was chilled by the applauder being led forth on the Speaker's injunction, and seen safe into Palace Yard. On a still more memorable occasion the strangers in the gallery, looking down on a free fight on the floor of the House of Commons, indignantly hissed. Here was lost an opportunity for fitly ending an unaccustomed scene. In the Christmas pantomime, when the uproar breaks forth, the attendant policeman, with novel and subtle humour, swoops down on the smallest and most inoffensive boy on the outskirts of the throng and leads him to the lock-up. If Mr. Mellor had only thought of it, he might have sternly called "Order! Order!" and directed the Serjeant-at-Arms to remove the disturbers of peace in the Strangers' Gallery. After this episode the fracas on the floor of the House might, or might not, have been resumed.
MR. GLADSTONE ON THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE HOUSE. The plans for a new House of Commons include fuller accommodation for strangers of both sexes. The scheme comes up with regularity at the mustering of every new Parliament, the clamour dying away even as the first Session advances, and, the novelty of the situation fading, attendance falls off. Mr. Gladstone has never publicly expressed an opinion on the question of the desirability or otherwise of enlarging the House. But in private conversation he makes no secret of his distaste for the proposal. To him it is a place of work, and he is averse to anything that should increase the tendency to make it a rival of the theatre.
The Ladies' Cage.
For this reason he is in favour of retaining the grille before the Ladies' Gallery, an opinion in which he is supported by a large majority of the ladies frequenting the House. Mr. Gladstone well remembers the old House of Commons, in which no accommodation for ladies was provided. Undaunted by this circumstance, ladies were present at all the big debates for some years prior to the destruction of the old House. Discovery was made that in the ventilating chamber in the roof there were shutters, through which persons peering might see and hear what was going on below. It must have been a terrible ordeal, with no air to breathe save the vitiated atmosphere of a crowded House. But there was great competition for the privilege of standing there. Mrs. Canning, wife of the Prime Minister, was, Mr. Gladstone tells me, a frequent visitor to this chamber of horrors at times when her husband was intending to make an important speech.
"I remember one night," said Mr. Gladstone, looking back smilingly over a period of fifty years, "the House being crowded for a big debate, something fell on the floor with a distinct thud. It was a lady's bracelet, which had dropped through the open space in the ventilator."
LADIES IN THE VENTILATOR. History repeats itself in small things as well as in great. This very Session, a small group of ladies, cachées in the ventilating chamber of the House of Commons, heard a speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone as, sixty years ago, another group in similar circumstances listened to his friend and early master, Mr. Canning. It happened on the night of the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. Every seat in the Ladies' Gallery, including the little-known stalls hidden behind the Strangers' Gallery facing the cage, had been appropriated. But the ladies of this generation are not more easily repulsed from a desired position than they were in the time of Canning.
Immediately under the House of Commons is a chamber running its full length, part of the elaborate construction of the ventilating department. The floor of the House, which to the casual glance seems of solid construction, is composed of perforated iron-work, covered with fine thread matting. Through this the fresh air drawn in from the river-terrace and elaborately treated in the lower vaults, is driven into the House. In this chamber, roofed by the fretwork of iron, speeches made in the House are as audible as if the listener were seated at the table or on one of the front benches. Four ladies, having obtained official permission, here sat and heard every word of Mr. Gladstone's speech. In respect of purity of air the
