the ladies,
we dare say, would not mind being treated as the Commons treat them, if
the debates in the Lords were as good as in the Commons. If the peers
did not dress so well, and were not so excessively polite, but spoke
better, no great harm would be done; but there's the difficulty. It is
difficult for a polite man to be ill-bred, and to lose his temper, and
say sharp things. In the House of Commons nothing is easier. Say
something bitter, and you will have a murmur of applause--be savage, and
at any rate your own party will cheer; but in the Lords you can't get up
the semblance of earnestness. The whole thing seems too much like
play--an apology for business, and that is all. No man can speak to
twenty sleepy peers as he could to four or five hundred eager partisans.
No man can be impressive in the bosom of his family--and the Lords are a
family party, all connected, or nearly so; and if a stranger comes in, he
soon apes the fashionable tone, and becomes as dull and apathetic as the
rest. And why should a lord be otherwise? A lord is not more a lord for
having brains--nor the less a lord for being without. Intellect, skill,
oratory, are no helps--are unnecessary in an hereditary institution. Sir
Robert Peel knew this, and lived and died a commoner. Chatham became
comparatively a small man when he took a pension and a peerage. So was
it with Walpole, when meeting his old rival Pulteney, after they had both
been raised to the peerage, he exclaimed, "Here we are, my lord, the two
most insignificant personages in Europe." The Upper House but registers
the decisions of the Lower--the business of the country is carried on
elsewhere.

But while we have been looking at the House, the debate has closed. Lord
Granville has asked a question and made an attack. Lord Derby has
uttered a few petulant remarks, to which Lord Aberdeen has made a cold
and formal reply, to which some peers, disappointed of place, have added
a little independent criticism on their own account. Two or three
exquisites have been discussing little matters of their own, till they
find that if they stop much longer they will be too late for Rotten Row,
and the House merely waits for Lord Monteagle to sit down and go home.
Happily his lordship is briefer than his wont, and the Lord High
Chancellor declares the House adjourned. Rushing outside, we catch hasty
glimpses of our hereditary legislators as they, in fashionable brougham
or on sple