Chapter II: Part 2

If it has ever been your lot, most magnanimous sir, to be in the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall about four any afternoon while Parliament is sitting, you must have observed more than one individual, with cheeks evidently "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," rushing into the door which leads to the Strangers' Gallery in the House of Commons. If, however, you look well, you will see that the parties referred to, instead of going the whole length of the passage, as you are compelled to do when occasionally you get an order, turn sharply to the left and climb a flight of narrow stairs. If you manage to follow them, you will find at the top of the stairs a small lobby, where three or four boys, in the livery of the Electric Telegraph Company, are waiting to receive the parliamentary report, which almost immediately after is flashing along the wires to our great hives of industry, of intelligence, and life, or to the capitals of other lands--to Paris--to Vienna--to Berlin. You turn to the left and enter a small room set apart for refreshments--three or four individuals are seated at table, one drinking Bass's far-famed ale, another feasting on juicy beef, another regaling himself with brandy-and-water, and another sipping the less stimulating and equally agreeable produce of the coffee plant. The happy fellows are poking their fun at each other in a mild and pleasant way, or possibly discussing the usual political topics of the day; others flit through the room with a celerity, as Mr. Squeers said of nature, easier imagined than described. Were they followed by gentlemen of Hebrew extraction, with those mysterious little slips of paper which contain letters of such magic power, they could not walk faster. As you listen, utterances of doubtful and dire import fall from their lips. "Palmerston is up," says one. You are alarmed; you think the bottle-holder is in a rage, and you tremble for the consequences. Again you hear, "Lord John is down;" you are distressed at the intelligence, the old champion of civil and religious liberty you hoped would long have been preserved from such a catastrophe. The gentlemen around you, however, listen to such statements with the coolness of stoics, paying little or no regard to such announcements. One says to another, "When are you on?" another demands of his friend, whether he is off; another says he comes on at nine. You are puzzled to know what manner of men you are amongst. They are not strangers fresh from the country--they have too pale and town-like a look for that; they are not members--because members feast in another part of the house. You will soon see what they are! you leave that room and enter another, in which are a few well-dressed personages transcribing hurriedly, as if for life. The truth flashes upon you. "These men are the reporters," you exclaim. For once, my good sir, you are right; and if you go through that glass-door you will find yourself in the REPORTERS' GALLERY.

We will suppose that for this time only the doorkeeper has relaxed his usual vigilance, and you have managed to effect an entrance. There is as much difficulty in getting a stranger into the Reporters' Gallery as in getting Baron Rothschild into the House. As the gallery will not hold more than thirty, it is quite right this should be the case. On the back seats the reporters are sitting idle--some criticising the speakers in a manner anything but complimentary--some sleeping--some reading a quarterly; but on the front seat you see some dozen or thirteen, each in a little box to himself, busily engaged. If the speaker be a great gun, the reporter puts forward his utmost energies and takes down every word--if he be one of the illustrious obscure the task is less difficult, and a patient public is saved the painful duty of reading the _ipsissima verba_ of Smith or Brown. Beside the reporter, in some cases, sits another gentleman, who has, comparatively speaking, an easier office to perform. He is the gentleman that does the parliamentary summary to which you instinctively turn, instead of wading through the eight or nine columns that give the debate itself. I believe the summary writer in the gallery remains all night, while the reporters take their turns, which last on an average half an hour. Thus, no sooner has a reporter been at his post for that time, than he leaves the house and rushes up to the office to copy out his notes; this may take him an hour. He then returns, and is ready to go on again when he is due. It would be utterly impossible for one man to report a debate and then to copy out his notes, and be in time for the paper of the next morning; consequently each paper is compelled to have a body of nine or ten parliamentary reporters, and these reporters, in order that they may all have an equal chance, vary their turns every week. Thus the man who goes on one week at four, goes the next at a later hour--and the reporter who is one week in the Commons, perhaps the next has the honour of sitting in the House of Lords. Otherwise the hard work might fall to a few, and the rest might take it very easy indeed.

As we don't happen to be reporting, we will look about us a little. We will report reporters as they are: on our left, just below us, is the reporter for the _Star_; next comes the _Daily Telegraph_, then the _Advertiser_, and then the _Daily News_. Three boxes are occupied by the _Times_: one for the reporters, one for the summary writer, and one for the manager of the _Times_ parliamentary staff. On the other side are the _Chronicle_ reporter and summary writer, the _Herald_ ditto, and the _Post_. Up to six o'clock in the evening the _Globe_, and the _Sun_, and the _Express_ have each a parliamentary reporter present. The gallery is under the care of Lord Charles Russell, Sergeant-at-Arms, who is sadly put to it where to stow the gentlemen of the press, who have increased far beyond the limits of the gallery. Behind the gallery are rooms in which some reporters write out their notes; and so hot and inconvenient are they, that his lordship has latterly acceded to the reporters a committee room attached for such as need it. Behind the gallery also is a refreshment room, and a policeman to keep out intruders. A few of the weekly papers have reporters in on Thursday and Friday nights, and these constitute the only habitues of the gallery. Of course the aspect of the house is different to what it is when viewed from the Strangers' Gallery. You miss the Speaker and his ornamental chair and majestic wig, but you have a better view of the gangway and the bar--you see the Sergeant-at-Arms, wearing a sword, seated on his easy chair--that chair being made easy by the receipt of twelve hundred a year. You see the gallery under the Strangers' Gallery in which peers, and members' sons, and old M.P.'s occasionally sit; and now and then, through the glass door by which members enter, you see a bonnet, a bit of muslin--the lustre of some female eye--denoting that woman in her loveliness is taking note of the Conscript Fathers. This reminds us that the Reporters' Gallery is just under the little cage in which the British fair are confined during a debate. The consequence is to some of the reporters who wear moustaches, and cultivate the art of killing--who get themselves up in a very different style to your fathers of families--a Barmecide feast of the most cruel kind. They hear the murmur of female voices, not always "gentle and low"--they know that, shining like stars above them, are forms such as "might melt the saintship of an anchorite;" that above them are eyes more eloquent than the tongues below, but they cannot realise what they can imagine; and whilst music comes to them--

"Like ocean which upon the moonlight shores
Of lone Sigaeum steals with murmuring noise,"

they must take down the common sense of common men; such is their cruel fate. And now one word about our companions. Most of them are young men--some are in their prime. None of them are old; old reporters are only met with where dead donkeys and departed postboys are common. At any rate they are not engaged on the morning papers: the late hours, the hard stretch of mind required in a reporter, don't exactly suit old men. If you think reporting easy, my good sir, you are most egregiously mistaken. It takes you two or three years to master shorthand sufficiently to assume your place as a reporter in the gallery. When you have done that, you will find that you don't get your money for nothing, I can assure you. You must for half an hour take down all you can hear; you must then copy that out into long-hand and plain English as best you can. You must then come back into the house and take another turn, and so on, till the house is up; and then, worn and weary, you must again trudge to the office, and there indite the copy which, before the ink with which it is written is dry, is in the composing-room and in type. As this may detain you till four o'clock in the morning, you are then at liberty to retire to your bed, if it suit you, or to the flowers and early purl of Covent Garden, if it be summer time, and you are of a sentimental turn. Now, occasionally, it is all very well to sit up till three or four o'clock in the morning; London then is invested with a grandeur and stillness very impressive: the air is fresh and pure, bearing with it the odours of the country; the grand Cathedral of St. Paul looms proudly before you; the streets seem broader, longer than usual; and, far off, we catch glimpses of Hampstead or of the Surrey hills; but when you have to see this, not once, but every morning, the case is altered, the spell is broken, and the charm is gone; and such a life must tell, sooner or later, upon the constitution. Reporters are not rosy, jolly men; they don't look like Barry Cornwall's happy squires,

"With brains made clear
By the irresistible strength of beer."

Most of them live well, and are protected against the inclemencies of the weather. The reporters of the _Daily News_ and _Times_ come down in cabs, but they appear delicate hothouse plants; though, after all, they do not look worse than a popular M.P., such as Lord Dudley Stuart or Mr. Milner Gibson, at the end of a session. As a class, we have already hinted, the reporters are intellectual men; among them are many who have embraced literature as the noblest of all professions, and have as sacredly devoted themselves to it as, in old times, priests did to the service of their gods. You can tell these by their youthful flush and lofty foreheads. A time may come when the world may seduce them from the service, when all generous aspirations may fade away, when crushing selfishness shall make them common as other men. Then there are others to whom reporting is a mere mechanical calling, and nothing else; who do their week's work and take their week's wages, and are satisfied; but most of the parliamentary reporters are clever men, and all aspire to that character. The mistake is one a little self-love will easily induce a man to make. Men of infinite wit and spirit have been in the gallery; therefore, the men in the gallery now are men of infinite wit and spirit. A gorgeous superiority over other men is thus tacitly assumed. You will hear of such a one, that he was a reporter on the _Times_, but he was not clever enough for that, and so they made him an M.P. But, after all, no man of great genius will report long if he can help it: reporting is a terrible drudgery. A man who can write his thoughts well will not willingly spend his time in copying out the thoughts of others. Dickens was a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_, but he, though his talent in that way was great, though he could perform almost unparalleled feats as a reporter, soon left the gallery. At one time Angus Reach was in the gallery; there, till recently, might have been seen that accomplished critic and delightful novelist Shirley Brooks. For a literary man reporting is a capital crutch: he is well paid, and it often leads to something else. The _Times_' reporters are divided into three classes, none of whom get less than seven guineas a week. The other papers do not pay quite so well; but a literary man, if he be in earnest, can live on less than that till the day comes when the world owns him and he becomes great; and if his dream of fancied greatness be but a dream--if hope never realise the flattering tale she at one time told, still he has a means of respectable livelihood, and may rise from a reporter into an editor. Mr. James Grant, editor of the _Morning Advertiser_, was at one time reporter for that paper. In some cases the ambition of the reporter does not end quite so successfully. Only recently a reporter for one of the morning papers contested an Irish borough. Unfortunately, instead of being returned, the ambitious youth was thrown into gaol for an insignificant tavern bill of merely 250 pounds for eleven days. What cruelty! What talent, what hope, what failure, have there not been in the Reporters' Gallery! And those who know it, if they wanted, could find abundance of material there with which

"To point a moral or adorn a tale."

Perhaps, after all, in nothing is the astonishing improvement made in these latter times so conspicuous as in our system of parliamentary reporting. The House was in terror when reporters first found their way into it. "Why, sir," said Mr. Winnington, addressing the Speaker, "you will have every word that is spoken here misrepresented by fellows who thrust themselves into our gallery. You will have the speeches of this House printed every day during your session, and we shall be looked upon as the most contemptible assembly on the face of the earth." In consequence of such attacks as these, the reporters became frightened, and gave the debates with the speakers disguised under Roman names, though nothing could be more wearisome than the small type of the political club, where Publicola talked against turnpike-gates and Tullus Hostilius declaimed on the horrors of drinking gin. Nor is it to be wondered at that the House grew angry when such reports as the following professed to be a faithful account of its proceedings: "Colonel Barre moved, that Jeremiah Weymouth, the d---n of this kingdom, is not a member of this House." Even when the reporters triumphed, the public were little benefited. Nothing can be more tantalising than such statements as these, which we meet with in old parliamentary reports: "Mr. Sheridan now rose, and, during the space of five hours and forty minutes, commanded the admiration and attention of the House by an oration of almost unexampled excellence, uniting the most convincing closeness and accuracy of argument with the most luminous precision and perspicuity of language; and alternately giving force and energy to truth by solid and substantial reasoning, and enlightening the most extensive and involved subjects with the purest clearness of logic, and the brightest splendour of rhetoric." Sheridan's leader fared no better. "Mr. Fox," we are told, "was wonderfully pleasant on Lord Clive's joining the administration." Equal injustice is done to Mr. Burke. We read, "Mr. Burke turned, twisted, metamorphosed, and represented everything which the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Pitt) had advanced, with so many ridiculous forms, that the House was kept in a continual roar of laughter." Again: "Mr. Burke enforced these beautiful and affecting statements by a variety of splendid and affecting passages from the Latin classics." It is no wonder, then, that a prejudice should have existed against the reporters. On a motion made by Lord Stanhope, that the short-hand writers employed on the trial of Hastings be summoned to the bar of the House to read their minutes, Lord Loughborough is reported, in Lord Campbell's life of him, to have said, "God forbid that ever their lordships should call on the short-hand writers to publish their notes; for of all people, short-hand writers were ever the furthest from correctness, and there were no man's words they ever had that they again returned. They were in general ignorant, as acting mechanically and not by considering the antecedents, and by catching the sound and not the sense they perverted the sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves." At a later period, the audacity and impudence of the reporters increased; loud and numerous were the complaints made against them. Mr. Wilberforce, who really deserved better treatment at their hands, read to the House, on one occasion, an extract from a newspaper, in which he was reported as having said, "Potatoes make men healthy, vigorous, and active; but what is still more in their favour, they make men tall; more especially was he led to say so as being rather under the common size, and he must lament that his guardians had not fostered him upon that genial vegetable." Mr. Martin, of Galway, has immortalised himself by his complaint made about the same time, though based upon a less solid foundation than that of the great Abolitionist. The reporter having dashed his pen under some startling passages which had fallen from the Hibernian orator's lips, the printer was called to the bar. In defence he put in the report, containing the very words. "That may be," said Martin; "_but did I spake them in italics_?" Of course the printer was nonplussed by such a question, and the House was convulsed with laughter. Happily, this state of things no longer exists, and, in the language of Mr. Macaulay, it is now universally felt "that the gallery in which the reporters sit, has become a fourth estate of the realm." The publication of the debates, which seemed to the most liberal statesmen full of danger to the great safeguards of public liberty, is now regarded by many persons as a safeguard tantamount, and more than tantamount, to all the rest put together. "Give me," said Sheridan, whilst fighting the battle of the reporters on the floor of the House--"give me but the liberties of the press, and I will give to the minister a venal House of Peers--I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons--I will give him the whole host of ministerial influence--I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase up submission and overawe resistance--and yet, armed with the liberties of the press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed; I will attack the mighty fabric he has raised with that mightier engine. I will shake down from its height corruption, and bury it beneath the ruins of the abuses it was meant to shelter."

The reporters have now a comfortable gallery to themselves--they have cushions as soft to sit upon as those of M.P.'s--they have plenty of room to write in, and whilst they wait their turns they may indulge in criticism on high art or Chinese literature--on the divine melodies of Jenny Lind, or the merits of Mr. Cobden--a very favourite topic with reporters--or go to sleep. Mr. Jerdan, in his Memoirs, tells how different it was in his day; then the reporters had only access to the Strangers' Gallery, and could only make sure of getting in there by being the first in the crowd that generally was collected previous to its being opened. But about the smart new gallery there are no associations on which memory cares to dwell. It was different under the late one; old Sam Johnson sat there with his shabby black and unwieldy bulk, taking care to remember just enough of the debate to convince the public that "the Whig dogs," to use his own expressive language, "had the worst of it." We can fancy Cave, of the "Gentleman's Magazine," with a friend in the gallery, stealthily, for fear they should be detected and turned out, taking a few brief notes of the debate, and then, at the taproom of the nearest public-house, amidst the fumes of tobacco and beer, writing out as much as they could, which Guthrie then revised, and which afterwards appeared in the magazine under the head of "Debates in Great Lilliput." Woodfall we see--the Woodfall of Junius--his pocket stuffed with cold, hard-boiled eggs--sitting out the livelong debate, and then writing out so much of it as his powerful memory retained--a task which often occupied him till noon the next day, but which gave the "Diary" a good sale, till Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_--Perry, the friend of Coleridge and of Moore--introduced the principle of the division of labour, and was thus enabled to get out the _Chronicle_ long before Woodfall's report appeared.

We see rollicking roysterous reporters, full of wine and fun, committing all kinds of absurdity. For instance, one night the debate has been very heavy--at length a dead silence prevails, suddenly a voice is heard demanding a song from Mr. Speaker. If an angel had fallen from heaven, it is questionable whether a greater sensation could have been created. The House is in a roar. Poor Addington, the Speaker, is overwhelmed with indignation and amazement. Pitt can hardly keep his seat for laughing. Up into the gallery rushes the Sergeant-at-Arms to take the delinquent into custody. No one knows who he is--at any rate no one will tell. At length, as the officer gets impatient and angry, a hand is pointed to a fat placid Quaker without guile, seated in the middle of the crowd. Much to his amazement, on his devoted yet innocent person straightway rushes the Sergeant-at-Arms; and protesting, but in vain, the wearer of square-collar and broad-brim is borne off to gaol. The real delinquent is Mark Supple, a big-boned, loud-voiced, rollicking Irish blade--just such a man as we fancy M., of the _Daily News_, to be. Mark has been dining. He is a devoted follower of Bacchus; and, at this time, happens to be extraordinarily well primed. Hence his remarkable contribution, if not to the business, at any rate to the amusement, of the evening. People call the present times fast; but men lived faster then. Sheridan drank brandy when he spoke. Pitt made one of his most brilliant speeches just after he had been vomiting from the quantity of port he had previously been drinking. Members, when they came into the House, not unfrequently saw two speakers where, in reality, there was but one; and the reporters were often in a state of similar bewilderment themselves: but they are gone, and the oratory they recorded has vanished from the senate. In the new gallery they can never hear what was heard in the old--the philosophy of Burke--the wit of Sheridan--the passionate attacks of Fox--or the cool replies of Pitt. The House has become less oratorical--less an imperial senate, more of a national "vestry." It discusses fewer principles, and more railway bills. The age of Pitt and Fox went with Pitt and Fox. You cannot recall it--the age has altered. You find Pitt and Fox now in the newspaper office, not in the senate. The old gallery has looked down on great men. It could tell of an heroic race and of heroic deeds. It had seen the angry Charles. It had heard Cromwell bid the mace be gone. It had re-echoed the first indignant accents of the elder Pitt. It had outlived a successful revolution. It had witnessed the triumph of reform. Can the new one witness more?

So much for the Reporters' Gallery. We cannot take leave of the subject without remarking what obligations members are under to it. No man can long attend parliamentary debates without being very strongly impressed with that one great fact. The orators who are addressing empty benches and inattentive audiences are, in reality, speaking to the dozen reporters just before them. Colonel Sibthorpe, when he spoke, turned his face to them, in order that they might not miss a single word. You did not, the last time you were in the house, hear a single atom of Jones's speech; you could merely see Jones, with an unhappy expression of face, and to the infinite annoyance of the House, waving his arms in an inelegant manner; yet how well Jones's speech read in the _Times_ the next day. Once upon a time a paper attempted to report literally what the members said--not what they should have said. They were threatened with so many actions for libel that they were all obliged to abandon the attempt; and now the reporters take care that the speeches contain good grammar, if they do not contain good sense. Nor, most good-natured sir, are you under fewer obligations. It is owing to them that you read the debate over your muffins and coffee at your ease, in your morning gown and slippers, whilst otherwise you would have to remain in profound ignorance of it altogether, or would have to fight your way into the gallery as best you could, besides running a risk of catching cold or having your favourite corn trod on. Think, then, of the Reporters' Gallery leniently. The brave fellows in it suffer much for you. Cowper makes the slave in the "Negro's Complaint" exclaim--

"Think ye, masters, iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords."

A thinking public, at times, should reason in a similar manner. The reporters don't find it all play. People should remember--if a debate be dull to read--how terrible it must be to hear!

THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DURING THE SESSION.

England, Ireland, Scotland, and our forty colonies are ruled, not from Downing-street, not from Privy Councils at Buckingham Palace, nor by the _Times_ newspaper, as some pretend, nor even by the stump orator, but by the Lobby of the House of Commons. This I know, that if I were a member of the United Kingdom Alliance, and wished to root up the liquor traffic in England--that if I were a Scotchman, and endeavoured to confirm and extend the provisions of the Forbes Mackenzie Act--that even were I of the Green Isle, and raised the cry of justice for Ireland, whatever that may mean--I'd plant myself in the Lobby of the House of Commons, and there win victory or die.

Externally the Lobby is a handsome one; little more. Mr. Timbs tells me it is "a rich apartment, forty-five feet square, and has on each side an archway, carved open screens, inscribed _Domine salvam fac Reginam_, and windows painted with the arms of parliamentary boroughs. The brass gas standards by Hardman are elaborately chased. The doorways lead to the library, the post-office, vote paper office, central hall, &c." Is this all? Yes, is the answer of one of the matter-of-fact class, of whom Peter Bell is such an illustrious example.

We are not all Peter Bells. We are of those who can read sermons in stones. We fancy for every why there is a wherefore. Wealthy men, and busy men, and great men, don't stand talking and grimacing for nothing; and when I catch one member in a corner with Brown I am not greenhorn enough to suppose that they are merely inquiring after each other's health, or commenting on the extraordinary mildness of the season, and its probable effect on the growth of cabbages. No, no, you may be certain that the Lobby of the House of Commons, where I have seen our greatest statesmen, our proudest peers, the nation's most illustrious guests, ambassadors, and princes, and wags, is not the place for small talk. Without studying "De Morgan on Probabilities" (a sin of which I am never likely to be guilty), you will not be far wrong if you come to the conclusion that in the Lobby, somehow or other, between the hours 4 P.M. and 2 A.M., not a little business is settled more or less agreeable to all parties concerned. (Of course I am not referring to the young sprigs of nobility, who come into the House merely as an amusement, and without the slightest idea of the rights and duties of their class, and who are neither more nor less than a parody upon the representative system of which we are all so proud.) A few sentences will point to the significancy of the Lobby. Every member of the House of Commons passes through the Lobby. That is a given fact. Another is, that the Treasury Whipper-in affects the Lobby. Another is, that if you have anything to say to your member, or if he has anything to say to you, the Lobby is the place of rendezvous. These facts are suggestive. I am member for Bullock Smithy. I am not wealthy, and I have a large family. The Ministry are hard driven, one vote will save them. I meet their Whipper-in in the Lobby. We have a little chat. I give an honest vote, and virtue is rewarded by the appointment of my son to a place in the Circumlocution Office. "This is an exaggeration!" exclaims the general public. Let me then, give another case. I am member for Bullock Smithy; I am rich, but I have no family, and I am a man of no birth. I'd give my ears, and my wife would not merely give them, but her diamond earrings as well, to see her name in the _Court Circular_, or to get a ticket to Lady Plantagenet's Sunday-evening parties. Promiscuously I hint this in the Lobby, and lo! the magician's wand waves, and I and my wife enter the stately portals we had long aspired to cross. If certain parties, in the course of the parliamentary session, find there is nothing lost by civility, where's the harm? But look round the Lobby; the electioneering agent is there to discuss how to make things pleasant; the getter-up of public companies comes there to catch a few M.P.'s as directors. There is the local deputation of the Stoke Gas Company--limited liability--whose Bill stand for reading a third time to-night; and there is the Secretary of the United Metropolitan Association for making every householder consume his own smoke. Smith from the provinces has caught his member's eye, and has got an order for the gallery. Alas, Smith, the gallery has been full this hour; and there are now fifty individuals, fortunate holders of orders like yourself, waiting their turn. Here is "Our Correspondent" gossiping with the door-keepers, attacking every member with whom he is on speaking terms, in order that he may concoct the luminous epistles which form the attraction of the paper whose columns he adorns. This man is a spouter at public-house discussion clubs, and fancies himself, as he stands surrounded by M.P.'s, almost an M.P. himself. What does he here? I know not, except waste his time. A grand debate is coming on; a ministerial crisis is imminent. How full the Lobby gets; and how scrutinised is every action of hon. gentlemen as they take a turn, as they all do in the course of the evening, in the Lobby! There is the leader of the Opposition; he meets his bitterest foe, and bows to him and smiles. In what agony are the quidnuncs to know the hidden meaning of that bow and smile! The Ministerialist Whipper-in has a little book in his hand, and is busy in his calculation. By the twinkle in his eye I fancy it is all right; and now he may whistle "Begone, dull care, I prythee begone from me." He need not fear next quarter-day. Ah! that cheer which comes sounding to us through the glass doors denotes that the Premier has concluded his defence, and that the House is on his side. But out rushes the Sergeant-at-Arms. "Clear the Lobby for a division," exclaim the door-keepers. The police point us the door: we take the hint while all the bells are tinkling, and all the members are rushing from every quarter, through the Lobby to the House, as if members and bells were alike mad. We wait outside. By the clock nearly a half-hour is gone. Hark, what a cheer! By Jove! the division is taken, and the ministry are saved. It is midnight; yet the Lobby is full and gay. We won't go home yet. Just behind is the bar, and members are drinking pale ale and sherry, and soda with a little brandy in it, and the whole place begins to have the air of the London Tavern after an anniversary dinner on behalf of the Indignant Blind. Look at those swells just entering the House: evidently they have been dining out, and presently one of them will speak, and the whole House will be in a roar at his vinous oratory; out in the Lobby we catch faint echoes of the mirth. The House is in committee on the Cab Act, and are now enacting a clause relative to drunken and disorderly cabmen. Our friend is vehement, inconclusive, and indistinct. Happily the reporters will merely mention that he addressed the House amidst considerable laughter. As we leave the Lobby, we hear hints about "physician, heal thyself."

OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

Where's Eliza? Who was the man in the iron mask? Who was Junius? Whose were the bones discovered last year in a carpet-bag under Waterloo-bridge? You cannot tell. Neither can I tell you who is our London Correspondent. Yet he exists. I find traces of him in the most Boeotian districts of England.

"Caledonia, stern and wild,
Fit nurse for a poetic child,"

knows him. In "Tara's halls" he has superseded the harp, and is a presence and a power. Before newspapers were, when Addison was writing the "Spectator," and Dick Steele "Tatlers" innumerable, and De Foe his Review and all sorts of romances, in Grub-street there was an immense deal of activity in the way of letter writing. Country gentlemen wanted news, and were willing to pay for it. When there was a frost or when it was wet, when the nights were long or amusements few, when the squire was laid up with the gout or when my lady had the vapours, it was pleasant to read who ate cheesecakes and syllabubs at Spring Gardens, who drank coffee at Button's or chocolate at the Cocoa Tree, what was the gossip of the October or Kit Kat clubs, what had become of Mrs. Bracegirdle, and how Mrs. Oldfield triumphed on the stage. Nor did the letter-writer stop here. In those days courtiers had two faces. There was one King _de facto_, and another _de jure divino_. There was a Court at St. Germains as well as at St. James's. There were Jacobites as well as Hanoverians. There were plots and intrigues--Popish and Protestant--and in the dark days before Christmas, in old country houses, letters full of all the rumours thus created were welcomed. But the age made progress. Newspapers were established in all the leading towns of the country, and the need of the letter-writer vanished, but only for a while. In his desire to cater for the public, and to outbid his competitors, the country newspaper revived the London correspondent, but on an extended scale. Now scarce a country newspaper exists that does not avail itself of his services.

But from the general let me descend to the particular. I take up the "Little Pedlington Gazette," and I find our London Correspondent dates from --- Club, St. James's-square. Of course, in a free country, a man may date his letters where he likes; but I'll be bound to say the letter is written in a cheap coffee-house in Chancery-lane, and all its contents are culled from that day's papers. From the letter, however, I am led to suppose that the writer is a member of the House of Commons--that he has the run of the clubs--that royal personages are not unfamiliar with him--and that his intimacy with Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli is only equalled by his friendship with Palmerston and Russell. Our London Correspondent has very wonderful eyes, and I am sure his ears must be longer than those of any other animal extant. I have tried the Strangers' Gallery in the House of Commons, and the Speaker's, and the Reporters', and in all I have the utmost difficulty in distinguishing emotions which an animated debate must excite in the disputants. The Parliamentary fashion is for a minister, when attacked, to sit with his hat so pulled down over his eyes that you can scarce see a feature. Lord John always sits in this way, so does Lord Palmerston. Our London Correspondent can see what no one else can, and there is not a wince of the galled jade but what is visible to his eyes. He sees Palmerston winking to Sir George Grey, and hears what Cornewall Lewis whispers to Lowe. Lord John does not chuckle quietly to himself, nor Disraeli whisper a sarcasm, nor Walpole meditate a joke, but he hears it. He possesses a rare and blessed gift of ubiquity. At the very time that he is watching these exalted personages in the House, he is chatting confidentially with Hayter in the lobby, or looking in at the Opera, or gossiping behind the scenes with Wright and Paul Bedford, or having a chop at the Garrick with Thackeray, or shining at Lady Plantagenet's soiree "as a bright particular star." I wonder the dear creature's head is not quite turned with the attentions he receives from the nobility, with whom he is as intimate as I with Smiths and Browns. Occasionally I meet with a few London Correspondents imbibing together their frugal half-and-half. It does me good to hear them. It reminds me of Elia's Captain Jackson's bacchanalian orgies, where "wine we had none, nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there." Says one to another, "Oh, how did you get on last night?" "Pretty well," is the reply, "considering there were none but lords there." Walking in a low neighbourhood, I meet one. I ask after his health. "Devilish seedy," says he; "up too late last night at Lady ---," naming one of the proudest members of the proudest aristocracies in the world. Yet are they too uncultivated, and hairy, and _outre_, to pass with credit in Belgravia. Their literary efforts are not remarkable for polish. They affect a graphic style, and are not sparing in the use of slang. They eschew the classics, and evince but a very superficial knowledge of literature, save that of the current year. They are chiefly strong in politics, and for the actors on that stage have that contempt which familiarity is said to breed, but which, as in the present case, sometimes flourishes without it. They view the busy scene as the gods of Epicurus the follies of mankind. This man is a fool--that a tool. As a rule, officials are run down, and some illustrious-obscure--perhaps the borough representative, if he is on good terms with the paper--is suspiciously and inordinately puffed up. I often wish our London Correspondent would address the House. What a figure he would make on some matter of business, the details of which it is impossible to make interesting! The chances are that he is a Scotchman or an Irishman; that his impudence is merely confined to paper; that he does not shine either at the Temple Forum or Codgers' Hall. There would be a burst of laughter when he rose. They ought to be more genial critics. I was once in the lobby when our London Correspondent of a paper published in a large manufacturing town came up to me. I had not seen him for some years. After the usual inquiries, said he, "What a capital cutting that was in the --- of your book!" "You are mistaken," said I; "the book was by so and so." Our friend, very crest-fallen, immediately rushed off without bidding us goodbye. Once upon a time one of them produced a great sensation. Our readers will remember, when Lord John Russell dismissed Lord Palmerston, what a cry was raised about German influences by a certain morning print which seems to exist merely for the sake of disgusting intelligent people with a righteous cause. A German paper was referred to. Well, the gentleman to whom I have alluded was the correspondent of that paper, and one day, in the absence of anything of importance, he had manufactured the article very innocently out of the extraordinary paragraphs in which the morning print aforesaid rejoices, little dreaming, that in Parliament and out his letter would be quoted as evidence of a deeply-laid conspiracy to weaken the power of Lord Palmerston and undermine European liberty.

But I have not yet said who our London Correspondent is. The better class of them I think are Parliamentary reporters. There was a paper published in London kept alive merely by its Paris Correspondent. No other paper had such a correspondent, or abounded in such extraordinary tales and scandal. Yet the correspondent's plan was very simple. Every new tale and drama which came out in Paris was worked up and sent to London as a reality, that was all. In a less degree our London Correspondent does the same, and in quiet country towns there is great wonder and lifting up of hands, especially if, as was once the case, the wrong letter is sent, and the Tory paper abounds with sneers at Lord Derby and the squirearchy, a _contretemps_ which is avoided if the plan of one London Correspondent be adopted, who supplies thirteen different papers with the same letter at five shillings each--a plan, however, not sanctioned by respectable papers, who pay a good price and get often a good article, and for whose letters, if a little too highly coloured and seasoned, the public taste is more to blame than the newspaper proprietor, or his painstaking London Correspondent. I believe _the_ Mr. Russell, of the _Times_, was the London Correspondent of one of the Irish papers, and such papers as the _Liverpool Albion_, _Cambridge Independent_, and a few others I could name, evidently have for London Correspondents literary men of superior position and respectability.

A SUNDAY AT THE OBELISK.

The ancient Athenians were a restless, inquisitive people. At the Areopagus it was that Paul preached of an unknown God. Their popular assemblies met on the Pynx. There mob orators decreed the ostracism of Aristides the Just, and the death of Socrates the Good. In the metropolis we have no Pynx where our _demoi_ are wont to assemble, but we have several spots that serve for popular gatherings on the Sunday--our working-man's holiday. One of these is the Obelisk at the Surrey end of the Blackfriars-road. The district I allude to is what is called a low neighbourhood. If I am to believe a popular poet, it was there that the Ratcatcher's daughter lived; and I should imagine, from the seedy, poverty-struck appearance of the place, that her papa's avocation was not so highly remunerative as some other professions, or he would have pitched his tent, _alias_ become a ten-pound householder, in a more fashionable quarter.

May I attempt a description of the neighbourhood? Circumstances compelled me to be there one Sunday, just as Sabbath bells were ringing for divine service, and the streets were crowded with hungering worshippers. Newman Hall's place of worship was full, as was St. John's Episcopal Chapel, and there was between them a Methodist Assembly, which was by no means scanty; yet all round me there were crowds to whom Sunday was no Sunday in a religious sense, to whom it was a mere day of animal rest, who were yet pale and heavy with the previous night's gin and beer. What were they about? Well, from the Surrey Theatre, all placarded with yellow bills of "The Wife's Revenge," to the Elephant and Castle, there was a busy traffic going on, far busier, I should imagine, than on any other morning of the week. Happily the public-houses were shut up, but as I passed the coffee-houses were full of working-men reading newspapers, and an easy shaving shop (I write so from the placard on the door, not from actual experience) seemed doing a tremendous trade. Such shops as were open, and they were numerous, were very full, and opposite such as were shut up, what rows of barrows and costermongers' carts there were, with all the luxuries of the season, such as Spanish onions, carrots, cabbages, apples and pears, chestnuts, sweetmeats! Did you want your likeness taken, there were artists to do it at sixpence a head. Did you need to buy old clothes, there were Hebrew maidens waiting to sell you them to any amount. One old lady was doing a thriving business in what she denominated as "spiced elder." Boot-cleaning, though not by Lord Shaftesbury's boys, was being carried on upon a gigantic scale. Two or three vendors of cheap prints, chiefly fancy subjects--portraits of imaginary females with very red cheeks and large eyes, and gay dresses--collected a great crowd, but I fear one consisting chiefly of admirers rather than purchasers. It may be that the tightness of the money market was felt in the Blackfriars-road, and that the lieges of that district felt that, with the Bank charging even two-and-a-half per cent., something better might be done with the money than investing it in works of art. The butchers' stalls were well attended, though I regret to say, from casual remarks dropped as I passed by, the keepers of rival establishments were not on such friendly terms as are desirable amongst near neighbours. Women were bringing their husbands' dinners, children were flocking about in shoals, and sots were yawning, and smoking, and gossiping, waiting for one o'clock and their beer. You ask, was no effort made to get this mass under the influence of religious teaching? Oh, yes; all the morning there was service of some kind of other at the Obelisk. As soon as one man had finished, another had commenced; and at times one man was preaching on one side and another on another. The first man I heard evidently was a working-man; and if to preach all that is required were fluency and a loud voice, evidently he would have done an immense amount of good: but he was too fluent to be clear and correct. I question whether a working-man is a good preacher to a working-man. The chances are, he imitates the worst characteristics of some favourite preacher, instead of translating Bible truth into plain every-day language. My friend had got all the stereotyped phrases, such as the "natural man," &c., which can only be understood by persons accustomed to religious society, and therefore I did not wonder when I found he had but some twenty or thirty to hear him. To him succeeded, I regret to say, two men in seedy black, with dirty white chokers, and cadaverous faces, whose portraits were I to give, you would tell me I was drawing a caricature. I don't doubt but what they were most respectable, well-meaning men; but I do think it is a mistake to send such out into the highways and byways. The men who go there should be of an engaging aspect, as in the crowd that pass by you may depend upon it there are but too many disposed to sneer at and ridicule religion even when it is placed before them in the most attractive form. How they got on I cannot tell, as just at that time a host of men very earnest in discussion attracted my attention. A teetotaller was hard at work, not repeating a set of phrases parrot-like which he had learnt by heart, but discussing teetotalism with a crowd evidently well ready to go into the whole subject. Short and sharp question and answer were flying fast, and all seemed very good tempered. I don't know whether my friend succeeded in getting any to sign the pledge, but I could see that he had more success than the preachers, who seemed to me to make no impression whatever. We may depend upon it these discussions are better than speeches or lectures; they require, perhaps, greater gifts, but they will be found to yield a richer harvest. It is in the streets we find the victims, and in the streets we must seek to save them. You would not get these loungers round the Obelisk to take the trouble to come to a temperance lecture, but they, well fortified in their prejudices as established truths, were not unwilling to engage in a discussion in which they found themselves worsted. The temperance orator had an advantage over the divine. The latter could only speak of a future joy or sorrow, the former could tell the sot how much better he would have been, how much fresher he would have felt, how much more money he would have had in his pocket, if he had kept sober last night; and there stood the sot, all dirty and stupid, yet repentant, and half influenced by the orator to become a sober man himself. Such teaching is good in such places; but the speakers must be prepared to rough it--to give and take, to be ready in repartee, to be abundant in anecdote and illustration. They must have pliant tongues and good voices, or they may find their congregation moving off to listen to a social orator over the way; or, what is worse still, remaining to confute, and jeer, and laugh.

EXETER HALL.

Lord Macaulay has made all the world familiar with the bray of Exeter Hall. Exeter Hall, when it does bray, does so to some purpose. It is in vain fighting Exeter Hall. It is the parliament of the middle classes. It has an influence for good or bad no legislator can overlook--to which often the assembly in St. Stephen's is compelled to bow. I have seen a Prince Consort presiding at a public meeting in Exeter Hall; on its platform I have heard our greatest orators and statesmen declaim. In England who can over estimate the influence of woman? and in Exeter Hall, in the season, nine benches out of ten are filled with women. The oratory of Exeter Hall is not parliamentary. A man may shine before a legal tribunal--may shine on the floor of the House of Commons--may be great among the Lords--and yet utterly fail in Exeter Hall. He may even be a popular preacher, and yet not move the masses that crowd the Strand, when a public meeting, chiefly religious, occasionally philanthropic, never political, is being held.