376 Exhibition Tactics. 



piggledy at tlie Brompton end of the town. We will not stop 

 to discuss the inconvenience of selecting a locality accessible 

 with great difficulty to nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the 

 metropolis, and remote from the mass of inns and lodging- 

 houses which visitors frequent. The land was vacant, and 

 must become a profitable speculation for influential jobbers if 

 a large stream of public money could be turned that way. 

 This, in brief, appears to be the history of the foundation of 

 the far-famed "Boilers/' which were the precursors of the 

 present scheme. The story may some day be told in full ; but 

 our present purpose is less with the site than with the arrange- 

 ments of the newly-opened enterprise. 



As an international undertaking the value of such an 

 Exhibition must depend, first, upon the collections being a 

 tolerably fair and complete representation of industrial skill ; 

 and, secondly, upon the facilities afforded by their collocation 

 for the purposes of investigation and comparison. Could ex- 

 hibitors be persuaded to co-operate in such a manner, objects 

 of the same kind should be placed in series ; the porcelain or 

 textile fabrics of England, for example, occupying one side of 

 a gallery, and similar productions of foreign nations occupying 

 the other. In the Picture Gallery at Brompton, "Foreign 

 Schools" fill one portion of the fine suite of noble and suitable 

 rooms, while "British Schools" are exhibited in the other. 

 Here we have an approximate illustration of a good method, 

 although there are certain drawbacks, as the pictures which are 

 first seen on entering the British, from the foreign department, 

 seem to have been selected for their position on account of their 

 not possessing those properties of colour which enable them to 

 be viewed with advantage, while the impression of the con- 

 tinental paintings is still fresh and vivid upon the eye. English 

 art has, moreover, suffered from the snobbishness engendered 

 by the Royal Academy, whose agents have been permitted 

 to thrust their water-colour brethren into an inferior set of 

 apartments, and hang their productions in defiance of every- 

 thing but that malice prepense which the oleaginous prac- 

 titioners are accustomed to manifest towards their aqueous 

 rivals amongst the wielders of the brush. But notwithstanding 

 these defects, if we were to assume British and foreign art as 

 fairly represented in the two collections, the arrangement offers 

 considerable facilities for the comparison of the two. Very 

 different is the result if we try to ascertain how we stand with 

 reference to other countries in the industrial race. The nave, 

 with its conglomerations of incongruous and oddly huddled 

 together objects and edifices, shows at once that the genius of 

 muddle and confusion animated the Commissioners when they 

 disposed of their space. The building itself is badly adapted 

 to the purpose, because it offers no convenient natural divi- 





