In England all interest in living
fish, except as creatures to be coaxed towards hooks and occasionally
retained there, has vanished; on the site of old Westminster Aquarium
the Wesleyans now manage their finances and determine their circuits,
while the Brighton Aquarium, once famous all the world over, is a
variety hall with barely a fin to its name.
After seeing the aquarium in Honolulu, which is like a pelagic rainbow
factory, and the aquarium in New York with all its strange and beautiful
denizens, I am a little ashamed of our English apathy. To maintain
picture galleries, where, however beautiful and chromatic, all is dead,
and be insensitive to the loveliness of fish, in hue, in shape and in
movement, is not quite pardonable.
ENGLISH AND FRENCH INFLUENCES
In essentials America is American, but when it comes to inessentials, to
trimmings, her dependence on old England was noticeable again and again
as I walked about New York. The fashion which, at the moment, the print
shops were fostering was for our racing, hunting and coaching coloured
prints of a century ago, while in the gallery of the distinguished
little Grolier Club I found an exhibition of the work of Randolph
Caldecott and Kate Greenaway. In such old bookshops as I visited all the
emphasis was--just then--laid upon Keats and Lamb and Shelley, whose
first editions and presentation copies seem to be continually making the
westward journey.
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