debate, seems as if he would step off his pedestal and come down to you-with what calm self-possession Burke uplifts one single finger, as if gently keeping time to some wonderful discourse:-how Pitt, the hard-headed, obstinate little man, stands fronting the colossal Fox, who, with arm uplifted and fist clenched, looks inclined to drive home his arguments by main force: -how the boyish figure of Falkland, leaning on his sword, has the sweet face it up by a half-sorrowful smile: -what an invincible, fixed resolve is in the clear-cut features of Hampden as he, too, grasps the sword, with lips compressed. And having noted all these our visitor can, if he likes, pass forward and examine the frescoes close at hand. After which, still with his hat off, and still moving very noiselessly, let him ask the first policeman he sees, where this passage leads, and where that passage leads, and that functionary will be pretty sure to respond by promptly ejecting him from the building and assuring him that he is an audacious intruder.

If the prospect of this result is not satisfactory, then, as an alternative mode of procedure, we advise our friend to put on an air of important business,-to press forward and let the doors shut behind him with a good slam,-above all, to keep his hat on and look like a man who knows where he is going and who wants to be there as quickly as possible. If, beyond this, he will be at the trouble of carrying in his hand a roll of foolscap or brief paper we have no doubt he will find it a passport to the most secret and hidden penetralia of the building. Indeed, he would be an unusually astute policeman who would object, at sight of such a talisman, to admit a man of average impudence to join the Lord Chancellor himself upon the very woolsack. At any rate, he will be an unusually surly policeman who declines to point out the winding staircase beyond the telegraph office, &c., which leads to the long line of the Commons' Committee Rooms.

In fact, these rooms are open to the public, but as they are usually

crowded with those who have business there, the guardians of order naturally enough try to keep away those who go merely to loiter.

The long elegant corridor which stretches by the seemingly interminable suite of Committee Rooms, each of which opens into it, has its windows looking into the interior courts of the structure. In the recess of each window is a little desk, with inkstand, pens, &c., for the convenience of the many who spend here so much of their time. On each side of the corridor are benches, which a few hours' standing in a committee room often make acceptable enough to tired legs. Lounging about, or sauntering up and down, groups of men, for the most part engaged in earnest conversation, throng this corridor or passage all day long (that is, all that part of the day during which the committees are sitting, for within five minutes of their rising the passage is deserted).

The excitement which attends the lottery of a Parliamentary Committee Room, where the prizes are so splendid and the blanks so many, yet so obstinately disbelieved in, would be well shown if we could analyze these groups and show what manner of men they are who are thus drawn together. Here are barristers, solicitors, parliamentary agents, clerks, clergymen, men of the sword and men of the sea, secretaries and projectors of every description of joint-stock enterprise beneath the moon, owners of mines and collieries, iron-founders, noblemen and their agents, railway chairmen, railway directors, railway managers, railway engineers, railway shareholders (though not so many of these last as there ought to be). The railway element is strongest of all, for at least four-fifths of the 'Private Bills' which come before the committees are promoted by railway companies. Scarcely a mile of railway in Britain but you will find some one here able (if willing) to give you a free pass over it. Scarcely an engineer of any eminence but you are more likely to find him here than at his own office. To such men this corridor and the committee rooms themselves are as much a rendez

vous as the Exchange is to the broker and the merchant. Nowhere else can you see so clearly all the enthusiasm which attends the spending of vast sums of money foolishly, -and this enthusiasm is, after all, the most wonderful of any. Hardly anywhere else have you a prospect of seeing so clearly with what earnestness men can go about their projects, and about their principal project of making money,-for where many spend some must also gather.

Amongst so heterogeneous an assemblage it would be odd indeed did we not find some black sheep, and such sheep are to be found here in flocks. The professional projector, the unprincipled schemer, the bubble-blower,-men who care absolutely nothing for the intrinsic merits of the projects they are advocating, who know well enough indeed that they have no intrinsic merits;-but whose one object is to squeeze as much out of the scheme as possible and then throw it away like a sucked orange. Such are to be found here by dozens.

But we do not hesitate to say that here also is to be found the true outdoor parliament that manages the home affairs of England. All that is most distinguished in our country for energy, ability, and enterprise in commercial pursuits is well represented here. Here are to be found the men who keep the great industrial machine of Britain moving by their enterprise and their skill. It is they and such as they who have made English industry and English progress what it is. It is amongst these and such as these that we find the Stephensons, the Brunels, the Watts, the Arkwrights of to-day. They are the salt of a great hard-working, money-making, money-spending people.

And though we speak of them merely as an outdoor parliament we see amongst them no small number of our legislators both hereditary and elective. It is true that we do not, as a rule, meet here our great politicians and diplomatists, for this is not their place, though on occasions they, too, may be seen flitting up and down. But here we meet

day after day those Members of Parliament who have been sent up by their constituents not for their wonderful gifts of tongue, but for their proved ability at doing real hard work. Members who make, it may be, very poor speeches on reforın bills, on party politics, or foreign affairs, and who have scant space allowed them in the Times;' but Members who can go through a bill that proposes to deal with millions of pounds, discuss it clause by clause, reconcile conflicting interests, discriminate between the scheme of the professional projector and the scheme that really supplies a national want, and give their prompt decisions honestly and justly. Such Members will sit five days a week through a long session, hearing often the dreariest of evidence on private bills, from eleven till four, then hurry away to prayers at the sound of the Speaker's bell, and scarcely ever fail to have their names in the list of votes, however late the division, or however tedious the debate. Happy are the constituents who are thus represented. As for the poor Members themselves, one scarcely sees their happiness so clearly.

It is time, however, that we leave the corridor and enter the Committee Room itself. And in doing so let us be specially careful to enter by the proper door. For each room has two doors-one for the entrance of the public, the other for the use of Members only. And many are the instances of utter discomfiture on the part of visitors who, entering by the wrong door, find themselves suddenly in the immediate, august presence of the committee itself, and as suddenly bundled out again by the offended clerk.

Most of these rooms are much alike in their general aspect. They look down upon the great silent highway of the penny boats, which are continually passing and repassing beneath the windows. And

often, in hot weather, the odours which Father Thames sends up from his lucid waters are so overpowering that these windows have to be kept close shut.

Each room is divided about equally

by a low handrail running from side to side, and designed to separate those who are officially engaged upon the bill from the public and those who are merely interested in its fate. Outside the rail, therefore, there is merely standing room. Immediately inside it is a long table with seats for the barristers, solicitors, and chief promoters and opponents of the bill. But as this table does not extend quite across the room it leaves space for a few chairs and another table for the convenience of witnesses in waiting, or, indeed, of any one who chooses to push forward and make himself at home.

[And here I hope I may be allowed to pause from charitable motives, and drop a hint which I am sure will be gratefully received by my needy literary brethren. They will always find at this spare table a plentiful supply of the best of pens, ink, and paper (paper with embossed heading, House of Commons,' which is surely respectable), all of which they are free to use ad libitum, and no questions asked. The only deficiency, to which I would respectfully call the attention of the officers of the House, is that postage-stamps are not supplied also. But this, however, is merely within parentheses.]

Beyond this barristers' table and witnesses' table the room is sacred to the committee and its officers. There is a horseshoe table at which sits the committee itself;-the chairman in the convex centre and two other members on each side of him. The committees usually consist of five. The chairman is generally an experienced Member of the Housealways a gentleman of thorough business capacity. The other four members (if we may venture to say it without fear of impeachment) as often as not contain amongst them gentlemen who know very little of, and care still less for, what is going on, and who leave themselves implicitly in the hands of their chairman with a confidence that is well deserved.

In the concave recess of the horseshoe is another small oblong table, on one side of which is a chair for the witness under examination [the

witness being examined in a chair, not in a box], and opposite to him sits the official reporter of the committee, who is a personage of sufficient importance to have a paragraph to himself.

He is invested with much more plenary powers than are given to the gentlemen in the gallery above the Speaker. There, if one does not catch what Lord Palmerston says, he is by no means allowed to interrupt his lordship and make him say it over again. But here our reporter in a similar emergency is allowed to interrupt counsel, witness, or committee until his notes are correct. He is, in fact, the recognized officer of the House, whose duty it is to take verbatim notes of the whole of the proceedings. These notes of his are referred to very frequently in the course of the proceedings, and what is found written there is held conclusive in cases of dispute. Probably some of the most rapid shorthand writers of the day are to be found in attendance on these committees-men who will write from two hundred to two hundred and fifty words per minute without any apparent exertion, and who will continue their work without relief from the time of the committee taking its seat to its rising again. Perhaps such a man might be very much out of his place as a reporter of the debates, where speed and endurance are by no means the only qualities that are requisite. But, on the other hand, the reporter from the gallery would be often quite as much out of place in the committee room. The committee's reporter has no scope whatever for the exercise of his genius, and not much for the exercise of his judgment. He is never worried with a classical quotation. It is no part of his duty to improve the eloquence of the counsel, to condense the verbosity of the witness or correct his grammar, to gloss over ugly mistakes, or add point to a pointless answer. His business is to photograph the proceedings as well as pen and stenography will do it.

If a witness acquits himself well he may depend on finding his performance put down to his credit. If he makes himself an ass he is