They have the
crown down at Hurlstone--though they had some legal bother, and a
considerable sum to pay before they were allowed to retain it. I am sure
that if you mentioned my name they would be happy to show it to you. Of
the woman nothing was ever heard, and the probability is that she got
away out of England, and carried herself, and the memory of her crime,
to some land beyond the seas."

_From Behind the Speaker's Chair._

V.

(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)

SIR CHARLES LEWIS.

The history of Sir Charles Lewis, long time member for Derry, who sat in
the last Parliament for North Antrim, is full of instruction for young
members. Mr. Charles Lewis, as he was most familiarly known, entered the
House as member for Derry in 1872, representing the city for just
fourteen years. He was returned again at the General Election of 1886;
and it was part of the evil fate that pursued him through his
Parliamentary career that he should have been unseated on a petition. In
the following February he was returned for North Antrim, and with the
Salisbury Parliament disappeared from the political arena.

[Illustration: SIR CHARLES LEWIS.]

It was in the Session of 1874 that he bounded into fame. Conservatives
were in high spirits, just entering under Mr. Disraeli's leadership upon
a long lease of untrammelled power. Mr. Lewis, unnoticed in the
preceding Parliament, came to the front in the earliest weeks of the new
one, buzzing around in what some of his contemporaries were inclined to
regard as an unnecessarily blatant manner. He attracted the notice of
the _World_, just then founded, and, under the new and vigorous system
of editorship inaugurated by Mr. Edmund Yates, boldly striking out for a
leading place in weekly journalism. Mr. Lewis, whom his most relentless
detractors would not accuse of lack of courage, resented the playfully
bitter attacks of the _World_, and brought before Mr. Justice Coleridge
and a special jury what, at the time, achieved some notoriety as the
great White Waistcoat question.

It must be admitted that whether a member of the House of Commons wears
a white waistcoat or a black one is no business of anyone but himself;
certainly has nothing to do with his political position. But of Mr.
Lewis's once famous white waistcoat it may be said, as was written long
ago in another connection, "which thing is an allegory." A white
waistcoat worn in sultry weather with light tweed or other summer suit