Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub
[graphic]

WE

THE NEW-YORK CRYSTAL PALACE.

E present our readers with original engravings of The New-York (it should be The New - World) Crystal Palace. The drawings have been furnished us by the architects themselves, and the cuts, done by one of our own artists, Mr. N. Orr, are the best views of the edifice yet given to the public.

feet broad and twenty-one feet high, answering to the arch of the nave. The central portion, or nave, is carried up to the height of sixty-seven feet; and the semicircular arch by which it is spanned is forty-one feet broad. There are thus, in effect, two arched naves, crossing each other at right angles, forty-one feet broad, sixty-seven feet high to the crown of the arch, and three hundred and sixty-five feet long; and on each side of these naves is an aisle fifty-four feet broad and forty-five feet high. The exterior of the ridgeway of the nave is seventy-one feet. The central dome is one hundred feet in diameter-sixty-eight feet inside from the floor to the spring of the arch, and one hundred and eighteen feet to the crown; and on the outside, with the lantern, one hundred and forty-nine feet. The exterior angles of the building are ingeniously filled up with a sort of lean-to, twenty-four feet high, which gives the ground plan an octagonal shape, each side or face being one hundred and forty-nine feet wide. At each angle is an octagonal tower, eight

The dimensions of this noble structure have already been published in detail by the Scientific American, and other prints; illustrated by our cuts, they will be readily comprehended by the reader. They are as follows:-The site of the building (guarantied to the association for five years) is on Reservoir Square; the general plan is a Greek cross, surmounted by a dome at the intersection; each diameter of the cross will be three hundred and sixty-five feet five inches long. There will be three similar entrances-one on the Sixth-avenue, one on Fortieth, and one on Fortysecond-street. Each entrance will be forty-seven feet wide, and that on the Sixth-avenue will be approached by a flight of eight steps. Each arm of the cross is, on the ground-plan, one hundred and forty-feet in diameter, and seventy-five feet high. nine feet broad. This is divided into a central nave and two aisles, one on each side the nave forty-one feet wide; each aisle fifty-four feet wide. On each front is a large semicircular fanlight, forty-one

Each aisle is covered by a gallery of its own width, and twenty-four feet from the floor. It will be the largest edifice ever put up in this country.

Now, to compare this building with some

of the great European wonders: St. Paul's, in London, is five hundred feet long, but has only eighty-four thousand and twenty-five square feet on its groundfloor, and is thus, on the whole, decidedly smaller. St. Peter's Church at Rome, is six hundred and sixtynine feet long, and has two hundred and twenty-seven thousand and sixty-nine square feet. So that the New-York Crystal Palace will be, on the ground-floor, just half the size of St. Peter's-but, with the galleries, the available room in St. Peter's is only one-fifth larger. The New-York building covers one-eighth of the ground occupied by the Hyde Park Crystal Palace; but the available space, with the galleries, is about one-fifth or one-sixth.

The number of the columns on the ground-floor will be one hundred and ninety, all hollow and of eight inches diameter,

[ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic]

[Sixth Avenue.] PRINCIPAL STORY PLAN."

architect of the Astor Library; Mr. Downing, lost in the Henry Clay; Mr. Eidlitz, Sir Joseph Paxton, and others. The successful competitors are Messrs. Carstensen and Gildemiester. Mr. Cars

+

GALLERY PLAN.

and of different thicknesses from half-aninch to one inch. On the gallery floor there will be one hundred and twenty-two columns, and the whole structure will be constructed of glass and iron. The plans have been selected from among several competitors, including Mr. Saeltzer, the VOL. II, No. 1.-G

tensen is the designer of the Tivoli and Casino of Copenhagen. "The directors," says an exchange paper, "have been fortunate in selecting a plan from this side of the water, and in not going to England for one." The beauty of the structure is manifest at a glance. It is an honor to the nation; and the more so, as it is not constructed from foreign designs. The work is now in rapid progress, and will be completed by next May; when it is hoped an industrial display will be made within its walls, such as shall be creditable not only to the country, but the age.

The ambition to succeed in this enterprise should be a national sentiment. It is rapidly

[graphic]

becoming such.

EXPLANATIONS.-Principal Story Plan.-AA, Entrance Halls; BB, Nave; C, Dome; DD, Offices; EE, Staircases.

cc, Nave; D, Dome; EE, Roofs of First Story.

Gallery Plan.-AA, Balconies; BB, Staircases;

The dots indicate the principal columns; the smaller dots in the enclosure are smaller columns, between.

which the window-sashes are to be fastened.

I

WHIMS AND ODDITIES, BY HOOD.

A NEW LIFE-PRESERVER. "Of hairbreadth 'scapes."-OTHELLO. HAVE read somewhere of a traveler, who carried with him a brace of pistols, a carbine, a cutlass, a dagger, and an umbrella, but was indebted for his preservation to the umbrella; it grappled with a bush, when he was rolling over a precipice. In like manner, my friend Wthough armed with a sword, rifle, and hunting-knife, owed his existence-to his wig!

He was specimen-hunting, (for Wis a first-rate naturalist,) somewhere in the backwoods of America, when, happening to light upon a dense covert, there sprang out upon him, not a panther or catamountain,—but, with a terrible whoop and yell, a wild Indian,—one of a tribe then hostile to our settlers. W's gun was mastered in a twinkling, himself stretched on the earth, the barbarous knife, destined to make him balder than Granby's celebrated Marquis, leaped eagerly from its sheath.

Conceive the horrible weapon making its preliminary flourishes and circumgyrations; the savage features, made savager by paint and ruddle, working themselves up to a demoniacal crisis of triumphant malignity; his red right-hand clutching the shearing-knife; his left the frizzle top-knot; and then the artificial scalp coming off in the Mohawk grasp !

summer sun. At length, the phenomenon returned into the hands of the chiefa venerable gray-beard: he examined it afresh, very attentively; and, after a long deliberation, maintained with true Indian silence and gravity, made a speech in his own tongue that procured for the anxious, trembling captive very unexpected honors. In fact, the whole tribe of women and warriors danced round him, with such unequivocal marks of homage, that even W-comprehended that he was not intended for sacrifice. He was then carried in triumph to their wigwams; his body daubed with their body-colors of the most honorable patterns; and he was given to understand that he might choose any of their marriageable maidens for a squaw. Availing himself of this privilege, and so becoming, by degrees, more a proficient in their language, he learned the cause of this extraordinary respect. It was considered that he had been a great warrior; that he had, by mischance of war, been overcome and tufted; but that, whether by valor or stratagem, each equally estimable among the savages, he had recovered his liberty and his scalp.

As long as W- kept his own counsel, he was safe; but, trusting his Indian Delilah with the secret of his locks, it soon got wind among the squaws, and from them became known to the warriors and chiefs. A solemn sitting was held at midnight by the chiefs, to consider the propriety of knocking the poor wig-owner on the head; but he had received a timely hint of their intention, and when the tomahawks sought for him, he was far on way, with his Life-preserver, toward a British settlement.

FANCIES ON A TEA-CUP.

I LOVE to pore upon old china-and to speculate, from the images, on Cathay. I can fancy that the Chinese manners betray themselves, like the drunkard's, in their cups.

Wsays, the Indian's catchpole was, for some moments, motionless with surprise; recovering, at last, he dragged his captive along, through brake and jungle, to the encampment. A peculiar whoop soon brought the whole horde to the spot. The Indian addressed them with vehement gestures, in the course of which Wwas again thrown down, the knife again performed its circuits, and the whole transaction was pantomimically described. All Indian sedateness and restraint was overcome. The assembly made every demonstration of wonder; and the wig was fitted on rightly, askew, and hind part before, by a hundred pair of red hands. Captain Gulliver's glove was not a greater puzzle to the Houhyhnms. From the men, it passed to the squaws, and from them down to the least of the urchins; W's head, in the meantime, frying in a mid-porcelain.

How quaintly pranked and patterned is their vessel!-exquisitely outlandish, yet not barbarian. How daintily transparent! It should be no vulgar earth that produces that speculative ware, nor does it so seem in the enameled landscape.

There are beautiful birds; there, rich flowers and gorgeous butterflies, and a delicate clime, if we may credit the There be also horrible mon

sters, dragons, with us obsolete, and reckoned fabulous; the main breed, doubtless, have followed Fohi in his wanderings thither from the Mount Ararat. But how does that impeach the loveliness of Cathay? There are such creatures even in Fairy-land.

There would be some sense, there, in birthday celebrations.

Here, in another compartment, is a solitary scholar, apparently studying the elaborate didactics of Cos-Fuse-Ye.

The Chinese have, verily, the advantage of us upon earthen-ware! They I long often to loiter in those romantic trace themselves as lovers, contemplatists, paradises-studded with pretty temples-philosophers: whereas, to judge from our

holiday pleasure-grounds-the true teagardens. I like those meandering waters, and the abounding little islands.

And here is a Chinese nurse-maid, HoFi, chiding a fretful little Pekin child. The urchin hath just such another toy, at the end of a string, as might be purchased at our own Mr. Dunnett's. It argues an advanced stage of civilization where the children have many playthings; and the Chinese infants-witness their flying fishes and whirligigs, sold by the stray natives about our streets-are far gone in juvenile luxuries.

But here is a better token. The Chinese are a polite people; for they do not make household, much less husbandry, drudges of their wives. You may read the women's fortune in their tea-cups. In nine cases out of ten, the female is busy only in the lady-like toils of the toilette. Lo! here, how sedulously the blooming Hyson is penciling the mortal arches and curving the cross-bows of her eyebrows. A musical instrument, her secondary engagement, is at her almost invisible feet. Are such little extremities likely to be tasked with laborious offices? Marry, in kicking they must be ludicrously impotent, but then she hath a formidable growth of nails.

By her side, the obsequious Hum is pouring his soft flatteries into her ear. When she walketh abroad, (here it is on another sample,) he shadeth her at two miles off with his umbrella. It is like an allegory of Love triumphing over space. The lady is walking upon one of those frequent petty islets, on a plain, as if of porcelain, without any herbage; only a solitary flower springs up, seemingly by enchantment, at her fairy-like foot.

The

watery space between the lovers is aptly left as a blank, excepting her adorable shadow, which is tending toward her slave.

How reverentially is yon urchin presenting his flowers to the Gray-Beard!

jugs and mugs, we are nothing but sheepish piping shepherds and fox-hunters.

THE MORNING CALL.

I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveler than the approach to Bedfordshire. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow; the fleecy clouds seem like blankets; the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His traveling-cap transforms to a night-cap; the coach-lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard's horn plays "Lullaby." Every flower by the roadside is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up-stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down spread "all before him where to choose his place of rest.”

It was in a similar mood, after a long, dusty, droughty, dog-day's journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room, surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.

Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep; and a blessing is it that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster: "Great Nature's second course" was spread before us; and I fell to without a long grace!

Here's a body--there's a bed!
There's a pillow-here's a head!
There's a curtain-here's a light!
There's a puff-and so Good-Night!

So honorable is age considered in China! It would have been gross improvidence to

waste more words on the occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o'clock the next morning, to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.

How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part, I must have slept as fast as a cathedral, as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber: nay, as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster-or, rather, I must have slept "like winkin," for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a voice cried-" Sleep no more!"

It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, while through the keyhole a ray of candle-light darted into my chamber.

"Who's there?"

"It's me, your honor; I humbly ax pardon-but somehow I've oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by !"

"Then I have lost my place!"

"No, not exactly, your honor. She stops a bit at the Dragon, 'tother end of the town; and if your honor would n't object to a bit of a run-"

"That's enough-come in. Put down the light-and take up that bag-my coat over your arm--and waistcoat with itand that cravat."

men-may you do a week ?—I'll tell you what. If I-run-a foot-farther-"

I paused for wind; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side certainly stood an inn with the sign of The Dragon, but without any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me, aghast, and surveying the house from the top to the bottom; not a wreath of smoke came from a chimney; the curtains were closed over every window, and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my indignation when I looked at the somnolent visage of the fellow, hardly yet broad awake he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.

[ocr errors][merged small]

66

No, there be no coach, sure enough," soliloquized Boots, slowly raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression on my face. "No, there's no coach-I ax a thousand pardons, your honor-but you see, sir, what with waiting on her, and talking of her, and expecting of her, and giving notice of her, every night of my life, your honor-why I sometimes dreams of her-and that's the case as is now!"

CALAMITIES OF THE IMAGINATION.

A

· Boots acted according to orders. I DDISON, in treating on this subject, jumped out of bed-pocketed my night- says:-"As if the natural calamities cap-screwed on my stockings-plunged of life were not sufficient for it, we turn into my trowsers-rammed my feet into the most indifferent circumstances into wrong right and left boots-tumbled down misfortunes, and suffer as much from trithe back stairs-burst through a door, and fling accidents as from real evils. I have found myself in the fresh air of the stable-known the shooting of a star spoil a night's yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer rest; and have seen a man in love grow haste, or spleen, I pitched into the horse-pale, and lose his appetite, upon the pluckpond. Then began the race, during which I completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as often as I could spare breath for one.

“And you call this waking me up for the coach. My waistcoat! Why I could wake myself too late-without being called. Now my cravat-and give me my coat! A nice road-for a run !—I suppose you keep it-on purpose. How many gentle

ing of a merrythought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the

roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics. A rusty nail or a crooked pin shoots up into prodigies."

« IndietroContinua »