st homicidal
fury, which the sweltering light produces in the waking soldiers. This
would have been something like the temper of the House of Commons on
June 18th, if that assembly had not recently discovered methods of
saving its temper and pleasantly spending its vacant hours. For the dog
star--raging, merciless, sweltering--ruled everywhere within Westminster
Palace. On the floor of the House itself, men sweltered and mopped their
foreheads; in even the recesses of the still library they groaned aloud;
then down on the Terrace, and with the river sweeping by, there was not
a particle of air; and the heat of all the day had made even the stony
floor of that beautiful walk almost like the tiles of a red-hot oven. In
short, it was a day when one felt one's own poor tenement of clay a
misery, a nuisance, and a burden; and the mind, morose, black, and
despondent, had distracting visions of distant mirages by the seashore
or under green trees. It was natural, under such circumstances, that
everybody who could should desert the House of Commons. And this sudden
desertion of the House will be always remembered as one of the many
peculiarities of the Annus Mirabilis through which we are passing. It
has not been unusual for some years for members to take a turn on the
Terrace now and then. I have paced its floor at every hour of the night
and the day--from the still midnight to the delightful moments before
breaking day; and I still remember the beautiful summery morning when,
after a hard night's fight, an Irish member rushed down to the Terrace
to tell Mr. Sexton and myself that we were just being suspended--an
operation not yet grown customary. But this Session the majority of the
House of Commons is always on the Terrace; and woman--that sleuth-hound
of every new pleasure--has discovered this great fact, and utilised it
accordingly.

[Sidenote: Tea on the Terrace.]

The afternoon tea--the strawberries and cream which make a coolness and
delight in the midst of the raging day--has been erected by woman into
one of London's daily social events; and though the novelist has not
discovered the fact up to this moment--Mr. McCarthy has made a very
pretty love scene on the Terrace, but it is at the witching hour of
night--though this discovery has yet to come, the respite is brief, and
in a short time we shall have the hero and the heroine passing through
all the agonies of three-volume suffering, to the accompaniment of the
div