ow out the above four lines--and were we not
assured that they are better lines, far more musical, than any to be found
in BULWER'S SIAMESE TWINS, we should blush much nearer scarlet than we
do--to give an idea of the utility and beautiful comprehensiveness of our
plan.

The great difficulty, however, will be to compress the subjects--so
multitudinous are they--within the thousand feet allowed by the architect.
To begin with the Wittenagemot, or meeting of the wise men, and to end
with portraits of Mr. Roebuck's ancestors--to say nothing of the fine
imaginative sketch of the Member for Bath tilting, in the mode of Quixote
with the steam-press of Printing-house-square--will require the most
extraordinary powers of condensation on the parts of the artists.
Nevertheless, if the undertaking be even creditably executed, it will be a
monument of national wisdom and national utility to unborn generations of
Members. What crowds of subjects press upon us! The _History of Bribery_
might make a sort of Parliamentary Rake's Progress, if we could but hit
upon the artist to portray its manifold beauties. _The Windsor Stables_
and _the Education of the Poor_ would form admirable companion-pictures,
in which the superiority of the horse over the human animal could be most
satisfactorily delineated--the quadruped having considerably more than
three times the amount voted to him for snug lodging, hay, beans, and
oats, that the English pauper obtained from Parliament for that manure of
the soil--as congregated piety at Exeter Hall denominates it--a Christian
education!

What a beautiful arabesque border might be conceived from a perusal of the
late Lord Castlereagh's speeches! We should here have Parliamentary
eloquence under a most fantastic yet captivating phase. Who, for instance,
but the artist to PUNCH could paint CASTLEREAGH'S figure of a smug,
contented, selfish traitor, the "crocodile with his hand in his breeches'
pocket?" Again, does not the reader recollect that extraordinary person
who, according to the North Cray Demosthenes, "turned his back _upon
himself_?" There would be a portrait!--one, too, presenting food for the
most "sweet and bitter melancholy" to the GRAHAMS and the STANLEYS. There
is also that immortal Parliamentary metaphor, emanating from the same
mysterious source,--"The _feature_ upon which the question _hinges_!" The
only man who could have properly painted this was the enthusiastic BLAKE,
who so successful