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26. Albert Memorial. Albert Hall. Horticultural Society's Gardens. Natural History Museum.

To the S. of Kensington Gardens, between Queen's Gate and Prince's Gate, near the site of the Exhibition of 1851, rises the *Albert Memorial (Pl. R, 9), a magnificent monument to Albert, the late Prince Consort (d. 1861), erected by the English nation at a cost of 120,000l., half of which was defrayed by voluntary contributions. On a spacious platform, to which granite steps ascend on each side, rises a basement, adorned with reliefs in marble, representing artists of every period (169 figures). On the S. side are Poets and Musicians, and on the E. side Painters, by Armstead; on the N. side Architects, and on the W. Sculptors, by Philip. Four projecting pedestals at the angles support marble groups, representing Agriculture, Manufacture, Commerce, and Engineering. In the centre of the basement sits the colossal bronze-gilt figure of Prince Albert, wearing the robes of the Garter, 15 ft. high, by Foley, under a Gothic canopy, borne by four clustered granite columns. The canopy terminates at the top in a Gothic spire, rising in three stages, and surmounted by a cross. The whole monument, designed by Sir G. G. Scott (d. 1878), is 175 ft. in height, and is gorgeously embellished with a profusion of bronze and marble statues, gilding, coloured stones, and mosaics. At the corners of the steps leading up to the basement are pedestals bearing allegorical marble figures of the quarters of the globe: Europe by Macdowell, Asia by Foley, Africa by Theed, America by Bell. The canopy bears, in blue mosaic letters on a gold ground, the inscription: 'Queen Victoria and Her People to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, as a tribute of their gratitude for a life devoted to the public good.'

On the opposite side of Kensington Road stands the *Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences (Pl. R, 9), a vast amphitheatre in the Italian Renaissance style, destined for concerts, scientific and art assemblies, and other similar uses. The building, which was constructed in 1867-71 from designs by Fowke and Scott, is oval in form (measuring 270 ft. by 240 ft., and 810 ft. in circumference), and can accommodate 8000 people comfortably. The cost of its erection amounted to 200,000l., of which 100,000l. was contributed by the public, 50,000l. came from the Exhibition of 1851, and about 40,000l. was defrayed by the sale of the boxes. The exterior is tastefully ornamented in coloured brick and terracotta. The terracotta frieze, which runs round the whole building above the gallery, was executed by Minton & Co., and depicts the different nations of the globe. The Arena is 100 ft. long by 70 broad, and has space for 1000 persons. The Amphitheatre, which adjoins it, contains 10 rows of seats, and holds 1360 persons. Above it are three rows of boxes, those in the lowest row being constructed for 8 persons each, those in the centre or 'grand tier' for 10, and those in the upper tier for 5 persons. Still higher is the Balcony with 8 rows of seats (1800 persons), and lastly, above the balcony, is the Picture Gallery, adorned with scagliola columns, containing accommodation for an audience of 2000, and affording a good survey of the interior. It communicates by a number of doors with the Outer Gallery, which encircles the whole of the Hall, and commands a fine view of the Albert Memorial. The ascent to the gallery is facilitated by two 'lifts', one on each side of the building (1d.). The Organ, built by Willis, is one of the largest in the world; it has 8000 pipes, and its bellows are worked by two steam engines. (The organ is occasionally played about 4 p.m., when notice is given in the daily papers; small fee.)

A subway, lined with white glazed tiles, has been constructed under the Exhibition Road from the S. Kensington railway station to the Albert Hall, with branches to the Natural History Museum and South Kensington Museum.

The Albert Hall stands nearly on the former site of Gore House, which has given its name to Kensington Gore, the high road from Knightsbridge to Kensington. Although less famous than Holland House, it possessed fully as much political and social influence at the beginning of the present century. It was for many years the residence of William Wilberforce, around whom gathered the leaders of the anti-slavery and other philanthropic enterprises. It was afterwards the abode of the celebrated Lady Blessington, who held in it a kind of literary court, which was attended by the most eminent men of letters, art, and science in England. Louis Napoleon, Brougham, Lyndhurst, Thackeray, Dickens, Moore, Landor, Bulwer, Landseer, and Count D'Orsay were among her frequent visitors. During the exhibition of 1851 Gore House was used as a restaurant, where M. Soyer displayed his culinary skill; and it was soon afterwards purchased with its grounds by the Commissioners of the Exhibition, for 60,0001.

On the W. side of the Albert Hall is the Royal College of Music, incorporated by royal charter in 1883 for the advancement of the science and art of music in the British Empire. The Prince of Wales is the president and Sir George Grove the director of the college, which provides a thorough musical education in the style of the Continental Conservatoires. Upwards of fifty scholarships and exhibitions are open to the competition of students. The teaching staff consists of 11 professors and 30 teachers; and in the first year of its existence the college was attended by 150 pupils, including several from the Colonies and the United States. Adjacent is the Alexandra House, a home for female students, projected by the Princess of Wales and erected in 1886 at the cost of Sir Francis Cook. A little to the E. of the Albert Hall is Lowther Lodge, a very satisfactory example of Norman Shaw's modern-antique style.

Immediately to the S. of the Albert Hall, in South Kensington, lay the Gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, which was founded in 1804 for the promotion of scientific gardening. The gardens have, however, lately been chosen as the site of the Imperial Institute (p. 272), and a new road has been constructed through them from Prince's Gate (Exhibition Road) to Queen's Gate. The flower-shows of the Society, formerly held here, are now held in the Drill Hall of the London Scottish Rifle Volunteers, James Street, Victoria, or at the Society's Experimental Gardens at Chiswick. The latter are open on week-days from 9 to sunset, and in summer on Sun. also from 1 to sunset.

The Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the Colonies, and India, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Queen Victoria in 1887, as the national memorial of Her Majesty's Jubilee, is a huge Renaissance edifice by Mr. T. E. Colcutt, with a frontage 600 ft. in length, surmounted by a large central tower (280 ft. high), with smaller towers at the corners. In addition to the main building there are to be a Conference Hall, to the N., 100 ft. long and 60 ft. wide, and Exhibition Galleries covering two acres of ground. The building will probably be completed in 1891; its estimated cost is about 170,0001.

The main objects of the Institute, which is supported by funds subscribed by the people of the British Empire, are: - 1. The formation and exhibition of collections representing the important raw materials and manufactured products of the Empire and of other countries, so maintained as to illustrate the development of agricultural, commercial, and industrial progress in the Empire, and the comparative advances made in other countries. - 2. The establishment or promotion of commercial museums, sample-rooms, and intelligence offices in London and other parts of the Empire. 3. The collection and dissemination of information relating to trades and industries and to emigration. 4. Exhibitions of special branches of industry and commerce, and of the work of artizans and of apprentices. 5. The promotion of technical and commercial education, and of the industrial arts and sciences. 6. The furtherance of systematic colonization. 7. The promotion of conferences and lectures in connection with the general work of the Institute, and the facilitating of commercial and friendly intercourse among the inhabitants of the different parts of the British Empire.

The buildings which enclose the (former) Horticultural Society's Gardens on three sides were used, from 1871 to 1874, for the International Exhibition, which took place annually from April to September, and consisted of specimens of the art and industry of different nations. The exhibition buildings, consisting of two-storied galleries running along the W. and E. sides of the Horticultural Gardens, are tastefully built of red brick in the Italian Renaissance style, and adorned with an elegant balustrade and other terracotta decorations. The gallery on the S. side is older. There are two entrances in Prince's Gate (Exhibition Road; see below), and another (comp. p. 289) from Queen's Gate on the W. side, while they may also be reached from the Albert Hall. The S. and W. Galleries now contain collections connected with S. Kensington Museum (see p. 288), while the E. Gallery is devoted to the India Museum (Pl. R, 9; see p. 289). In Exhibition Road, to the N. of the India Museum, is the Central Institution of the City and Guilds of London Institute (p. 74). Connected with the Institute is Finsbury Technical College, Tabernacle Row, City. Adjacent is the Royal School of Art Needlework, open to visitors from 10 to 5 or 6 (Sat. 10-2).

The Eastern Gallery also contains the National School of Cookery (entrance in Exhibition Road; on view 2-4), an institution for teaching the economical preparation of articles of food suitable to smaller households, and for training teachers for branch cookery schools, of which there are now several in London and other towns. On the opposite side of Exhibition Road, at the corner of Cromwell Road, is the South Kensington Museum (p. 275).

The large and handsome building to the S. of the International Exhibition Galleries, occupying a great part of the site of the Exhibition of 1862, is the new *Natural History Museum, containing the natural history collections of the British Museum. It was built in the Romanesque style in 1873-80, from a design by Mr. Waterhouse, and consists of a central structure, with wings flanked by towers 192 ft. high. The extreme length of the front is 675 ft. The whole of the external façades and the interior wall-surfaces is covered with terracotta bands and dressings, producing a very pleasing effect. The Museum is open daily from 10 to 4, 5, or 6 p.m. according to the season (closed on Sundays, Good Friday, and Christmas Day); on Mon. and Sat., from May 1st to July 16th, it is open till 8 p.m., and from July 18th to Aug. 29th, till 7 p.m. General guide 2d. In 1888 the Natural History Collections were visited by 372,802 persons.

We first enter the GREAT HALL, 170 ft. wide and 72 ft. high, with a skeleton of the cachalot, or sperm-whale (Physeter macrocephalus), 50 ft. long, in the centre. The adjoining glass-cases contain groups illustrating albinism, the variation of species under the influence of domestication (pigeons), and the crossing of what outwardly appear to be quite distinct species. On each side of the whale is a section of the trunk of an enormous tree, on one of which (a Douglas pine from British Columbia), 533 years old, are marked some of the dates of great events with which it was contemporaneous, beginning with the battle of Poictiers in 1356. The alcoves round the hall are devoted to the Introductory or Elementary Morphological Collection (still incomplete), 'designed to teach the most important points in the structure of the principal types of animal and plant life, and the terms used in describing them. The W. side of the gallery round the hall contains a very interesting collection of birds with their nests, eggs, and young, as in nature; while in the E. gallery is the *Gould Collection of Humming Birds (special catalogue 2d.). A room on the ground-floor, behind the great staircase, contains the British Zoological Collection.

The Geological and Palæontological Collection occupies the basement of the E. wing (to the right). The S.E. GALLERY, 280 ft. long and 50 ft. wide, contains fossil remains of animals of the class Mammalia. In the first Pier-case to the right are placed human and animal remains, with implements of flint and bone, chiefly from the caves of France; among them is the skull of the great sabre-toothed tiger. Table-case 1 also contains skulls and other remains of the prehistoric cave-dwellers, as well as bone-needles, harpoons of reindeer-antler, carved bones, etc. In the Pier-case between the first two windows is a fossilised human skeleton, found in the limestone rock on the coast of Guadeloupe, West Indies. Table-cases 2 and 3 contain the remains of extinct carnivorous animals, including a fine collection of bones of the great cave-bears. The following cases on this side are devoted to the Ungulata or hoofed animals, such as the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, palæotherium, horse, pig, and the great family of ruminants. Among the most prominent objects are the skull and lower jaw of the Rhinoceros leptorhinus from the Thames Valley, the sivatherium, a gigantic Indian antelope, and the heads and horns of the extinct wild ox of Great Britain. To this class belong the skeletons of the gigantic Irish elk (Cervus or Megaceros hibernicus) in the central passage. Most of the cases on the left side of the gallery are occupied by the very complete collection of the molar teeth and other remains of the Proboscidea, or elephants, including the mastodon, mammoth, and twelve

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other species. In one case is a fragment of the woolly skin of the Siberian mammoth. Closely allied to this species was the Ilford mammoth, found in the valley of the Thames, the skull and tusks of which are exhibited in the middle of the gallery. On a stand close by is the skeleton of Steller's sea-cow (Rhytina), an extinct species, found in the peat deposits of Behring's Island, Kamschatka. On a separate stand near the beginning of the gallery is a perfect skeleton of the mastodon, found in Missouri, to one side of which are the skulls of a dinotherium (lower jaw a plaster reproduction), from Epplesheim in Hesse-Darmstadt, and of a mastodon from Buenos Ayres. At the end of the gallery we enter the Pavilion, which contains the fossil Birds, Marsupialia, and Edentata. Among the first are remains of the dinornis, or moa, an extinct wingless bird of New Zealand. Table-case 13 contains specimens of the oldest fossil birds as yet discovered, in which the tail is an elongation of the back-bone. Other cases contain remains of the gigantic extinct kangaroo of Australia (six times larger than its living representative), and of some of the diminutive mammals of the earliest geological period. In the centre is the skeleton of a megatherium from Buenos Ayres, a huge extinct animal, the bony frame-work of which is almost identical with that of the existing sloth. Its colossal strength is indicated by the form of its bones, with their surfaces roughened for the attachment of powerful muscles and tendons. Adjacent is a cast of a gigantic extinct armadillo (Glyptodon clavipes) from Buenos Ayres, beside which the skeleton of a living species is placed for comparison.

In the corridor leading to the N. from the end of the gallery is placed a plaster cast of a plesiosaurus. The passage leads to

GALLERY D, which is devoted to the fossil Reptiles. In Wall-case 1 and Table-cases 1 & 2 are remains of the pterodactyles or flying lizards, while to the left is a large collection of icthyosauria. At the end of the gallery is a cast of a gigantic Indian tortoise.

The various galleries extending to the N. of the reptile gallery, each about 140 ft. long, contain the fossil Fishes and Invertebrate Animals.

We now return to the entrance-hall and enter the S.W. GALLERY, to the left, which contains the Ornithological Collection. The mounting of the specimens of the glass-cases in the middle of the floor is extremely skilful. The Pavilion at the end of the gallery contains the ostriches, emus, and cassowaries.

The parallel gallery to the N. contains the Collection of Corals, while the galleries at right angles to this are devoted to the Fishes, Insects, Reptiles, and Shells. A staircase, descending from the westernmost of the passages connecting the Bird and Coral Galleries, leads to the basement of the W. wing, which is occupied by the Cetacean Collection, including the skeleton of a common rorqual or fin-whale (Balaenptera musculus), 68 ft. long.

We now again return to the Great Hall and ascend the large flight of steps at the end of it to the first floor. On the first landing-place is a statue of Charles Darwin (d. 1882), by Boehm. To the right, above the geological department, is the Mineralogical Collection, which contains a most extensive array of minerals, meteorites, etc. A notice at the door gives instruction as to the best order in which to study the specimens here. To the right and left of the entrance are cases containing different varieties of marble and granite. Among the most remarkable objects in the other cases are a unique crystalline mass of Rubellite from Ava (Case 33), a magnificent crystal of light red silver ore from Chili (Case 8), and the unrivalled groups of topazes and agates (Cases 25 & 14). In Case 13 is a piece of jasper, the veining in which bears a singular resemblance to a well-known portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer. Among the larger objects in the room at the E. end of the gallery is the Melbourne meteorolite, the heaviest known (31/2 tons).

The gallery in the W. wing of the first floor, above the Bird Gallery, contains the Mammalian Collection. The most interesting section is that devoted to the various species of monkeys; close to the entrance are the anthropoid apes. In the middle of the gallery are the seals and walruses; farther on, the giraffes, elephants, and hippopotami.