214 The New Temple of Industry. 



no pictorial advantage from these overgrown monsters, being 

 too far removed from them ; and this is, oddly enough, alluded 

 to as a merit in the general design. A great central dome 

 over the southern courts (which will certainly never now be 

 built) was intended to relieve the flatness of the southern front, 

 and therefore the effect of the two existing domes in combina- 

 tion is confined to the Horticultural Gardens. As these grounds 

 are now little more than a back garden to the Exhibition, it is 

 only fair that they should have some compensating prospects, 

 and from no point can Captain Fowke's building be seen in a 

 more favourable light. Even here the disproportion of the 

 domes still stands prominently forth, and they must be classed 

 as twin monsters with the two water-towers at Sydenham. 



Inside the building, the same harmony of proportion is felt 

 to be sadly wanting, with the single exception of the British 

 and foreign picture-galleries. The southern courts — called 

 the open or glass courts — are light and spacious ; but from the 

 dwarfed height of the side-walls they have a depressing appear- 

 ance of flatness. In design they are nothing more than a 

 repetition of the Birmingham Railway Station, with this dif- 

 ference, that the latter has a noble span four times as great 

 as that of these courts. The nave, which divides the build- 

 ing into two unequal halves lengthways, runs from one 

 dome to the other; and its style, when we look at the 

 meanly-glazed, commonplace, workshop clerestory windows, can 

 hardly be called by any other name than factory- Gothic. The 

 transepts, which run along the whole length of the eastern and 

 western fronts (being intersected, of course, by the dome co- 

 lumns), are designed in the same style, and are surrounded, like 

 the nave, with broad galleries. The spaces under these galleries 

 must be more or less dark, as the flooring above is necessarily 

 laid down dust-tight. The northern courts — a smaller repeti- 

 tion of the southern open or glass courts — are shut in by the 

 brick wall of the refreshment-rooms, and as several windows 

 and doors have been knocked in this wall to light and give 

 access to the premises taken at a heavy rental by the food con- 

 tractors, the eye is offended by what looks like a row of common 

 irregularly -built houses. One or two of the staircases leading 

 up to the galleries are also out of keeping with the rest of the 

 building, having balustrades such as are generally found in 

 small villas at Dalston. The two annexes — western and eastern 

 — which sprout out from the main building, running along the 

 sides of the Horticultural Gardens towards the Kensington 

 Road, arc lightly and inexpensively built, and having no avowed 

 pretensions to architectural effect, promise to be the most 

 pleasing parts of the structure. 



The maiii picture-galleries, before alluded to, which occupy 



