n tallies which
once used to be employed in the Court of Exchequer, and he heaped too
large a bundle of them on the fire. At an unlucky moment a flame
suddenly blazed up which caught hold of the furniture in the room, and
in another moment set the whole building on fire, and then created the
vast conflagration which wrought so much destruction.

We have expressed a certain doubt as to whether the burning of the old
Houses of Parliament is really to be regarded as a national calamity,
and the doubt is founded partly on the admitted fact that the chambers
which existed before the fire were quite unequal in size and in
accommodation to the purposes for which they were designed, and partly
on the architectural magnificence of the buildings which succeeded
them. The Lords and Commons found accommodation where they could while
preparations were in progress for the building of new and better
chambers, and a Parliamentary committee was soon appointed to consider
and report upon the best means of providing the country with more
commodious and more stately Houses of Parliament. The committee
ventured on a recommendation which was considered, at the time, a most
daring piece of advice. The recommendation was that the contract for
the erection of the new Houses of Parliament should be thrown
absolutely open to public competition. Nothing like that proposal had
ever been heard of under similar conditions in English affairs up to
that time. What seemed to most persons the most natural and proper
plan--the seemly, becoming, and orderly plan--would have been to allow
the sovereign or some great State {270} personage to select the Court
architect who might be thought most fitting to be intrusted with so
great a task, and let him work out, as best he could, the pleasure of
his illustrious patron. The committee, however, were able to carry
their point, and the contract for the great work was thrown open to
unrestricted competition. Out of a vast number of designs submitted
for approval, the committee selected the design sent in by Mr. Barry
(afterwards Sir Charles Barry), the famous architect, who has left many
other monuments of his genius to the nation, but whose most conspicuous
monument, assuredly, is found in the pile of buildings which ornament
the Thames at Westminster.

[Sidenote: 1840--The seating capacity of the Commons]

Only the mere fact that the selection of the design for the new
building was made during the life