PAST AND PRESENT. "HAD A GLORIOUS DAY'S SPORT! BAG NINE AND A HALF BRACE. BEAUTIFULLY! I BEGIN TO LIKE MY NEW PERCUSSION GUN." ESSENCE IOF PARLIAMENT. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P. House of Commons, Monday, June 21.House in Committee of Supply; benches almost empty. CORPORAL HANBURY at gangway-end, and PRINCE ARTHUR seated nearly in the middle, are only occupants of Treasury Bench. After a while, soothed by monotonous voice of Chairman putting vote after vote, PRINCE ARTHUR'S chin dropped on his breast. He seemed to sleep-no strange thing in circumstances. What puzzled me as I watched him (noting, by the way, the streaks of grey beginning to gleam in his dark hair), was the motion of his head and the expression on his face. Sometimes he turned his head to the right, bending down as if listening to one seated an inch or two lower than himself. His mobile face displayed the keenest interest. Occasionally his lips moved, as if in response to an observation. Anon, he turned quickly to the other side, and, his head now uplifted from its bending attitude, seemed to listen with the same air of reverent attention. The curious scene did not last many moments. Not the least weird part of it was the conviction borne in upon me that I had been watching a conversation carried on for at least an hour. PRINCE ARTHUR brimmed hat was Lord JOHN RUSSELL, Home Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons in Lord MELBOURNE'S Ministry, the one which paid earliest homage to Queen VICTORIA. The other (who, PRINCE ARTHUR was surprised to see, didn't carry a straw in his mouth) was Lord PALMERSTON, Foreign Secretary in the same Government. They seated themselves one on each side of PRINCE ARTHUR, Lord JOHN to the right, PAM to the left. "Didn't you feel creepy ?" I asked him. "Not a bit," he said. "Seemed most natural thing in the world. 'Good evening, my lords,' I said. Very pleased to see you in the old place. Glad, also, to find you so friendly. Old scores forgotten up there-or, I mean, wherever you may chance to foregather?"" "Oh! yes," said PAM; "I long ago had tit-for-tat with JOHNNY RUSSELL, and we bear no malice. Thought we'd drop in on this interesting occasion. Hope we don't intrude. Were present, you know, at first Privy Council of the girl-QUEEN; heard her first speech from the throne in another place; interesting to stroll round and look in on the old shop sixty years after. Place looks different from this night sixty years ago. I don't mean chamber itself, that of course; but in style of Members and fashion of dress. You've more young men than we had. If you turn up the list of the House of 1837, you'll see we were mostly middle-aged gentlemen of sub "Yes," said JOHNNY; "and what strikes me particularly is the way you fellows sport the moustache. In our time, only army men, and not all regiments, wore the moustache. If I remember right, some years after the QUEEN came to the throne, only two regiments wore the moustache, the Huzzars and the Blues." "Quite so," said PAM. "Your memory, always wonderful, has not shrivelled up under normal circumstances of extreme heat. Ahem! I mean you are still as smart as when you fomented that row DOGS WORKED about my saying a friendly word to the Prince President after the coup d'état." assured me later he had certainly been talking to Lord JOHN RUSSELL and PAM take oath that the whole thing, which I for over an hour. Yet I am prepared to saw from first to last, did not occupy two minutes. Whilst it was fresh in his mind, PRINCE ARTHUR told me all about it. He was sitting, as I have said, watching the votes piled up; last thing he remembers was the voice of Mr. LOWTHER saying, "The question I have to put is "Do you think this is the Treasury Bench? It doesn't look like the same shop." This last was not LOWTHER's voice, nor was it a continuation of the question he had been putting. "Of course not," said another, sharper, and more cheery voice. "The place we sat in this night sixty years ago, on the eve of the accession of Her Gracious Majesty Queen VICTORIA, was a temporary building run up after the old Houses were burned down. It was used pending the building of the palatial structure opened in the Exhibition year." "The year you were turned out, my dear JOHNNY; when DERBY came in, bringing Dizzy with him as Chancellor of the Exchequer." PRINCE ARTHUR knew who they were at once. The little gentleman with the broad PRINCE ARTHUR thought he detected a sneering tone in this remark. Lord JOHN took no notice. 66 with courteous inclination of his head. "I "I am much obleeged to you," he said, certainly remember a scene in the House just fifty years ago. There was there a member of O'CONNELL's party, one Alderman REYNOLDS. He represented the city of Dublin. An Orange Member who wore a heavy pair of moustachios, having made a violent attack on the Repealers, Alderman REYNOLDS rose to reply. In course of his speech he constantly alluded to the Orangeman as 'the hon. and gallant Member.' 'I am not in the army,' interrupted the Orangeman. The hon. Member says he is not in the army,' responded the alderman, but I think if he has quitted the trade he ought to take down the signboard,' and here the alderman swept from his upper lip an imaginary moustache." "Ha! ha!" laughed PAM, in his cheery way. "I suppose my PRINCE knows no personal remarks of that kind in his multireformed Parliaments; no shaking of fists across the table, no Members suspended for disorderly conduct, no free fights on the floor of the House, eh?" A blush mantled ARTHUR'S ingenuous face. This must have been the moment when I observed him hanging his head. "Tut, tut!" said Lord JOHN. nature's the same at all epochs. House of "Human Commons, the most perfect microcosm of human nature, varies little through the ages. Nor does the tendency to laud earlier times as compared with the present. I suppose, now, you've lots of superior ola gentlemen who protest that your House of Commons to-day is a ragged assembly compared with what it was sixty or seventy years ago? I can imagine one of these writing, 'The new Parliament consists of more editors of papers, shopkeepers, obscure barristers, and attorneys than any former Parliament. Holland and Portugal might disappear from the world without exciting the feelings or care of a single shopkeeper or attorney amongst us. "I heard something at the Carlton the other day very like that," said PRINCE ARTHUR. "Only there was nothing said about Holland and Portugal. It was the Cape and Constantinople that troubled the patriotic mind. Cropping up in our foreign politics of to-day there is about mention of Holland and Portugal a smell as of faded apples." "Precisely. You've just hit it. The passage I quoted is from a letter by SCARLETT, afterwards Lord ABINGER. I remember it as if it were yesterday, thougn it was dated February 11, 1832. At that time, Holland and Portugal were troubling the waters of foreign politics. But there's always something for what believe you call the Jingo to get in a fluster about. There's nothing new under the sun, certainly not the Jingo. PAM was the primest Jingo of the century; weren't you, dear boy? "Yes; and a nice time I had with you and Prince A-T," murmured PAM, a look of melancholy momentarily clouding the place where his brow used to be. "After all, many things are new in this place," he added, after an awkward pause. "Your closure, your twelve o'clock rule, your long contributions to debate by inconsiderable Members, your tea on the Terrace, your private rooms for Ministers, your objection to adjourn over the Derby, your electric lights, your signal from the Clock Tower, your national expenditure of over a hundred millions, and, more marvellous still, your income in excess of that fabulous sum. PAST AND PRESENT. A SPORTSMAN'S DIARY OF 1897. BAG THREE HUNDRED BRACE. MY NEW PAIR OF HAMMERLESS SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER IF I HAD HAD A THIRD GUN." All these are new since the EJECTORS SHOT WELL. "SPORT FAIR TO-DAY. June afternoon when JOHNNY and I sat on the bench corresponding with his in the temporary House of Commons, knowing MR. PUNCH'S DRAMATIC DREAM. that in the early morning WILLIAM THE FOURTH had passed away, and that we were now the Ministers of a Queen." "There are," PRINCE ARTHUR observed, "some other novelties in the situation as compared with the epoch you recall. How would you like STER. (Continued.) "I was coming to the front in 1837," said JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE. "I wrote and played for a quarter of a century." "You did," acquiesced BENJAMIN WEB"I was lessee of the Haymarket in PRINCE ARTHUR turned to put a questhe forties, and you took my lease of the tion to Lord JOHN, and found the space he little house afterwards. Don't you rememhad occupied empty. There was nothing ber, Mr. Punch, that I offered a prize for between him and the portly figure of the best comedy, and one of your staff CORPORAL HANBURY. Turning his head gave a series of scenes from the rejected quickly, he found that PAM also had vancompeting compositions?" "To be sure. And the collection inished, leaving not a straw behind. He rubbed his eyes. There was Mr. LoOWTHER cluded TALFOURD, BULWER LYTTON, and FITZBALL." in the Chair, at the moment remarking, "The question is that a sum not exceeding of the operas," put in Mr. BUNN. "You "The last was my rival with the books £320.000 be granted to HER MAJESTY to used to chaff me, Sir, but so you did "Why" cried PRINCE ARTHUR, looking everybody, inclusive of that poor little round, decidedly dazed, "he was saying foreigner chap, Monsieur JULLIEN." that when THEY came in!" "He was a foreigner," put in BALFE, Business done. Strangers in the House."but he could appreciate native talent, meet the charges arising out of A DRUCE OF A PLAYER.-The captain of the Cambridge University Cricket Club. such as that possessed by Miss ROMER, Who 66 "You were rather hard upon me, Mr. Punch," said CHARLES KEAN, "but I bear no malice. I did my best, although I gave you the impression that all the characters I created suffered from a cold in the head." My good CHARLES, I am delighted to see you," cried the Sage, cordially. "And you, too, CHARLES the younger, son of the elder MATHEWS. KEAN, you regenerated the poetical drama, and CHARLEY, you taught us light comedy." "I was in that line myself," observed LEIGH MURRAY. "Do you remember The Camp at Chobham, with KEELEY?" "Ah, now we have taken a jump into the Crimean days, when Miss WOOLGAR and Madame CELESTE were at the Adelphi." BEDFORD. "I played up to WRIGHT." "HEARTS" THAT ARE OFTEN BOUGHED DOWN.-The cherries of Kent. HOT COPPERS.-Perspiring policemen on Jubilee Day. |