THE EXHIBITION OF 1862.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1435, 13 September 1861, Page 4

THE EXHIBITION OF 1862.

The unremitting labours of the Royal Gommissioneis aie fast reducing the huge mass of details connected with ne\t year's Exhibition to ordei and system The airangements connected with the organisation of Trade Committees for English exhibitois are fast progressing towards completion, and the Commission appointed by the Fiench Empeior is equally diligent and forward in its results On the Continent, however, there is a certain amount of apathy as to the intended display. That this is due to political causes alone is known from the fact that only m those parts of Europe which either have been in a state of disturbance, or apprehended it foi next year, is this feeling, or rather absence of feeling, for the Exhibition discoverable. To make ud for it, however, English manufacturers aie tin owing themselves into it with redoubled ardour. 4s in the last Exhibition, one half the entue space of the budding will be allotted to England and the colonies, and the lemainder among the vaiious foreign countiies All the applications for space fiom England have been sent m, and some idea may be formed of their extent when we state that, if all were granted that is asked, England alone would lequire a building nearly three times larger than the entne structure for next year It follows, theiefore, as only half this is allotted to Great Britain, that the demands foi space will all have to be leduced to one sixth of what is now asked Some exhibitors' demands are most pieposterously exorbitant. A visit to the site of the proposed building is the best way to get a fair idea of the immense extent of the intended structuie, and also of the rapidity with which it is being laised A foitnight ago, and the suiveyois were only maiking out the giound, and a line of little sticks of different colouis was the sole aid to tracing the plan of the building Now all the concrete foundations have been l.«d and hardened, and the walls of the pictuie gallery are already some 15 feet high. The first impiession on entering the woiks is that you are in a hopground of colossal proportions, so bate looks the flat enclosure, with its hundied« of scaffold poles, set in lines of such length that the farthest off seems a meie twig Stray men are at work here and there removing gravel, or setting bioad slabs of stone on little cubes of brickwoik. There are really some 800 employed in all, but they are lost, and look as nothing in the wide enclosure. When all is m full opeiation, from 3,000 to 3,500 labourers will be requhed. The site of the domes is as yet only marked by sticks, with here and there solid squ!»i -> columns of brick woik and masonry let into the grou.id to carry the cast-iron columns. The biickwork and masonry, also, on which the columns for the nave and transppts will rest, are also complete, and the great picture gallery, as we have said, is most rapidly advancing. Theie must be very many of our leaders who have contemplated building improvements in some foim or other, if only in the way of a little gieen-house, or an additional stall to the stable, and who can, therefore, understand what the builder's " bill of quantities " means, and lecollect how they have shrunk in alarm from the estimate of so many thousand bricks, two tons of moitar, 5 cwt. of timber, so many hundred Queen slates, and so on. All bills of quantities, however, fall into utter insignificance when we come to look to tho amount of materials required to complete the building for 1562. The foundations have already consumed 5,000 tons of concrete, which, as the first item, is pretty fair. On these foundations will be laid neaily 60,000 tons, or 1,400,000 cubic feet, of brickwork, requiring upwaids of 18,000,000 bricks to build it. To 18,000,000 bucks no less than 22,000 tons of mortar will be requisite; 10,000 tons of uon work- — viz, about 7,000 tons of cast and 3,000 tons of wrought iion — will be used in the entire stiuctuie. As there are nearly 1,200,000 supeificial feet of flooring, the same amount of timber as of iron is required — namely, 10,000 tons. The flooiing alone consumes 360 imles of planking, 7 inches wide ; and 270 miles' length, nine inches wide ; or upwards of 600 miles' length of planking in all. The actual quantities are 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 lineal feet of each kind. For the windows no less than 108 miles' length or 600,000 feet of sashing will be lequired, to fill in which are required 500 tons of sheet glass and upwards of 50 tons of putty The roofs will need 600,000 square feet of felt ; and among the minor items aie between 200 and 300 tons of nails, 600 tons of paint, 300 tons of piping, and so on. The cubical contents of the whole structure will be no less than 73,000,000 cubic feet. The public have recently been rather astonished to see that the distiict surveyor summoned Messrs. Kelk and Lucas, the contractors, for commencing a building not in accoi dance with the piovisions of the Building Act Now, when this Act was passed such a gigantic structuie as that intended for next yeai's Exhibition was never contemplated. The Act pioyides that no building for tiade purposes shall exceed in contents 216,000 cubic feet; but from this aie exempted all lailway stations and buildings, also all buildings for the service of the Ciown. As all the articles to be exhibited next year will have their prices affixed, and as all, or nearly all, will be sold before the Exhibition is over, the building necessarily comes within the piovisions of the Act as one for tiade purposes, and, though built under Royal charter, is neither a Cioun nor railway building Consequently, under tho Act, its contents would be limited to 216,000 cubic feet instead of 70,000,000, as intended Fortunately the lioird of Works over ruled the legal inteiforencoof the district smvoyor, and sanctioned the election of the building But foi this sensible solution of the difficulty, Loid Gianville would have had to pa?s a shoit bill exempting the propobed building from the provisions of

the Act and not a nail could have been driven or a brick laid until such bill had passed both houses. The magistrate was obliged to inflict a nominal fine of Is. on Air. Kelk for his contemplated infraction of the law, and with this the affair has dropped. As yet the arrangements for the refreshment department have not been settled. In this department— which will exeicise such an important influence on the feelings of satisfaction with which the public will visit the building — it is a matter of almost vital consequence that all the arrangements should be of the best possible kind, and that, in treating for this contiact, the Commissioners should make considerations of profit quite insubordinate to the question of efficiency. It is, perhaps not advisable that the refreshments should be a monopoly in the hands of one person, though it might be even more dangerous to divide it among too many, as in that case t would be certain to fall to small firms, and piobably result in a system of "touting" among the rival ■waiters, which would be alike aunoying and discreditable. The guarantee fund is reported to the Commissioners as amounting to *i 07,000. It is understood, although not officially repoitee), that a commission, composed of the most influential members of the Russian govern ment, has, been formed to superintend the airangemeuts for the exhibitors of that country, who « ill laisrely contribute towards the exhibition. A number of additional local committees for the United Kingdom have been formed. The building is making considerable progiebs, the obstruction which has taken place undet the technicalities of the Building Act having really caused no delay, the time lost in actual building having been employed in the preparation of materials. j The commission, presided over by Prince Napoleon, for furthering and promoting the interests of French manufactures at the Universal Exhibition of London, in 1862, has issued its first circular. It states that the great competition in question will open under better auspices than any preceding one, that of 1851 having followed close on a revolution which had shaken most of the states of Europe, and that of 1555 taking place in the midst of the struggles and hazards of war. At the present time peace reigns in almost all the nations of the world ; communications have become extended and multiplied ; and the burners which had before closed the extreme cou ltries of Asia have fallen before the victorious flag of civilisation. The French school of the fine arts is now called on, as it was in 1855, to prove that sound artistic traditions are still perpetuated in the country. The Exhibition Palace in London opens its doors to all the clicjs d' arnire of modern art. The cucular expresses a "hope tha,t the offer thus cordially made will be eagerly accepted, and that merchants, manufactuiers, and agriculturists will do all they can to uphold the credit of France Such peaceful relations must strengthen more aud more the alliance between two great nations, and tend to lemove all feelings of hatred, prejudice, or mistrust.