Inigo Jones. Who could find it in his heart to grudge Sir Joseph his really pardonable vanity? Had he not hit upon the very best design for the very biggest building in the world by merely sketching on a blotting-pad the elevation of one of his Chatsworth palm-houses?

And there the building is; shorn of its fair proportions, injured by tempest and flame, alas! but still a wonderful building, wonderfully furnished forth; and would you ask where in it stands Sir Joseph Paxton's monument, I say, look round. Look at the far-reaching reticulation of iron-work, spread to encompass all the marvels and beauties of nature, science, and art. Look at the loveliest flowers, the most gracefully, bending plants, reflected by the water from whose margin and very midst they spring. Look at those crowds of people, who are also observant; for in them, as much as in the objects they regard, is an enduring memorial of the architectgardener. Among them on all days of the year-on the patrician Saturdays of the opera season, when birds of gay plumage are convoked by birds of rare voice, and the centre transept is a sight never to be forgotten by him who has once seen it; on the ordinary shilling days, when excursionists roam with happy heedlessness of plan from picture-gallery to porter-pump, and from the top of the tower to the bottom of the grounds; on popular occasions, Licensed Victualistic festivals, Foresters' festivals, festivals of Odd Fellowship, and of all institutions given to festivity; on days of bird-shows, flower - shows, archery meetings, athletic sports, all holidays in the calendar and out of it-the ample white beaver hat is missing as a once familiar and patriarchal presence-a genius of the place, that should be there as constantly as the excellent manager and his walkingstick, or as the back hair and bâton of the chef d'orchestre. That things so permanent in their seeming character should be as fugitive as the shadows on terrace and fountain; briefer than the prologue, which was no less brief than woman's love! The sense of a loss, and a want that

we may vainly long to fill, the yearning after days and glories that are irrevocable, shall not, however, keep me from a single day's enjoyment of scenes that I have haunted summer and winter for fifteen years. I have heard those say who have official duties at the Crystal Palace, that custom has not staled for them its infinite variety-a sufficient proof that the variety is infinite as well as charming. Many inhabitants of the pleasant neighbourhood which has grown round the palace gardens must be almost as regular in their attendance as the secretary and the clerks. I dare say these young ladies, whom our artist has depicted as a segment of the Saturday audience, are constant frequenters. They have the quiet look of habit, the appreciative but unsurprised expression which contrasts in a very noticeable manner with the bewildered stare of novices who have never read, or have failed to follow, the injunction of Horace, 'not to admire.' I don't think they are ennuyées, bored, or blasées; I hope they are above the petty affectation of being so; for I think there can be no doubt that this affectation is infinitely more vulgar than the undisguised and, if you will, the foolish marvelling of the many. Perhaps they may not be altogether insensible to the tedium of too much overlearned music, though they do not yawn or close their eyes. I have sometimes wished, like Christopher Sly, that 'a good piece of work' were 'ended.' There is this excuse, too, at the Crystal Palace, for such Gothic distaste of the subtle beauties of harmony - that surrounding objects and noises are wont to beckon away the attention. I have sat through a symphony without being able to take my eyes from an inflated bladder-elephant, carried up from a toy-stall by the specific levity of hydrogen gas, and pulled down again by a string abdominally attached to his form. Ninety-six ascents of this ludicrous paradox of airy bulk I counted while the fiddles performed the neverending still-beginning movements of Op. something or other. Funny at first, but maddening by repe

tition, were the phenomena of this flimsy elephant's flight and downward return. He ascended with a swaying wobble, like a tortoise endowed with aërial motion; then, on reaching the end of his tether, he trembled with a gelatinous spasm, and came down again, wobbling more than in the passive exertion of going up. He was just about to make his ninety-seventh ascent, when he was bought by a boy who had escaped from the reserved seats and the classical symphony.

Though, wet or dry, the Crystal Palace is an unfailing resort of pleasure, it is well to have the choice of a fine day. Indeed, there are some days of the year when the tens of thousands who make holiday in a mass would be inconveniently squeezed within the building, to say nothing of their losing the delights of open-air amusement. There is racing and chasing on the soft elastic turf; and nowhere can kissin-the-ring obtain a sanction more sedate than that implied in the mere circumstance of the game's being overlooked by such an educational institution as the Crystal Palace. Moreover and I say this without disrespect to the intelligent artisanhe is certainly a more cheerful spectacle of enjoyment, in himself, when he gets among the green trees and on the winding walks and sloping lawns, than when he is dragging his faculties through the 'courts' that are designed to teach him archæology and every other ology at a glance. You meet him with a sort of dissatisfied, impatient gravity in his face, as he walks ahead of his wife and children, now and then turning back and calling on those wayworn pilgrims to 'come along.' But outside he is another being. He has his children by the hand, or is running after them, or away from them, or is lying on the grass while they sit upon his Sunday waistcoat and tumble over his dusty boots. Indeed for all healthy-minded per

sons the grounds at Sydenham, in favourable weather, have a special charm. A noble cricket-ground, much frequented by lovers of the eminently English pastime, is often put to other purposes quite as worthy as those of bat, ball, and stumps. There is a Canadian game, brought to England by certain Indian players, and known as 'La Crosse; a game that ought to flourish here as well as on the banks of the St. Lawrence. It is played according to the same laws as those which govern the game of football; but it is not like football in any other respect than its having sides, and goals, and goal-keepers, and rules which are in common. The ball is of india-rubber, and the implement with which it is driven here and there is an elongated racket, the handling of which requires great practice in order to attain such perfect skill as that shown by the Canadian players, who, while running at full speed, pick up the ball with the curved end of the 'crosse,' and carry it on the light catgut net, and drop it, and pick it up again, with marvellous dexterity and judgment.

To the German Gymnastic Society, whose head-quarters are at St. Pancras, and whose head is Mr. Ravenstein, athletic exercises in the Crystal Palace grounds owe much of their great and growing popularity. Physical training, muscular culture, the education of the body and limbs as well as of the head, will continue to flourish in the midst of such great encouragement and with the impetus of so fair a start. If, as is too evident, the vast and unrivalled collection of objects within the Crystal Palace has not fulfilled its purpose of schooling the people quite so thoroughly as the sanguine friends of enlightenment fancied it would do, the fine stretch of ground appropriated to healthful recreation has proved, almost unexpectedly, a perfect college of physical manliness.

IT

T is a clear, bright day to-day; the wind a soft south-west; the clouds cirrus-cumuli, and beautiful with the frail sculptures that delight the denizens of cloudland. This is the fag end of the Brighton season; but in this well-filled pier, and in the gorgeous fancy ball of last night, where more than a thousand came together, an unpractised eye would hardly detect any falling off during the last few weeks. Of course it is very different to the early autumn season, which every one knows so well, when the carriages are four-deep on the parade, and the band draws crowds on the pier both morning and afternoon. Yet our band held on bravely till the middle of January, when the wind blew cold, with touches of east, threatening a worse future visitation. Christmas, rather abruptly, makes a section of the Brighton season. All those who have a stake in the country troop off, according to immemorial custom, to their country-houses at Christmas tide. This makes a difference. Still, the resident society of Brighton is very large, and countless visitors prolong their stay far into January, or even February. This fancy ball is a kind of scenic wind-up to the general season. I am off myself; but let us have a final 'blow upon the pier,' for the sake of any atmospheric ozone that the salt breezes may bring us.

There seems to be always somebody on the pier. I went there very early one January morning, and found there two or three transparent Saturday-to-Mondayers, bound to town by an early train, but firmly resolved to squeeze all the good they could out of the British Channel. I am not sure they will not bring their rods, and shiver on the iron steps over some fishing. I believe, too, that there are some demented individuals who will pace

about till they are shrouded in the evening sea fog, or perhaps in another kind of fog in the smoking pagoda. But the chief time is, on a clear sunny day, between twelve and half-past one. Then, in the brilliancy of sunlight, sky and water, and in the excitant atmosphere, Brighton is by no means unlike Nice; and although it has not the climatic advantages of Nice, it is also without the mistral, the Alpine blast, and the unequal temperature. The season at Brighton should last until the winds, or, more properly, until the hurricanes set in. But it is always season at Brighton. There is never a time when the jaded Londoner will not come down for a day or two 'to pick up.' Within a few days I have spotted a brace of London editors, a fashionable physician, a learned judge, an author or two, a mob of fashionables; and for the ball people come from all parts of the country; and not in the time of the fourth George could the scene in the Pavilion have been more magnificent.

Now the peripatetic, by his very raison d'être, has to promenade this pier; and as he 'promenades himself,' as the French say, he philosophizes. Just as Burns wrote on the twa brigs' at Ayr, somebody ought to write a poetical colloquy between the two piers of Brighton. That old pier, which ich is now so slighted and solitary, may yield a moral on the transitory nature of earthly-or, to to suit a pier, let us say amphibious glory. But a hint for the weakchested-that walk below the cliff opposite the old pier collects the wintry sunshine, and is the warmest spot just now in all Brighton. The two Steynes have, however, lost their favourite haunt; and Regency Square, which used to affect to grumble at the new pier as marring its sea view, finds it both an ornament and a convenience, and takes