feet, form a succession of available galleries for viewing the surrounding scenery. There are broad basins of water between the flights of steps leading from the upper to the lower terrace, into which numerous dolphins, ranged in the vaulted niches of the terrace-wall, spout a continuous stream. The grand water-works are arranged at the bottom of the main avenue.

Before entering the building for a brief survey of its contents, we may as well perform what will be expected of us, by stating, as shortly as possible, the actual dimensions of the present structure, referring at the same time to that of the Hydepark palace. The entire length of the new pile is 1608 feet, that of the former being 1848 feet; the entire length of the central transept is 384 feet, against 456 feet, the greatest depth in the first building; the height from the floor to the roof of the nave is 110 feet, against 66 feet, the height of the former nave; and the height from the floor to the center of the middle transept is 180 feet, against 108 feet, the height of the first transept. Owing to the fact that the ground upon which the new palace is built shelves considerably toward the park, the elevation on that side is 194 feet, an increase in height which tells well upon the general appearance. The actual space inclosed by the new building is 542,592 feet, or about 131 acres, against 767,150 feet, or about 19 acres, in the old one. Thus it will be seen that while the inclosed area is nearly one-third less in the new pile than in the old, the height is about two-thirds greater-and it will be readily imagined that proportions so entirely different give a new character to the present undertaking. Add to this, that what was formerly the side is now the front of the edifice—that the device of breaking the long flatness of the façade by deep recesses at the ends of the transepts has been resorted to, and the immenselyimproved effect is readily conceivable, even without the aid of pictorial representation. But without such aid, or a personal visit, it is not easy to conceive what a really picturesque object the new palace becomes when seen from one of the many favorable points of view which the park presents. Our engraving perpetuates but one aspect of the picture, which the spectator may contemplate with renewed pleasure from a hundred different spots.

On entering the building from the ter

race, we find ourselves in an underground chamber, to which has been given the name of Paxton's tunnel. We mentioned above that the ground slopes downward from the rear to the front of the building; the descent from one side to the other is as much as twenty-five feet, and of this circumstance the architect has availed himself in constructing a long tunnel or basement story, extending the whole length of the edifice. A portion of this long chamber is allotted for the exhibition of working machinery, and another portion is fitted up with boilers for the heating of the water designed to raise the temperature of the interior in cold weather. To effect this, above fifty miles of iron piping, seven inches in diameter, are laid down beneath the floors, and connected with ventilators traversing the galleries, making together a huge arterial system dispensing warmth to every part. The pipes are so arranged that the water, after circulating through them, and parting with its caloric, returns to the boilers to be again heated. The furnaces will consume their own smoke, and thus there will be no visible effluvia projected through the central shafts of the water-towers at either end of the building. Experiments which have been made with the warming apparatus have satisfactorily proved its efficiency.

On ascending to the level floor-line, and proceeding to the end of the nave toward the Dulwich Road, we are enabled to compare the effect of the interior view with our recollections of the same effect in the former structure. Indisputably, one striking charm is nearly lost altogether. We allude to that dim, mysterious, hazy, and eminently picturesque effect which arose from the much greater length of the Hyde-park palace, which delighted, because it deluded the eye of the spectator with the idea of unfathomable depth and distance. Here there is no mystery to deal with; the eye commands the entire perspective, and, as it were, takes possession of the whole with a glance. In all other respects, however, the interior aspect of the Sydenham Palace is infinitely superior to that of its predecessor. The perspective of the long, lofty, arching nave excels the low, flat roof of the exhibition as much as the vaulted arch of a Roman temple does the ceiling of a barrack. The addition of forty-four feet to the height gives an air of sublimity and

grandeur to the new building wanting to the old. Again, the monotonous repetition of columns and girders, complained of as wearisome to the eye in the first building, is avoided in the new one by the projection, at regular intervals, of pairs of columns, which, advancing forward into the nave, break the perspective lines on either side, and impart a degree of variety to the view. On ascending to the galleries, where space is allotted for the different classes of manufactured goods, and viewing the area below from various points, the old idea of 'vastness grows upon us again, and by a judicious arrangement of the botanical and artistic specimens, that picturesque element of indefinite extent is fully restored. We must now turn our attention to the

works of art which form the principal features of attraction to this realm of fairy land. We enter first, as it happens to be nearest at hand, what is called the Pompeian Court, which is nothing more or less than a fac-simile of a Roman mansion restored to its beauty and brilliancy as it existed in Pompeii nearly eighteen hundred years ago. The building, as it stands here, complete in all its ornate elegance and luxury, presents a spectacle which can nowhere else be witnessed. In design it combines the most enchanting simplicity with the most elaborate art, and, though never overloaded with ornament, is yet an example of all that ornamentation can accomplish in the production of chaste architectural effect. The apartments, which

GROUP OF EXTINCT MONSTERS.

as to harmonize thoroughly, and to suggest, as they should do, the ideas of tranquillity and repose. This has been the work principally of foreign artists-the ornamentation having been intrusted to Signior Abbati.

Leaving behind us the collection of plants and botanical specimens, and turn

we advance through groups of busts, and statues, and colossal fragments, toward the Fine Arts Courts. A colored plan of the lower floor, exhibited on a boarding, shows us that the several courts have been arranged with a view to chronological order, and that we are in the right direction for the first, which is the Egyptian Court.

The entrance to this court is guarded by recumbent lions, and we proceed through corridors lined with massive pillars of every kind of Egyptian architecture, crowned with capitals of characteristic device, among which the lotus leaf figures prominently. Sphinxes, memnons, monarchs, deities, or idols of various kinds, ranged beneath the cornices, rest upright against the walls, or seated or couchant on slabs, greet the eye.

On the right hand-side of the court is seen a reproduction-little more than onethird of the height of the original-of part of the entrance-hall of columns of the palace at Karnak, the ruins of which are the most ancient and at the same time the most gigantic and most splendid in the world. They stand on a portion of the site, and formed a part of the ancient city of Thebes, and date from at least fifteen hundred years before the Christian era. The portion of the temple at Karnak here represented is not the most colossal part of that structure. The largest columns among these prodigious ruins are sixty-six feet in height and of the diameter of twelve feet, and they are inclosed between rows of columns forty-two feet high, and little more than nine feet in diameter. It is these smaller columns, reproduced upon a scale little more than one-third of the size of the originals, which represent Karnak in the Egyptian Court of the Sydenham Palace. Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon the manner in which this magnificent assemblage of ponderous pillars has been reared and elaborately finished off on every portion of their surface. Though so small, relatively to their originals, they are yet vast enough to symbolize strongly the ideas of strength and durability. The columns, as well as the walls, are covered profusely with hieroglyphics, also reduced to the same scale, and colored with bright tints of red, green, blue, yellow, and black. If the coloring of these columns be as faithfully reproduced as the forms-and we have no ground for questioning that it is so—i -it is very certain that the ancient Egyptians knew but little of the art of the colorist, and were infinitely behind the lowest of civilized moderns in that respect. We must pass the rock tombs of Aboosimbel, the columns from the temple of Denderah, and fifty other things which the visitor will pause to examine for himself, and

must hasten on to the Greek Court-the next on our route.

It is an assemblage of the most marvelous productions of human genius. Here are the matchlesss sculptures from the pediments of the Parthenon; the Theseus, the idol of artists and sculptors, old and young; the Ceres and Proserpine, with their inimitable draperies; the Ilissus, and the famous head of the horse from the chariot of the goddess Nox. Here also is the Niobe group, the Farnese Hercules and Flora, the Wrestlers, the Farnese Juno, the Dying Gladiator, and a number of other unrivaled works copied from the originals in the various museums and private galleries of Europe, which men in all countries have undertaken pilgrimages to see, and which have revived the arts of nations. Turning our eyes aloft, we see the noble frieze of the Parthenon elevated to an appropriate height; but we are puzzled to account for the strange tricks which some whimsical personage has been playing with the famous basso relievos. It would appear as though carte blanche had been given to some traveling showman to do his best to improve them, and that he had painted them as near as he could guess in the colors of life. The result has been the transformation of the works of the old Greek Phidiases into the works of Mrs. Glass or Mrs. Grundy, molded in colored sugar to ornament the top of a twelfth-cake. Others of the figures, not colored, are stuck into a bright blue background, with a result so utterly and instantaneously destructive of the delicate effect of this species of sculpture, that the only wonder is, that the hand which held the brush with the blue paint in it did not drop it instinctively after the first touch. This experiment, we should hope, will be conclusive as to the propriety of coloring the works of the sculptor, whether ancient or modern.

In the Roman Court is given the idea of Roman palatial luxury at its greatest height. The style of architecture is gorgeous and solid, the ornamentation of the most elaborate, and most expensive kind; but all without heaviness. The Roman sculpture differs from that of the Greek, much to the advantage of the latter. It is less graceful in design, less truthful in form, less poetical in conception; but is more practically useful, being confined very much to mythology, portraiture, and the

emblematizing of historical events. Among the chief sculptures to be found here are the Young Hercules, the Apollo Belvidere, the Diana with the Fawn, the Tortonia Hercules, together with a number of colossal busts, among which is the Jupiter Serapis, and a collection of Borghese and Vatican vases. There are also some fine bassi-relievi, including those from the Arch of Titus, which represent the leading of the Jews into captivity. There are also models of the Roman Forum, of the Colosseum in its perfect state, and of the celebrated temple of Neptune at Pæstum.

From the Roman Court we pass on to the court of the Alhambra, which constitutes the extreme northern refreshmentroom. The Alhambra, the ancient palace of the Moorish kings of Granada, is the most marvelous specimen extant of Moorish architecture. The portion here represented consists of the Court of Lions and the Hall of Justice. In the center of the Court of Lions stands the fountain, supported upon the backs of twelve of those royal animals. It is impossible to give an idea by mere description of the amount of manual labor bestowed upon the gettingup of this fac-simile of Moorish architecture. The whole erection from roof to floor is a real mechanical wonder, the ceiling of the hall forming especially a puzzle not easily solved. Here and there, on the walls and cornices, checkered with minute patterns in gold and vivid color, are Arabic characters and mottoes. It is well situated for a refreshment-room, standing at the end of the nave, out of the way of the stream of visitors, and, being free from sculptures and statuary, affords ample room for hungry and thirsty guests.

Before crossing the building to the courts on the other side of the nave, we spend a few moments in the Assyrian Court, where, under the direction of Mr. Fergusson, assisted, it is said, by suggestions from Mr. Layard, has been reproduced the audiencechamber of an Assyrian monarch, such as it appeared in its bold and primitive grandeur three thousand five hundred years ago. Enormous eagle-winged and humanheaded bulls stand guarding the entrance; they appear to have been modeled exactly after the originals. The audience-chamber measures one hundred feet in length by fifty in width, and around the walls are displayed the history of the first empire at the period when Sennacherib ruled and

Ezekiel prophesied—a history written in pictures of stone, which, after being buried beneath the dust of thirty centuries, are drawn forth in our day to attest the vigor and greatness of the world's youth, and the truth of prophecy. In point of artistic merit, the productions of the Assyrian chisel stand midway between those of Egypt and those of the early Greeks. In correctness of form, and in breadth and boldness of outline, with which mere size has nothing to do, they are many of them infinitely superior to the best of the Egyptian sculptures; and here and there we see evidences of a lofty intellect striving not always in vain-struggling, as it were, in spite of its unacquaintance with the true principles of art, toward the imbodiment of really grand and noble ideas. Had the Assyrian empire survived a few centuries longer, it might have boasted its Praxiteles and its Apelles, and perhaps its Socrates too, and an earlier Greece had changed the destinies of nations.

We pass into the Byzantine Court. Byzantine art may be regarded as the production of a semi-barbaric people, working upon the basis of the Greeks. The Greek simplicity they did not understand

the Greek outline they were incapable of producing; they overloaded the one with an eccentric kind of ornament, and substituted for the poetical idealism of the other a stiff, pedantic, and literal fidelity, which, wanting in the higher elements of art, has yet its historical and practical value. With all its defects, however, and its utter absence of the truly graceful, Byzantine architecture is imposing from a certain truthfulness of detail, and its suggestiveness of a kind of wild power tamed, as it were, to sacrifice to the beautiful. This court contains restorations of the cloister of St. Mary in the capitol of Cologne, and a portion of St. John the Lateran, with its gold mosaics. The fountain of Heislerback stands in the center, and remains of Romanesque art, collected from various countries, adorn the walls.

The Medieval Court is the repository of a series of fac-similes of the most beautiful forms of early ecclesiastical architecture, and consists of various departments illustrative of the French, German, Italian, and English schools, all of which are characterized by their use of the pointed arch. The examples of German gothic are selected from the works of Peter