THE MELBOURNE EXHIBITION.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 463, 31 December 1880, Page 2

THE MELBOURNE EXHIBITION.

(By Garnet Walch.)

A vale of tears—A scientific wilderness— A transformation seene —Disinfecting

The Honorable W. M. K. Vale may be a very good man in his way—but latterly he seems to be in everybody else's way as well—Teetotal Orator, Legislator, Exhibition Commissioner, goodness only knows what besides, he has taken into his capacious brain-box, as my friend James Mace would say, that he is a nineteenth century Hercules with a large stable contract on hand. Hence a number of those recent dismissals in various Government depart ments, concerning which bo much has already been said and written, that I shall not gild refined gold in that direction. I shall take no side in this letter, at any rate, as regards the political view of the matter. I merely mention it as a peg for what follows.

And what follows is my candid opinion, a bit ot my unbiassed untrammelled mind with regard to Dictator Vale's inteference with the Director of the Botanical Gardens Some eight years ago, as most of you will remember, these gardens under the control of a ver\ learned, highly accomplished, much be-decorated savant, had arrived at a pitch of scientific muddle, probaoly unequalled in the annals of flori-euw-horti-culture. Melbourne awoke to the fact, that the tens of thousands of pounds expended on tbe gardens had simply enabled an estimable old -Tentleman to jog backwards and forward upon an extremely unprogressive hobby-horse, a sort of counterfeit charger on the celebrated." Rocking '• breed, while our Sydney and Adelaide cousins laughed or sneered at us, as th

aticy took them, and pointed' with pardonable pride to their pocket Paradises. It became absolutely necessary to make a change. A change was accordingly made. The fossilised equestrian was laid up in «_ lavender at a cost of some £800 per " > annum* and out of numerous applicants jft Mr W. R. Guilfoyle was cho3en for tho vacant post, i ■■ A very little whjHe elapsed before t(J everybody agreed—and what everybody says, mubt, you know, be true-rthat not only had the right man been put in the right place but that a wonderful improvement was to be seen in the gardens themselves. Not only was the wilderness blossoming like the rose, the desert being transformed into . a land flowing with the milk of beauty and the honey of perfume, but i£ from a reserve shunned by all save pedagogues who visited it to inflict elemen- .. tary botany upon hydrocephalus pupils, ? the place became a goodly pleasaunce thronged by recreation-seeking citizens ; the change has been almost magical ; and —< so thoroughly had Melbourne folk become enamoured of their picturesque properly that when the Honorable John Woods proposed to run the Gippsland line through the gardens petitions were signed at th© street corners, and the unpopular proposition incontinently quashed. w From that day until the present time the process of beautifying has steadily proceeded, and our gardens, no longer a by-word and a reproach, are proudly shown to our visitors, and by them acknowledged worthy of our pride. Now J within the past few days the Hon. W. M. K. Vale, having exhausted many viala of his wrath upon the heads of trembling civil servants in the city, has taken an m extra-mural trip and upset a special bottle of Vale's Patent Disinfectant over the roses and geraniums. In other words, he v has virulently attacked Mr Guilfoyle, has chosen to forget the high public estimation in which that gentleman is deservedly held, and has framed several fresh regula • tions restricting, hampering, and generally speaking, bedevilling" Mr Guilfoyle's operations. Unfortunately, ho has one newspaper—an ungrateful journal tha for upwards of a year has been glad to publish Mr Guilfoyle's gratuitous weekly articles—he has, I say, this newspaper on " his side, so that a section of the public are in danger of being misled, not to say + humbugged in this matter. I therefore deem it my duty to enter a protest against the doings of our over-zealous Hercules, and to do what little I can to counteract this paiticularly " foul" blow of 1ug.... uncouth club.

Is it Mr Vale, or which one, or what *► number, of the Exhibition Commissioners, "~ who are making all this fuss about the prize design for the Exhibition Certificate ? The plain facts of the case are About a year ago, and after two competitions between some sixty or seventy

artists, Mr Charles Turner's design was Pchosen by the Fine Arts Committee, whose report to that effect was duly endorsed and finially approved of. Now, after tho lapse of all these months, we are told that the design is not good, and that, without in any way consulting Mr Turner, the Executive Committee, finding that the Fine Arts Committee very properly refused to have anything to do with such an unbusinesslike, such an ungentle-** manly mode of procedure, havo called in two or three artists and requested them to make certain alterations I regret find the names of Messrs G. F. Folingsby and J. R. Ashton in this affair, which looks like a paltry spite upon a gentleman whose ', work is favorably known far beyond Victoria, and whose designs won the prize fairly, honorably, and to the expressed satisfaction of the Melbourne Press. But men who could smilingly pay £800 for the Exhibition fountain, must I suppose, be pardoned all eccentricities where Art is concerned.