turies of nobility, a small minority, are endowed, in proportion to their pedigrees, with the logic, the wisdom, or the wit, although this limit includes the house of Russell, ennobled in 1539. Peers of meaner blood are quite on a par with them in this respect. Nor should it be forgotten how many of those who reflect, or have reflected, most honour on their House, received their training, their baptism of debate, in the House of Commons, and left that assembly with foreboding or regret. "When I have turned out Walpole,' said Pulteney, 'I will retire into that hospital for invalids, the House of Lords.' On entering it as Earl of Bath, he was thus addressed by his old adversary, who had recently become Earl of Orford: My Lord Bath, you and I are now two as insignificant men as any in England.' When (in 1766) the citizens of London learned that the great commoner was to be First Minister, they were in transports of joy, and prepared for a general illumination. The lamps had actually been placed round the Monument, when the Gazette' announced that he had become an Earl. The lamps were taken down. The contemplated entertainments were countermanded, and (according to Macaulay) the clamour against him appears to have had a serious effect on the foreign relations of the country. The name of Pitt had been a charmed name. Our envoys tried in vain to conjure with the name of Chatham.'

A few months after his elevation, the first Lord Holland wrote to Selwyn that his object in taking a peerage was to cut up any further views of ambition by the roots. Brougham, in the Lords, after three or four exciting years, was like Samson with his hair cut. There is a letter from Charles Fox to the first Earl Grey, earnestly condoling with him on the acceptance of a peerage by his father; and who would not condole with a man of energy, laudable ambition, eminent political ability and debating power, like Lord Salis

bury, on his being excluded in the prime of life from the arena in which all the decisive battles of the Constitution must be fought?

The House of Lords is generally and justly regarded as a main pillar of the social edifice; but a political writer of authority has plausibly maintained that the peerage would gain instead of losing by a fusion: that the eminent members would exercise more influence in the long run by (so to speak) leavening the popular assembly than they can ever hope to exercise in their hereditary one.1

Forms long outlive realities. The standing Order of the Lords for the regulation of conferences between the Houses runs thus:

6

The place of our meeting with the Lower House upon conference is usually the Painted Chamber, where they are commonly before we come, and expect our leisure. We are to come thither in a whole body, and not some lords scattering before the rest, which both takes from the gravity of the lords, and besides may hinder the lords from taking their proper places. We are to sit there, and be covered; but they are at no committee or conference ever either to be covered or sit down in our presence, unless it be some infirm person, and that by connivance in a corner out of sight, to sit, but not to be covered.'

The Personal Anecdotes,' comprising three-fourths

1 England and the English.' By the late Lord Lytton. The noble author, who delivered more than one fine and effective speech in the House of Commons, never addressed the Lords, although he carefully prepared five or six speeches, left among his papers, for delivery in the Upper House. Lord Macaulay, also, never spoke as a peer. Yet surely the House of Lords offers the most congenial audience for speakers who shine by intellectual richness and brilliancy, who owe little or nothing to the exciting current of debate. It is unfortunate that a tacit convention or understanding excludes the episcopal bench from secular topics of debate; for it is rich in eloquence of a high order. The late Lord Fitzwilliam, meeting the late Bishop of Winchester (Wilberforce) soon after his celebrated speech on the Corn Laws, told him that such a display of episcopal eloquence in the House of Lords was altogether contrary to rule. The Bishop of Peterborough (Magee) has more than once laid himself open to a similar reproof.

of the book before us, are arranged alphabetically and biographically, beginning Addington, Addison, Agnew, &c., and ending Wilberforce, Wilkes, Windham. This arrangement is fatal to generalisation of any kind. Epochs and subjects are thrown together without coherence or analogy, and a confused mass of desultory impressions is the result. To utilise the materials, we must classify them; and, adding to them what we have procured from other sources, we will endeavour to illustrate a few more of the distinctive features of the British Parliament.

Prominent amongst them must be ranked the proneness to be swayed by eloquence, and the abundant supply of it, of the best quality, at all times. In England, the oratorical ages, instead of being separated by long intervals like the literary ages, follow in unbroken succession. To the going and coming man we may again and again apply the noble imagery of Burke: Even then before this splendid orb (Chatham) was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary (C. Townshend), and, for the time, became lord of the ascendant.' Whenever speaking was possible, there were able, forcible, and fine speakers. Although the fame of many has been preserved only by description or tradition, no rational doubt can be entertained of their excellence. Sir Thomas More's wit, readiness, and eloquence were universally recognised by his contemporaries. Ben Jonson writes thus of Bacon:

'There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, when he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss.

He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.'

Clarendon's pages teem with proof that the period included in his history was marked by debating ability of the highest order. The leading speakers were then earnest, plain, and practical, rather than rhetorical or declamatory. They were rarely full and flowing, rarely what is commonly called eloquent, rarely imaginative in the highest sense of the term. Their greatest effects were produced by terse weighty sentences, apt homely metaphors, sudden turns, quaint allusions, condensed reasoning, and bold apostrophes. They cannot be acquitted of pedantry, and they were occasionally longwinded. Hume describes Pym as opening the charge against Strafford in a long-studied discourse, divided into many heads after his manner;' and contemptuously referring to an attempt to put the parliamentary champions in balance with the most illustrious characters of antiquity-with Cato, Brutus, Cassius-the historian exclaims Compare only one circumstance and consider its consequences. The leizure of those noble antients were (sic) totally employed in the study of Grecian eloquence and philosophy, in the cultivation of polite letters and civilised society. The whole discourse and language of the moderns were polluted with mysterious jargon, and full of the lowest and most vulgar hypocrisy.'

This was partly true of Vane, Cromwell, and many others when the Saints were uppermost : during 'Barebones' Parliament or in the worst days of the 'Rump.' But it was not true of the parliamentary celebrities of the antecedent or immediately ensuing periods-of 1628, 1640, or 1659; not true of Hampden, Holles, Digby, Capel, Hyde, Falkland, and a host of accomplished and highly-cultivated men, whose minds and

memories fairly ran over with classical illustrations. Of the two principal speakers quoted by Hume, in 1628, one, Sir Francis Seymour, refers to Herodotus, and the other, Sir Robert Philips, to Livy.

Sir Francis Seymour said:

'Let us not act like Cambyses's judges, who, when their approbation was demanded by the prince to some illegal measure, said, that, Tho' there was a written law, the Persian kings might follow their own will and pleasure. This was base flattery, fitter for our reproof than our imitation; and as fear, so flattery, taketh away the judgment. For my part, I shall shun both; and speak my mind with as much duty, as any man, to his majesty, without neglecting the public.

Sir Robert Philips :

"I read of a custom among the old Romans, that, once every year, they held a solemn festival, at which their slaves had liberty, without exception, to speak what they pleased, in order to ease their afflicted minds; and, on the conclusion of the festival, the slaves severally returned to their former servitudes.

"This institution may, with some distinction, well set forth our present state and condition. After the revolution of some time, and the grievous sufferance of many violent oppressions, we have now, at last, as those slaves, obtained, for a day, some liberty of speech: But shall not, I trust, be hereafter slaves: For we are born free. Yet, what new illegal burthens our estates and persons have groaned under, my heart yearns to think of, my tongue falters to utter.

'I can live, tho' another, who has no right, be put to live along with me; nay, I can live, tho' burthened with impositions, beyond what at present I labour under: But to have my liberty, which is the soul of my life, ravished from me; to have my person pent up in a jail, without relief by law, and to be so adjudged,―O! improvident ancestors! O! unwise forefathers! to be so curious in providing for the quiet possession of our lands and the liberties of parliament; and, at the same time, to neglect our personal liberty, and let us