We next, after long contemplating this rich hall, proceeded through passages and corridores to a great central room, very beautiful, which seems to be used for purposes of refreshment, and for electric telegraphs; tho I should not suppose this could be its primitive and ultimate design.  Thence we went into the House of Commons, which is larger than the Chamber of Peers, and much less richly ornamented, tho it would have appeared splendid had it come first in order.  The Speaker’s chair, if I remember rightly, is loftier and statelier than the throne itself.  Both in this hall and in that of the Lords we were at first surprized by the narrow limits within which the great ideas of the Lords and Commons of England are physically realized; they would seem to require a vaster space.  When we hear of members rising on opposite sides of the House, we think of them but as dimly discernible to their opponents, and uplifting their voices, so as to be heard afar; whereas they sit closely enough to feel each other’s spheres, to note all expression of face, and to give the debate the character of a conversation.  In this view a debate seems a much more earnest and real thing than as we read it in a newspaper.  Think of the debaters meeting each other’s eyes, their faces flushing, their looks interpreting their words, their speech growing into eloquence, without losing the genuineness of talk!  Yet, in fact, the Chamber of Peers is ninety feet long and half as broad and high, and the Chamber of Commons is still larger.

St. Paul’s [Footnote:  From “Walks in London.”]

BY AUGUSTUS J.C.  HARE

It will be admitted that, tho in general effect there is nothing in the same style of architecture which exceeds the exterior of St. Paul’s, it has not a single detail deserving of attention, except the Phenix over the south portico, which was executed by Cibber, and commemorates the curious fact narrated in the “Parentalia,” that the very first stone which Sir Christopher Wren directed a mason to bring from the rubbish of the old church to serve as a mark for the center of the dome in his plans was inscribed with the single word Resurgam—­I shall rise again.  The other ornaments and statues are chiefly by Bird, a most inferior sculptor.  Those who find greater faults must, however, remember that St. Paul’s, as it now stands, is not according to the first design of Wren, the rejection of which cost him bitter tears.  Even in his after work he met with so many rubs and ruffles, and was so insufficiently paid, that the Duchess of Marlborough, said, in allusion to his scaffold labors, “He is dragged up and down in a basket two or three times in a week for an insignificant L200 a year."...