ts of violence against royalty,
have paved the way for its eventual downfall. The House of Lords at the
present day is somewhat sad and astonished at what it has unwillingly
and unintentionally done, all the more that it is irrevocable.

What are concessions? Restitutions;--and nations know it.

"I grant," says the king.

"I get back my own," says the people.

The House of Lords believed that it was creating the privileges of the
peerage, and it has produced the rights of the citizen. That vulture,
aristocracy, has hatched the eagle's egg of liberty.

And now the egg is broken, the eagle is soaring, the vulture dying.

Aristocracy is at its last gasp; England is growing up.

Still, let us be just towards the aristocracy. It entered the scale
against royalty, and was its counterpoise. It was an obstacle to
despotism. It was a barrier. Let us thank and bury it.

CHAPTER III.

THE OLD HALL.

Near Westminster Abbey was an old Norman palace which was burnt in the
time of Henry VIII. Its wings were spared. In one of them Edward VI.
placed the House of Lords, in the other the House of Commons. Neither
the two wings nor the two chambers are now in existence. The whole has
been rebuilt.

We have already said, and we must repeat, that there is no resemblance
between the House of Lords of the present day and that of the past. In
demolishing the ancient palace they somewhat demolished its ancient
usages. The strokes of the pickaxe on the monument produce their
counter-strokes on customs and charters. An old stone cannot fall
without dragging down with it an old law. Place in a round room a
parliament which has been hitherto held in a square room, and it will no
longer be the same thing. A change in the shape of the shell changes the
shape of the fish inside.

If you wish to preserve an old thing, human or divine, a code or a
dogma, a nobility or a priesthood, never repair anything about it
thoroughly, even its outside cover. Patch it up, nothing more. For
instance, Jesuitism is a piece added to Catholicism. Treat edifices as
you would treat institutions. Shadows should dwell in ruins. Worn-out
powers are uneasy in chambers freshly decorated. Ruined palaces accord
best with institutions in rags. To attempt to describe the House of
Lords of other days would be to attempt to describe the unknown. History
is night. In history there is no second tier. That which is no longer
on the stage immediately fades into obs