curity. The scene is shifted, and
all is at once forgotten. The past has a synonym, the unknown.

The peers of England sat as a court of justice in Westminster Hall, and
as the higher legislative chamber in a chamber specially reserved for
the purpose, called _The House of Lords_.

Besides the house of peers of England, which did not assemble as a court
unless convoked by the crown, two great English tribunals, inferior to
the house of peers, but superior to all other jurisdiction, sat in
Westminster Hall. At the end of that hall they occupied adjoining
compartments. The first was the Court of King's Bench, in which the king
was supposed to preside; the second, the Court of Chancery, in which the
Chancellor presided. The one was a court of justice, the other a court
of mercy. It was the Chancellor who counselled the king to pardon; only
rarely, though.

These two courts, which are still in existence, interpreted legislation,
and reconstructed it somewhat, for the art of the judge is to carve the
code into jurisprudence; a task from which equity results as it best
may. Legislation was worked up and applied in the severity of the great
hall of Westminster, the rafters of which were of chestnut wood, over
which spiders could not spread their webs. There are enough of them in
all conscience in the laws.

To sit as a court and to sit as a chamber are two distinct things. This
double function constitutes supreme power. The Long Parliament, which
began in November 1640, felt the revolutionary necessity for this
two-edged sword. So it declared that, as House of Lords, it possessed
judicial as well as legislative power.

This double power has been, from time immemorial, vested in the House of
Peers. We have just mentioned that as judges they occupied Westminster
Hall; as legislators, they had another chamber. This other chamber,
properly called the House of Lords, was oblong and narrow. All the light
in it came from four windows in deep embrasures, which received their
light through the roof, and a bull's-eye, composed of six panes with
curtains, over the throne. At night there was no other light than twelve
half candelabra, fastened to the wall. The chamber of Venice was darker
still. A certain obscurity is pleasing to those owls of supreme power.

A high ceiling adorned with many-faced relievos and gilded cornices,
circled over the chamber where the Lords assembled. The Commons had but
a flat ceiling. There is a meaning