hdraw it. Mr. Gladstone made a few scornful
observations; and, without a division, the proposal was huddled out of
sight. It was almost a pity. It would have been such an instructive
spectacle to see the whole Tory party voting that the Catholic Church in
Ireland should have the right to be endowed and established; and some of
the Irish members felt this so much, that they were very much inclined
to force the Tories to a division. But they let the incident pass.

[Sidenote: The triumph of the tweed coat.]

It is one of the curious things about Parliamentary life in England,
that the smallest detail of personal habit attracts the all-searching
gaze of the entire world. Let a man change the shape of his hat, the
colour of his clothes, the style even of his stockings, and the world
knows it all before almost he is himself conscious of the change. And
then, though the House of Commons consists for the most part of men well
advanced in middle life--men who have made their pile in counting-house
or shop, before devoting themselves to a Parliamentary career--it is
also a House where wealth and fashion are very largely represented. It
is often a very well-dressed body; and in this House of Commons, in
particular, there is a very large proportion of well-tailored and
well-groomed young men--especially, of course, on the Tory side. The
consequence is, that you are able to trace the transformations of
fashion, the processions of the seasons, the variety of appropriate
garbs which social and other engagements impose, as accurately in the
House of Commons as in Rotten Row.

[Sidenote: The old order.]

The ordinary tendency of the Parliamentary man is towards the sombre
black, and the solemnity of the long-tailed frock-coat. There have been
times when if a member of Parliament did venture to enter the House of
Commons in a coat prematurely ending in the short tails of the morning
coat, or in the tail-less sack-coat, he would have been called up to the
Speaker's chair and as severely reprimanded as though he had committed
the most atrocious offence--in those far-off days--of wearing a pot-hat.
But in these democratic times one can do anything; and low-crowned hats,
sack-coats, homespun Irish tweeds, affright and shock the old
aristocratic Parliamentary eye. When summer approaches, the whole aspect
of the House changes. The sombre black is almost entirely doffed; and
you look on an assembly as different in its outward appearance fro