A GLIMPSE OF SOME REMARKABLE LONDON INTERIORS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, Issue 72, 5 December 1857, Page 4

A GLIMPSE OF SOME REMARKABLE LONDON INTERIORS.

[By an American.]

I have an engagement .(writes Mt. Jay Smith, an American traveller), at two, to see some of the modern club-houses ; go with you and my American eyes to the celebrated Reform Club, calling a moment to deliver some mere letter of introduction and make some purchases. My friend, the member of the Reform, has not arrived, say the clerk and footman installed within the door in large and comfortable anterooms. The former keeps a large book of accounts, noting a log-book of the club like our mate at sea. He receives messages and cards for members, their letters, &c, and despatches others. Very civilly invited iuto the hall, we sit down on morocco couches, made for comfort as well as show. The truly spacious square area before you, lighted by an immense skylight, is paved with tesselated figures. The columns, at least twenty, are lofty, and made of exquisite scagliola, the bases of different colours. Opposite is a fine bust of Victoria. This is the day that members are allowed for a few hours to exhibit the entire interior to 'ladies, several parties of whom, highly dressed, are passing in and out. At length my friend arrives, a lady under each arm. Turning to the right, we enter a library as luxurious as you may conceive. The carpets are the finest and thickest; the furniture neat and convenient, including a dais in the centre, with pillows, &c, made of cut culvet. The beautiful tables have the best daily and weekly papers, and here are members of Parliament reading, surrounded by law and other books. My conductor is no doubt a great reformer ; for every body shakes his hand, and of course I am introduced to men of names known to fame on our shores. Emerge slowly, for my i friend seems in no hurry, and you encounter a fine large portrait of the late Lord Holland, beside one of the late Duke of Sussex. There ■are other niches for similar portraits, when fame has sounded the tocsin sufficiently long. Some of the doors about here are of bird's- eye maple, and very beautiful ; while the arabesque ceilings of library and hall must not be forgotten, as you tread the thick soft Turkey carpeting of the vestibule. We next enter a very large drawing room, •like that of a palace. The curtains of enormous windows are silk damask, the walls are gilt, and the ceilings fresco. Huge mirrors at either end are festooned with similar curtains. The furniture is covered with linen. Examine : •it is all of cut velvet, and all as clean and free from dust as your best parlour at home. Look out from the balcony of that window, opening in the French style down to the floor. There is a fine large garden running past this, the Athenaeum and many other club-houses in the same range. Yonder are two of the great ■ ornaments of London, towering in the smoky atmosphere — the Duke of York's Pillar and Nelson's Column. Here are flues highly ornamented, for heated air, and near to one is an elegant marble bust of John Hampden. We now rise by a white marble staircase, covered up with Turkey carpets, coloured glass windows to light it; but the feature that strikes you most is, that the sides, nay, the Tery ceiling, are of panelled scagliola, superbly executed, and so strongly resembling sienite, breccia, and marbles, as to be equally pleasing to the eye. The dining-room is fitted up much as at the ■London hotels, -with small, very neat tables ready for dinners, expected from seven to nine in the evening. Our friend seems determined that the ladies and all shall see thoroughly, •;and we descended to the kitchen, much celebrated for its size, but more for its head cook, of whose station, and that of his late wife, you are not yet, I dare say, prepared to hear. Women are ranged round several large rooms in the basement, engaged in various occupations «f the culinary art ; they are pay scholars of the acknowledged best cook in London, and that is saying much. Some are cooking by gas fires, some making pastry, custards, tarts ; ■er cooking a nice steak, a chop, and so on, through a dozen ranges. Several =huge fires are raging, with screens in front to keep in the heat, and great joints are revolving by •means < of gmoke-jacks before them; at the backs of the fires are iron plates, eight inches thick, which get so hot that if the =iire goes out the meat will still roast. Pull out those drawers there, deep in the- cupboard; they are fnll of sweet-breads, spring chickens, and meats spread on towels over tin boxes of ice. Ah ! here comes a line of fish-trays ; the -servants are returning from; market; a few turbot and various other creatures of the deep, with whitebait, a fish so very small that it requires very careful handling, and is laid on white paper. In the basement are also suites of elegant •dressing-rooms for members, baths, &c, while the third story is used as bed-chambers. The latter accommodation, however, is rarely found at clubs, another being about to be established in the priacipal 'vicinity, to consist of bedrooms exclusively. A tea and coffee kitchen, and on a large scale, doses the round of this clubpalace. There are fifteen hundred members. The avowed object of its institution was for the purpose of promoting the social intercourse of the reformers of the United Kingdom.

Next day I visited the Conservative Clubhouse, the newest and most splendid of all the clubs. The hall of entrance is one of (he most beautiful things of the kind in England, having a dome -of great height, painted throughout in compartmented fresco ; columns of marble and scagliola ; staircases of the same, lined with statuary ; and most comfortable library, furnished throughout with green morocco, and imitation of verd antique columns and pilasters ; ceilings high, and oak gilt ; Turkey carpets in the dining rooms, some of which are for private parties, and others public. Some of the members were breakfasting at twelve o'clock. I took the following prices from the bill of fare of the day: — Mock turtle soup, thirty-three cents ; turbot, the same ; fish of other kinds, twenty-five cents ; eotelettes, forty-four cents ; joints, thirty-three cents; ham the same; tarts, twelve and a-half cents; sirloin, thirtythree cents. Joints are always set by you to take what you want, and the charge would be fifty per cent, more, at least, at Morley's. We inspected the kitchen apartment here also. Everything was in perfect order. There was

one *' sauce larder," where one hundred sauces were ready for use, in white china pans. I was shown a patent for boiling fish by steam. The clubs are Athetiseums on a large scale, united to a hotel, where members are at home, eat, drink, read, play cards or billiards, and meet people of their own political creed or profession. We next rode to the Royal Institution in Albemarle-street, one of the best for the diffusion of knowledge in Europe. Mr. Faraday, the chemist, is the popular lecturer of London ; it is a great favour to get in among the rich and noble who attend his course once a week at three o'clock, p.m. He had kindly sent us an invitation, which was most acceptable, though it threw us out of our proposed visit to G-^enwich Hospital. As to the theatre or lecture-room, it is the best to see and hear in, and the most comfortable I have ever been in. Carriages with coronets were setting down their titled possessors as we arrived. About three hundred persons were present, more than half of whom were ladies, old and young, many taking notes. The subject was mercury, the course being on the metals. As the clock sounded three the lecturer began. I have rarely or never passed so short an hour. His manner, his words, gestures, and matter were perfection ; the mode in which his difficult experiments were performed, beyond praise. There was no moment of interruption, and scarcely one when he ceased to speak, even while the experiments were in progress. He froze mercury in a few moments by means of carbonic acid gas, which was solidified before us by an assistant in one moment ; he also made an admirable cast in frozen mercury of Mr. Fuller, the cold being one hundred degrees below 0. Ice-water is a real furnace to this cold mercury, as was shown by putting the latter in the water, which instantly created a mass of icicles around it. I cannot spare space to recapitulate more, adding only my warmest expression of admiration at the beauty of the language, and the tact of the distinguished lecturer. He completely silvered a large looking-glass in as little time as I can write about it, and closed his lecture half a minute after the clock struck four.

Vesuvius is in eruption ; a stream of lava is flowing from the side of Ottajuno ; it does not endanger any villages or towns.

The Skylark, a Pattern of Excellence. — Behold yon lark. See how he rises, high on the wing, determined for a season to lose sight of all below! Upward he goes; and what sounds are those which descend and ravish our delighted ear — every note different, yet all breathing the purest melody. His heart is full of love ; it overflows : — Higher still and higher, From the earth thou springest ; Like a cloud of fire, The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singes t! Now he has entered yon brilliant cloud ; and he seems Hearing the sacred precints, the fond object of his flight. His voice becomes softer. He is lost to sight. We listen ; all is hushed. He is worshipping ! It is now time for us to retire ; and as we retrace our steps, let us each take a sweet morning lesson from this aspiring bird. "Upward and onward!" be our motto. —Kidd's Song Birds, " The Skylark."