tone at the head
of the Cabinet, had undergone defeat and the Conservatives had come in
with Lord Randolph Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The
first night was sure to be full of turmoil and excitement. Through
Mr. Bryce's good offices I had a seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The
student of history must always tread the precincts of Westminster with
awe. There attached to the Abbey is the Chapter House. The central
column divides overhead into the groins that form the arched ceiling,
the stones at its base still bearing a stain from the rubbing elbows
of mediaeval legislators, the floor worn by their hurrying feet, for
from the time of Edward I. the Chapter House remained for centuries
the legislative meeting-place. The old St. Stephen's Chapel to which
Parliament at length removed was burned some eighty years since, but
Westminster Hall, its attachment--the great hall of William Rufus,
escaped and the new buildings of Parliament stand on the site of its
former home. The present House of Commons occupies the ground of the
old Chapel and in size and arrangement differs little from it. The
Hall is small. The seven hundred members seated on the benches which
slope up from the centre, crowd the floor space, while the galleries
for the press at one end, for strangers at the other, and for the use
of the Lords and the Diplomatic corps at the sides give only meagre
accommodation. I passed into the building at nightfall, getting
soul-stirring glimpses into the great area of Westminster Hall, in
which burned only one far-away light. Its grandeur was more impressive
in the dimness than in the glare. The lofty associations of the spot,
coronations of kings, the reverberations of eloquence, the illustrious
victims that had gone out from its tribunal to the scaffold thronged
in my thought as I momentarily paused. But time pressed and I passed
on to the central Hall where I stood in a jostling crowd, absorbed in
the present with little thought of the fine frescoes that lined the
walls or of the history that had been made in that environment. I was
to send in my card to Mr. Bryce and while I stood puzzled as to what
course to take, a good friend came to my side in the person of Sir
Henry Norman. He had not then received his knightly title but was
simply assistant to W.T. Stead on the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
pushing his way, but already marked for a distinguished and eccentric
career. He came to America as a youth and entered the H