would look like without the grille." It must be
confessed that those who cherished visions of a dull assembly made
glorious by flashing eyes, white arms, and brilliant dresses were
disappointed.

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,"

wrote LOVELACE. Well, the iron bars have gone, but the stone walls
remain, and make, if not a prison, something very like a _purdah_; and
the "angels alone that soar above" are almost as much cut off from the
inferior beings below them as they were before Sir ALFRED MOND came to
the rescue of Beauty in thrall. He is rather disappointed at getting
so little change out of his "fiver."

_Wednesday, October 17th_.--The latest recruit to what JOHN KNOX
would have called the "monstrous regiment of Ministers" is Mr. WARDLE,
lately Chairman of the Labour Party. He made a promising _debut_. Mr.
HOGGE professed to be anxious as to the future of the North-Eastern
Railway, which, according to him, had lent all its "genii" to the
Admiralty. Mr. WARDLE, quick to note the classical accuracy of the
plural, assured him that he need be under no apprehensions--"there
are still some genii left."

Ireland is to have the extended franchise conferred by the
Representation of the People Bill, but not the accompanying
redistribution of seats. The Chairman suggested that Sir JOHN
LONSDALE, who wanted to do away with the anomaly, should move a
supplementary schedule embodying his own ideas of how Ireland should
be redistributed. Unfortunately--for one would have liked to see how
much was left for the other three provinces after he had designed an
Ulster commensurate with his notion of its relative importance--the
hon. Baronet demurred to this tempting proposal, and thought it was
a matter for the Government.

Some very pleasant badinage between Lord HUGH CECIL and the HOME
SECRETARY as to the relative merits of the words "dwell" and "reside"
for the purpose of defining a voter's qualification was followed by an
exhaustive and exhausting lecture by Major CHAPPLE on how to tabulate
the alternative votes in a three-cornered election. His object was to
demonstrate that under the Government scheme the man whom the majority
of the voters might desire would infallibly be rejected, while by
a plan of his own, which he had tried successfully on a couple of
wounded soldiers, the best man invariably won.

_Thursday, October 18th_.--The most obliging of men, Sir ALFRED MOND
nevertheless draws th