, 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