The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 7

THE MANCHESTER UHAKPTATST. SATURDAY, JAKUAftY 14. 1922. THE HAPPY MOUNTAIN 1 AWRT "CP I THE SOUTH END OF I A MISCL'LLANY. J.IX1 JJX JJ JJXJ All Did anybody, think it odd the other day that a man who was clearly no fool, and had no sort of quarrel with life, should set out alone at a midwinter sunset to cross in a storm one of the wildest tracts of mountain in England? For Kinder is mountain.

Years, no doubt, have planed a good two thousand feet of millttone grit and coal off the old Pennine arch. But at night, or when snow is falling and shuttingyou up, as you walk, in a moving white cell, the black peat flat that is now the top of the Scout has the right mountain glory of gloom that raises the mountaineer's spirits as black frost with-out makes your fire burn better within. See Kinder Downfall with all the little precipice curtained with ice and hung about with pendent six-foot lustres of that crystal. Or in an-equinoctial gale, when all the stream's water is caught by the wind at the edge of the fall and thrown back through the air on to the high table from which it has tried to hp over. Jn the man who came down a few hundred Jjrds from this spot the flame must have Vtrned pretty high on the night of New Year's Day before it went out altogether.

He asked for, and he must have got, his fill of the oldest and most elating of combative joys, the one beside which even Homer's joy of battle is a modern substitute. Carry your fever," says Meredith, to the or minus diseased; mount, rack the limbs, wrestle it out among the! peaks; taste danger, sweat, earn! ost learn to discover ungrudgingly i mac uaggaru tatigue is the. tair vision you have run to earth, and that rest is your uttermost reward. How the eld las life closes in about you there! You are the man of your faculties' nothing more. Why should a man pretend to more? We ask it wonderuiRly when we are heslfchv." Xn nP1 even, for what counts as technical climbing Orepous and Drus and the like.

Mere upland navigation will do. The Pennine gives Those who still that the Bible was written down at Divine ctjtion should nothing to onder at a London sto: current. A prosaic researcher tn the Br.iv Museum, wholly innocent of poetry and igru rant of the poets, but once a dabbler Spiritualism, was sitting in the Eeadipg-rooni one day before Christmas when he sudden ly began to "receive" verses metrically regular and, with one or two exceptions, rhymed. He "got" them indeed at such .1 rate that they outpaced his pen. and sonic o.

the lines were lost; but after two smmc- l.i went away with some forty octotj quatrans. He called the whole "The Mai World's Dream A Fantasy in Three Parts." a sent it first to Dr. Orchard, the mm stcr of church, then to Mr. Bernard Shaw, and to Mr. James Douglas, who had just puh is'iM an article on automatic writing.

To Dr. Orchard they are the not unnatur.i! sublimation of broodings on the world tioubUs of our me: to Mr. Shaw they are miraculous, if or pinal (and the stakes 250 on their ongmali.y); to Mr. Douglas they are a baffling imstery. To the verba mspiratiomst, of couise, they are none of these things.

The poem is concrete enouch. forcible and ten vivid in expression, but often quite commonplace too, and technically Alto gether it is not done remarkably well; but that is not the question. The question is. How did it come to get clone at all One can't suppose something like the old Hebrew prophecj, 111 which "the hand of the Loi.l was upon" the prophet as the umohtional tunsmitter of a message that somehow got itself expressed 111 all-unconscious art. for that kin.i of inspiration stood the test; it inspired, and still inspires, and this poem doesn't.

Mr. Shaw's theory is that it is the teinearnat on the writer's brain of verses written a hundred ears ago, lint there is strong internal oudeneo that dating l'o Mr. Douglai hits of them Blake-like or Shelleyan; biit simly ne tlici Shelley nor Blake at any stage or in any could have been got ther to own them 01. as is also suggested, to be responsible for tin- 1 psychic conveyance. It one accepts the statement that he wrote the poem from dictation and did '10L 11, then mind the dictator ery well be memoiy.

produc.ng something he had read so-new he -in a newspaper perhaps, at some me. un heeded? Nationally, at any rate, theie seem to be nothing else fui it. The function of the grand jury, fonorrnina which Mr. Justice Darling has been expros-'ng himself, has always uijsiined lhe 1 ij nun. and for thai reason the disappeaianoe uf gun.

I juries during the war did not ceein much tu matter. All that was was a little piei of ritual from the assize court proceed remembers -how the magistrate, wen1 solemnly sworn, how they were "charged" by the judge, how they letired to their duties, and how presently they would reappear in the 1 gallery, fix certain parchments 111 the clip ol a long rod, and hand them (allowing nobody else to touch them) direct to the clerk of assize That official opened the folded paichments ai.u announced: "Gentlemen, you find a tiuc bill against So-and-so," stating the charge; or alternatively, "Gentlemen, you find 'no bill' against So-and-so." It always puzzled the layman to know why the immediate proceeding: of the court were always interrupted the moment the membcre of the grand jurj appeared in their gallery, as if it were a matte; of life and death. But that was real respect for a theory of the law that a prisoner against whom the grand jury found no jirima-farn ase should not be detained custody one -v ui i own, mien the right mood is on it. At some evening" twilight or morning of mist you leave roads oeiiind first, and then tracks, and strike into the open moor as a ship goes into the pathos Atlantic at night. Almost at once you are reposcfully simplified; all that is complicated and inessential about you peel, iteelf off, coat by coat, til, behold! vou are the man ot your faculties, nothing more nothing bft but a body as fit as vour nasi, may have made it.

an oye to read" map uul compass and watch, a biain to connect hat you read, and a will to go on in absolute faith in those thiee. gallerv either uuncrtinonco of fu-sy 10lp or iniYMve ooun. i i moment alone Columbus pily, the most serious thing ill i tho world, has made vou one, in your own little nay, with all who have found their nOod going into the dark by themselves to wrestle with-those queer-tempered angels the earth and the lsy. Your logs and your nits and your compass may lead you through darkness and tempest over the top of Kinder to a tha wins-place in Edalos friendly or through falling snow across the Adler Pass to ii u' il" sea to a new world, hut the essential thrill is the same the delighted spirit's exultation in the captaincy of your simplest powers over the brute resistance of nature. Hergson suggests that we like tragic plays because they awake in our retentive, loni-pecljgreed souls an elating sense of the harsh and sombre youth of our race of the terrible tellows we were when a man would fight a fnend to the death for the hide of a slaughtered horse, or woo him a bride by stunning her with a club and bearing her homo over his shoulder through all the miles fit toi est between the young people's several kraals.

The joy of the duel with hard weather may be residual too. The solitary mountain rambler of to-day may be unconscio'uUv trying to dig up and enjoy the long-buried rapture of that first father of his who ventured up the steep forested slope of blackening earth above the rod Cheshire sands and peered over the Pennine ridge, between tho trunks ot the Peak Fo. est oaks, at the gentler slant miming down oast into the Yorkshire lo be Anyhow, he has made an escape He bas got out of reach, for the day, of that Besetting malady of intricate civilisations the want of a stirring visible relation between effort and result. A typical modern figure is tho municipal Medical Officer who half thinks ns pieservative work for the frail may nly ho compromising the future of tho unite longer than possible after he had entitled to his freedom. The grand jury of old did not record its findings in actual writing.

If it handed la the clerk of assize the indictment intact, that' was a true bill." If it buippcd the indictment with a pair of scissors, that was no bill." This tieatment was a wise piovision that inado the finding both tool-proof jnd knave-proof. When a grand jury had finished their duties they were always most courteously thanked by the judge, and if it was a quartei sessions grand juiy (these were not necus-sanly magistrates) it was an old custom foi the judge to accord them permission tu go tu his Majesty's prison of course a houuuicc visitors. Matthew Arnold described it all, wailfuUyl A drawing by Mr. Hanslip Fletcher. An article describing- the new buildings of London is printed on this page to day.

NEW LONDON BUILDINGS. familiar manner, just as he would have done THE WEEK ON THE SCREEN ten years ago. The public has stood that law 1 court many times without complaining, but a large, mobile character. The detail is designed to an unsual pitch of finish the towerlike treatment of the stair with small opening, contributes, as a foil, to the general appearance of quiet yet unmistakable grandeui. The ornament on" the niches, the quality ot the metal window panel, the chance in" the worm will turn.

The Queen of Sheba. AXD TIIBILLS. CONTESTS. CONFLICTS. iv ill still call tliem blessed.

The splayed corners leave only a small return in Aldwych, and thus the charming effect of the crescent is rather lost. It i- a thousand pities it was not possible to carry on tb design an open arcade bridging side streets as in Nash's Regent Street, knitting the buildings together and getting the tnlMalue of the Aldwych curve. Messrs. Trehearne and Norman are responsible tor many buildings in Kingsway, and it is to them it owes any semblance of unity that it has. They ale responsible also for the new buildins; of the London School of Besides stagnation there is exaggeration, and i character of the ironwork on the west side, this is a fault which has let loose upon us the flood of super-productions," in which growth and the scale ot the lam) hangings are open to criticism, but no new- building has aroused has gone not into the quality but the quantity.

COMl'LKTIOX OF KINGSWAY. A great event has quietly happened in London in 1922: the completion of Kingsway, which is to the London of George V. what Regent Street was to the Regency of the fourth George a great thoroughfare running north and south through a district mainly cut up hy little, crooked streets, and as Regent Street ended in the north by the Park Crescent, so Kiugsnfy is rounded "off by the crescent of Aldwych. Tint there the comparison unhappily ends, for the whole Resent i. i une way that wo each hall-live a hundred different lives strive without quite knowing what wo strive lor, and doubt and fluctuate and make fresh starts and then have fresh misgivings and nag and Gutter and rant about ideals we do not hvc up to.

until wo falter lite away with lutt.e done At least for some eager and absorbed hours your true rambler has washed all that hitili.tar.ra.nism out of his soul and has -started tair again a heaven of simple effort and clear aim a career in life opens before him at breakfast stucess in life warms him at bedtime. He has discovered a wav of plavino-from which most ways of working "have some thing to learn com en ti at ion and joy and the sense of au absolute value in anv hand's turn that is done with a will. I had never." a great modem thinker wrote from the Alps some years ago "been before on the sort of places we went up mostly locks ami I found it as much as I could do. But I got better as I went on and am certainly ghul ot the experience. 1 don't think I can oer net along without occasionally doing something violent.

It seems necessary to prevent thought from degenerating into flabbiness. Or rather, perhaps, it helps me to realise that the qualities wanted in what are called phya-cal' efforts are icallv just' as much more piotessionaJ interest since Sir J. J. The producer says (and who can blame bimf), Burnet's Kodak block in Kingsway. I In the City there has been much building, I II take a year to make ths picture, spend a quarter million pounds, build a tower that Lcononiics, uith its over-boldlv clesisnied London, Friday In the film trade show world this has bjen a week of thrills, of contest and conflict.

On Thursday we shot .1 com ict through a cupboard donr and murdered a villain by hi-, owi gai'len gate-: on 1'iiday we fought Russia for the ion of the Suez Canal and black-mailed the Governor of the Bank of England; on Monday we helped Solcmcn against the armies of Ecypt, poniarded a king, and th'ew out of gear; on luesday we will hold five thousand armed men fighttn add a few hundred camels, and the public will In looking through some back numbers ot Xotes and Queries (wntes V. I hnd that your correspondent it suppoited in Iih statement that "the word 'influenza' made its appearance in England just before the middic of the eighteenth century by the following tract: "Doctors may dispute ai to the date ot the first outbieak of influenza; the word itself seems to be of comparatively recent origin. It is not to be found in the folio ed.tiou (1765) of Johnson's Dictionary, but can be found traced as far back as 1770, where it appears Toole's 'Lame Lover'; air Luke Limp, one ot tht characters in that remarkable play, declining to dine out on the ground that he had beer, confined to bed two days with the now In 1782 the malady made a fresh appeaiance, and this time it attracted the attention a poet who sent eight lines on the subject to the 'European Magazine' for June of that year," two of which I will quote Influenza! ha'rte away. Cease thy baneful empire here. In Tuesday's list of Books Received by the Manchester Guardian I note with envy (writes Viator that the German version of Eomain Holland's Musical Tour through the Land of the Past is priced at Mk.60 (about Is.

8d. at to-day's exchange whereas the English translation costs 10s. Gd. There are compensations, however, for we are told on swallow the rest." The public has swallowed, Street scheme was treated as one unified effect but less readily every day. The new Fox super nun j.ne wueen of bheba." is to begin its by one controlling architect, and the result was the most harmonious and enticing shop career at the Boyal Albert Hall, and people who like to see armies clashing together.

ping street in the world, which gathered iw-pressiveness by the sheer momentum of rhythmic length. "With Kings wav it was chariots racing, and troops of camels moving in different, and, although planned on a nobly spacious scale and governed by the L.C.C. conditions of height, it was left to the owners and architects to desitrn then- buildines with wanted in what are called Two rame to earth and won a steeplechase. And I t-hc- thrill worthy of the name was the steeplechase, which, to cur honour, was of British manufacture an incident in the Granger Davidson film The sport of When an unpretentious picture, wnh a srr.U! cast and everyday setting, without puS or paddine, "puts it oer by sheer merit, and a gorgeous spectacle whinh cost a quarter of a million tc produce leaves the audience lukewarm, in spite of excellent photography, immense crowds, chariot-races, besieged cities, years latei he died ol exposure in a storm on Mont Blaius. almost exactly as Mr.

Martin did on tne i'oak. hat such things should a regard tar harmonious effect and not lo strive against one another in competitive architectural falsettos. There was at first an idea for Mr. Xorman Shaw to lay down a main scheme of design for the street, but that was thought to show unworthy suspicion. As Temurked at the time, it was evidently but the biggest thing Mr.

Edwin Cooper's offices for tne Port of London Authority is not yet finished. This- year, with its completion and that of the London County Hail by Mr. Ralph Knott, there should be particular incitement tor London citizens to interest themselves in architecture, for tbese will be the largest buildings of a public character erected in London this century. The Port of London building, with its grand portico and its square, ornate tower decorated by enormous sculptural groups of animals, is a bold effort to remind Londoners of the greatness ot the port that most ot them have never seen. It looms over Wyatt's beautiful Trinity House like the Mauretania over a dainty brig.

English architects are otten compared to their disadvantage with their American colleagues in civic architecture, but the latter are never tested as ours are when designing for a site in a mediaavally -planned city like London. Mr. Cooper had a site of extraordinary irregularity to tackle, and it is as yet to be demonstrated on the spot (as well as on paper) that he has had the genius to rise superior to it. An effort has been made by Mr. Campbell Jones to make a tall bank and office building worthy of its site behind King William's statue, facing the traffic coming over London Bridge.

It is nine or ten storeys high to the top of the central attic that makes a sort of tower, and it has a steep red roof which will sometimes very seldom befall. in this greatest spoit, as well as hunting and foot- another page that the average German income per head is Mk.5,000, which means that M. Eol- felt by the L.C.C. that simple faith was better than Norman Shaw. Well, to-day we see the slow snnouette against a desert sky will find them there in full measure, well staged and photographed.

The story is more Sheba legend than Biblical fact, the Solomon rather of the Song than of the Book of Kings, but I must in justice add that there is a quality of intense ness about this film monarch which, with an eastern dignity of manner and appearance, can carry him beyond his epoch and suggest for an odd moment or so the glory which sent away the old Sheba with no spirit left in her." The American film, to judge by our latest imports, is the film of yesterday the British is the film of to-morrow, and the thrill of best moments is the thrill of hope for the future, the joy of the immature but growing-. Bad photography and good exist side by side; the plot takes many an unnecessary turn, in which material is copiously wasted. Growth is there, and healthy growth, but the pruning-knife is badly needed. How, for instance, can we believe that in any respectable "club a visitor (even an amateur heavy-weight champion) uuu huh swimming ana every great sport you can name, is nothing against it or them. The mere retention of life is never a big enough aim to absorb all its powers.

And even here it may count for a little that death by a fali on a mountain, or by exposure on one, is, as a rule, death disarmed, for the dying, of many distresses those that you know" when vou see land's book costs a German about one-33rd of hi income, while the English price of 10s. 6d. re great thoroughfare lined with expensive and massive buildings harshly ignoring one another and shouting out in different languages like a row of booths at a fair. Lut- presents only about one-380tb part of an income of 200 a year. yens, Burnet, Belcher, Atkinson most c-f men aie, as me gr.miv ironical nhrase is.

arched entrance suggesting gieat converging lines of earnest students daiting in and out like projectiles (only, on closer view you see that tho doois aie lather an anti-climax) and also, I think, tor that charming office budding, with its unworried surface and well-pruportioned windows, nest to Burnet's baroque General Accidents Assurance Corporation's building. It is a pity, however, that the lines of the cornice do not join, particularly as about a foot more would have done it, and on the cuive the discordance is particularly unhappy. Before leaving Kings-way one may note two reflections. Our modern Imperialist commeicial architecture, ith its gigantic columns, pediments, and top-heavy attic, is defeating its own lmposingness by the use of dark metal panels enclosing tiers of windows which reduce the scale and in the second place, all this showiness and fancy trappings is already old-fashioned in the new world of economy and realism. While Kingsway is being built old Regent Street is being steadily destroyed, and the delicate old plaster fasade is now only to be seen in pieces.

Oxford Circus is being rebuilt on a larger scale, and Sir Henry Tanner and Son have completed a large block lower down for Messrs. Dickins and Jones, with a good shop front simply treated with flat-stone casing enclosing the windows and mezzanine storey. The central part is slightly advanced and accentuated hy large jrnamental iron flambeaux at either side. Another large block, the Galeries Lafayette, bv Messrs. William Woodward and Sons and Sr.

Chanut, is thinner in effect with aggressive windows, but has a sensible balcony with suitable ironwork, appropriate to this professional street. While in the West End mention must, of course, be made of Mr. Curtis Green's showroom and offices for the-A'olseley Motor Company in Piccadilly, near Ritz Hotel. It is worthy of its "august site, and is in many ways the most notable building of the year. The ground floor is ti-eated like a noble Italian stable of the Renaissance, with a vaulted roof forming a series of domes supported by tall Doric olumns of red lacquer with gilded capitals, vhile the floor is black and white marble in geometrical pattern, and the hanging lamps' are elaborate enough for a cathedral.

The quietly their beds." If we aij bnew tne THE LAST STRAW. fOn receivinK a demand for income tax which the cracks are there, and Burnet's KodaV Building is a masterpiece of its class, but they have "no connection with next door." None. No one is to blame, human nature as the phrase goes, being what it is; the architect's law the architect's clients eive. omitted to enclose the usual franked envelope; desert panorama, and all the technical attritions ot the American mot-'en picture when this state of affairs comes about, exhibitors jrill have to adjust their ideas of box-office success. That steeplechase should put more money into the till than all tite peacocks of Sheba and Disraeli.

American productions of late have shown progress only in the photosrraphv and the art-trtles: plays and players except the few stars who are also artists seem content to re.ieh their last year's, standards and then stop short. You feel that they cannot grow, that the oxygen in the film atmosphere is used up. In the best pictures this condition appears as maturity, with perfection of detail almost too conscientious, as in the screen version of Disraeli," made from Louis Parker's play, and perhaps the best picture to come across the Atlantic eince The Mark of Zorro." It is an attempt at the film epic, dealing with the man for a remittance. At the bottom of Kingsway, however, just could throw an elderly gentleman over the banisters without provoking remark? Yet he does it in The' Sport -of Kings "a good too, in other respects, and really admirable in when all seemed lost, there has baen a rally, as though the influence of the great Chamber? from Somerset House has ca'Ied out over the Bush site: "Rally, gentlemen really!" The prosaic fact that the design for the buildings at both sides was entrusted to the same firm of architects (Messrs. Trehearne the racing scene which provides its climax.

dates ot our deains and could choose only the manner, who would take loug over the choice On the one side the stilled, unnatural room the long, slow losing fight for breath; the lonely waiting, perhaps, in a kind of ante chamber to extinction, impenetrable by your friends perhaps worse. On the other ar Enoch's translation from the full height and heat of radiant vigour, effort and jov an instant fall dawn two thousand feet "of ice or rock wall into peace, or the restful collaps. of all the muscles into the acquiescence of bodily exhaustiou and all in no smothering prison of curtains and lamp-light, but witn the sane aad clean touch of sun or wind on you still, perhaps with the blown granules oi ice lightly stinging your cheek as" you take your departure. And here indeed might Death be fair If death be dying into air. If souls evanished mix with the Illumined heaven, eternal sea.

The chief interest of the -film, however, w.ll ne as a stage in tne evolution ot a promising and Norman) may also have had something British screen actor who is still in the early days of his career. Victor McLaglen has to do with it. the corner buildings have been designed for one effect, and these with the Bush developed finely since "The Call of the he has, happily, lost none of that Company great, arcnea portal in aidwycn. which Mr. Corbett has planned to make ar expressive end to Kingsway, will compose schoolboy exuberance and clumsiness which Of all the exhibitions Of meanness ever met I think that this omission's The worst encountered yet; To supersede or dim it Xo rival shall emerge? This is the holy limit, The last, the outer verge! They promised me a Geddes To whittle down the tax.

And this device instead is The way they use the axe For, mark you, not contented With all tbey took before, This dodge that they've invented Means claiming twopence mora. They take my little pittance And say, "Now, that's for you; The rest is our remittance (Which, kindly note, is due)." And now without contrition They yen strip the wreck, And make 'me in addition Bay postage on the oheque! Ltjcho. soon lose its redness in London smoke. Mr. M.

E. Collins also has a bank building at the Flat Iron junction of King William Street and Cannon Street, in the prevailing big business style, as well as Messrs. Furness, Withy's new offices in Leadenhall Street, which is excellent in scale but rather heavy-handed in detail. The office building near "it by, Messrs. Richardson and Gill and Mr.

Kersey is a very interesting solution of the problem of a small city building with good lighting and economy of ornament. The surface in this facade and the refined cornice and the distinction of the other facade in Eastdheap are notable. These architects have also a well-simplified building in Moorgate Street. Much refinement, too, is seen in the small office building in Cannon Street for Messrs. Blades, East, and Blades, by Mr.

Campbell Jones. These are among several signs of a return to something of the quiet refinements of the early Victorian city architecture, which had been rather lost in the Edwardian passion for making offic buildings look like official buildings. saves turn from the rank of perfect staxe lovers. symmetrical grouping of dignity and probably but has added to it subtlety of expression and flexibility of mood. Perhaps he boxed to better of beauty, lhe corner are treated oi a large scale, with tiers of windows treated in panel with metal filling between fall Disraeli as shown through the actions of the Suez Canal purchase, and although it sweeps political history away in true epic manner, it preserves social history with -a great billowing of crinolines and nodding of aide curls, for all the world like a page out of T5u Maurier.

This is American maturity and is good work-There is, besides, American stagnation, which contents itself with, the old stories, the old situations, the old stock characters. Such a film is Out of the where a young aristocrat marries beneath him," thrusts his wife upon a haughty and exclusive family of pre-Adamite descent, suspects a rival and promptly- shoots him, is charged in the old familiar law court and acquitted in the old lolumns, and surmounted by an mgemouc tower-like structure crowned' by a flattened octagonal dome like a Chinese -hat. Lit ud The handsome lines are recalled to mind by tho thought of an ending so clear of the minor charges, at least, that most of us have to bring against death. But death, anyhow, has little to do with a sport unmatched as a vivifier of life. purpose in his Alfred.

Truscott days, but he never did finer work than in the difficult remorse scenes of The Sport of Kings," a certain curve of the shoulders, a droop of the hand, and words are clumsy. It is difficult to imagine anything mors incongruous than Victor McEaglen as a star," but if he is not careful be 11 'inevitably become, -one of our few British screen luminaries. He is, at all events, a man- worth watching in the near future. C. A.

L. at night, these buildings have a very romantic elevation consists or a base, an order, and an attic. The lower storey forms an arcade, with arches for windows and doors guarded at the -ttect. A real etrnrt nas oeen made b- tb urchitects to save the splendid site, and if the facades do not rise above strong, hard top by ornate ironwork repeated in the balconies. The building combines an effect of.

the luxury of its wares, and-expresses their yELOO tooth es nd utilAes. therein its perfection lies. AvrJ commercial architecture of the time London.