,
notably in the feathers of the bird’s wing in No. 2,320, “A Chinese
Scullion plucking a Goose.” Compare this with the rude and uncouth
attempts of the ancient Greeks to idealize the naked human form!
_THEATRES._
At this season in former times, when boys were foolishly allowed to
leave school for the holidays, the theatres (as some of us are old
enough to remember) were much frequented, and were principally used
for a silly kind of entertainment called Pantomimes. Of the three
theatres in London which still continue to be devoted to some sort of
dramatic performance, and have not been transferred into Lecture
Halls, one only (the _Gaiety_) seems successful this winter. Crowds
attend every night to witness “School,” a piece in which there is no
folly of love-making, but the anxieties of a Competitive Examination
for Honours in Science are finely realised. A tragic interest is
imparted to the plot by making the hero become insane just as he has
achieved the object of his ambition. At the _Haymarket_ there has been
a failure which we fear will result in the ruin of the lessee. This
enterprising gentleman imagined it might be possible to revive in
these days an interest in some of the old plays once popular in this
country, and after (it appears) long consultation and deliberation,
determined to bring the _Merchant of Venice_ upon the boards. It was
hoped that the proposal of one of the characters of the piece, named
Shylock, to cut a pound of flesh from another, and the discussion
whether this could be done without the effusion of blood, would excite
the interest of the spectators. Unfortunately, as the author of the
drama (Shakespeare, we are informed) stops short at the very crisis of
the physiological experiment, and allows the intended subject to
escape, the audience not unnaturally have exhibited disappointment,
and the piece has been pronounced a failure.
At the St. James’s Theatre the manager has likewise made a mistake in
reviving Moliere’s _Malade Imaginaire_. We see no humour in this,
so-called, comedy. Where is the point, for example, of the supposed
jest of making the young medical student, _Thomas Diafoirus_, present
his lady-love with a ticket of admission to a dissection? The act was
a natural and delicate attention.
The next department of the _Age of Science_ is very short as usual.
_COURT._
Her Most Gracious Majesty, accompanied by the Princess Urania, and
attended by Dr. Brown and Dr. Robinson, Lords Physicians in Waiting,
honoured Dr. Scalpel’s studio by a visit, during which Dr. Scalpel
exhibited to the youthful Princess several beautiful preparations of
various cutaneous diseases, and of the morbid anatomy of Lupus and
Elephantiasis.
Sir R. Atmosphere, Astronomer Royal, Sir A. Diggory, Geologist in
Ordinary to her Majesty, and the eminent Chemist, Herr Von
Pestle-Mortar, had the honour of dining with the Queen at Windsor
Castle at 10 P.M. The Lord Doctor of Winchester, Her Majesty’s Medical
Confessor, said the new Grace (“May good digestion wait on appetite”)
at the commencement of the repast, and the Band, with chorus of male
and female voices, performed at the conclusion the Hymn, “Oh, take thy
pill,—Oh, take thy pill,—Oh, take thy pilgrim home.”
In examining the journals of a foreign country, the intelligent reader
will generally be able to gather some insight into the habits of the
natives by passing his eye down the columns of advertisements and noting
the class of objects presented for sale. In the _Age of Science_ there
are no less than fifty the vast pages we have described devoted to
announcements and puffs of the most astonishing variety, including
hundreds of articles whose names and uses are at present quite unknown.
Of advertisements of servants and other persons requiring employment we
have not found a single instance, but there were at least twenty columns
of invitations to “Ladies and Gentlemen” to be so kind as to act for the
advertiser in the capacity of housekeeper, steward, superintendent of
the house, or some equally well-sounding office, the remuneration
offered being at the lowest, it would seem, about £200 a year, with “the
use of a steam carriage,” and “every other luxury desired.”
We must, however, leave the columns of ADVERTISEMENTS for future
examination, and proceed to give an account of the more important LAW
AND POLICE REPORTS, which form, perhaps, the most surprising part of the
_Age of Science_. It would appear that it had become necessary to hold
assizes in at least twenty towns and villages in every county; and that
the judges were incessantly occupied with cases of robbery, garrotting,
arson, rape, stabbing, poisoning, and (strange to remark) a number of
offences with new names, of whose nature we can merely guess, but which
appear to involve mortal injury to the victim. The words employed, such
as “Debarrassing,” “Morbifying,” “Disbraining,” “Petroleumization,”
“Electroding,” “Mesmeraciding,” &c., seem to have become so common as to
need no definition, and to have taken their place in the statute book.
For all these crimes the same class of penalties are allotted; the
convicted persons are invariably sentenced by the presiding judge to so
many weeks’ or months’ detention—not in prison, but in the Penal
Hospitals of their respective towns or villages. The principle on which
crime is thus visited appears from the addresses of several of the
magistrates, who remark that the “diseased minds” exhibited by the
robbers and murderers “obviously require careful medical treatment,” and
that they trust that the eminent Physicians and Surgeons to whom the
prisoners are consigned will not fail to complete their cure. In
numerous cases, as the offenders have been sentenced many times
previously, the judge speaks of their crime as exhibiting “an
intermittent fever” of homicidal rage, or of covetousness. Remarks are
also always made by the reporters as to the “abnormal cerebral
development” or “morbid symptoms” exhibited by the criminals, and the
tone assumed in speaking of them (even in cases of what we should term
the most cruel and brutal murders) is invariably one of scientific study
and calm philosophic analysis.
A very different method of treatment, however, is adopted towards
another class of offenders, whom it would appear the authorities in the
_Age of Science_ are determined to put down in grim earnest. That our
readers may not suppose we mistake the sense of the amazing paragraphs
in which these new features of English legislation appear, we quote them
as they stand in the _Age of Science_, pp. 63 and 64.
_POLICE._
At the Mansion House this morning, 79 men and 140 women were summoned
for the non-attendance of their boys under two years old at the Public
Infants’ Science Classes in the new Kinder Garten in the Tower.
Various pleas were, as usual, put forth by the defendants, purporting
to prove in some cases that the children were ill with small-pox and
scarlet fever, and in several instances that they were dying or dead.
Mr. Alderman Busby remarked that “if they were to listen to such
pleas, children would grow up to three or four years old without
learning even the rudiments of astronomy or palæontology.” He ordered
all the fathers to be publicly flogged, and the mothers to receive
each a dozen stripes of the birch privately, in the State Whipping
House, and to stand on benches for three days in the nearest
Elementary School during school hours.
[Similar judgments are recorded at Westminster, Worship Street,
Clerkenwell, and several other police-courts in London and the
provincial towns.]
_MIDDLESEX SESSIONS._
The Duke and Duchess of Broadacres, the Marquis of Carabas, Lady Clara
Vere de Vere, and the Lady Adeline Amundeville were brought up (in
chains) to receive sentence on the charges (fully proved against them
last week) of having deceived the Officers of Domestic Inspection
respecting their own and their children’s Canination and Porcination.
It was shown that all the defendants had been Vaccinated according to
law four times during the last twelvemonth, and Equinated twice during
the late prevalence of glanders, but though Rabies and the Measles
were both known to be raging in London, they had not only neglected to
present themselves and their children at the Canine and Porcine
Stations in Queen’s Gate, but had deceived the Inspectors as above
stated by exhibiting the former scars for the latter. Being unable to
produce any medical certificate showing that they had obeyed the law,
and having been found “guilty” by a special jury (containing, of
course, the legal proportion—three-fourths—of Medical graduates), all
five prisoners were sentenced by Mr. Justice Draco to the extreme
penalty of the law. They will be vivisected for the instruction of the
students at the magnificent new School of Physiology in Carlton
Gardens, as soon after the opening of the session as may be
convenient. Some sympathy was expressed in court for the Duke of
Broadacres, who, being an elderly nobleman in feeble health, seems to
have feared superstitiously the processes (unknown in his youth) of
using, for the purpose of inoculations, the saliva from mad dogs, as a
preventive of hydrophobia, on the principle of “a hair of the dog
which has bitten you.” The expression of misplaced public
commiseration was instantly checked by the learned Judge, and the
prisoners were removed, exhibiting many signs of trepidation. Lady
Clara Vere de Vere implored that she might be even Ratified sooner
than given over to the students, but her request was, of course,
sternly refused. It is indeed specially fortunate that so sensitive a
subject as this young and delicate-looking lady is likely to prove
should fall, in course of law, under physiological investigation at
the moment when the exquisite experiments of Dr. Blacksmith on the
Nervous System are in course of exposition.
Even these startling announcements, however, are less surprising than
the following:—
_SANITARY OFFICE._
Dec. 25, 1977.
The proceedings of this most high and solemn Court in the Realm were,
as usual, held with closed doors. There were present five Lord
Doctors, and sentences were passed, after due deliberation, and (it is
rumoured) the application of the Question, ordinary and extraordinary,
on nine obstinate heretics. Three of these were members of that
fanatical sect, the Peculiar People, who refuse to consult physicians
on the ground of religious scruples—an instance of the survival of
outworn superstitions scarcely credible in this enlightened _Age of
Science_. One of these miserable delinquents, named John Nokes,
alleged that his twelve children had enjoyed unbroken health till his
youngest little boy cut his finger. The wretched father, instead of
hurrying instantly for the nearest surgeon, himself dressed the
child’s wound (which appears to have been superficial) with adhesive
plaster, and gave the child a fragment of toffee to stop his crying,
in lieu of the proper therapeutic remedies for the shock to the
nervous system which any medical attendant would have exhibited. The
crime came fortunately to the knowledge of the police, who immediately
brought the matter before the Sanitary Office. A second offender of
the same sect, named Styles, had, it seems, an attack of Podagra, but
took no advice, and having rather quickly recovered, was in hopes (it
is supposed) that his neglect to obey the law would pass undiscovered.
A crutch seen in his room raised the suspicion of a visitor, and the
offender was eventually arrested. When interrogated by the Lord
Presiding Doctor of the Sanitary Court as to the motives of his crime,
the man (as his sentence sets forth) actually dared to reply by
quoting a passage from an obsolete book, wherein it is narrated of a
certain King, “Now Asa was diseased in his feet, yet in his disease he
sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his
fathers.”[1] This narrative, as Styles had the audacity to argue, was
an authentic, and, indeed, inspired report of a fit of the gout—its
diagnosis, treatment, and the result. As he did not desire to “sleep
with his fathers,” he (Styles) had avoided consulting the physicians,
and had endeavoured to consult the Lord by following the dictates of
common sense, and the consequence was that he had recovered with
unusual rapidity. The Lord President was moved to great indignation by
the obduracy of this heretic. He remarked that the book which
contained such a passage—a volume which, he was happy to say, he had,
for his part, never read—ought to be burnt before the doors of the
London University; and as to the prisoner Styles, it would be useless
for him to hope to escape sharing in the same combustion.
Footnote 1: