The Minister’s own room is probably on the first floor—­perhaps looking into Whitehall, perhaps into the Foreign Office Square, perhaps on to the Horse Guards Parade.  It is a large room with immense windows, and a fireplace ingeniously contrived to send all its heat up the chimney.  If the office is one of the older ones, the room probably contains some good pieces of furniture derived, from a less penurious age than ours—­a bureau or bookcase of mahogany dark with years, showing in its staid ornamentation traces of Chippendale or Sheraton; a big clock in a handsome case; and an interesting portrait of some historic statesman who presided over the department two centuries ago.  But in the more modern offices all is barren.  Since the late Mr. Ayrton was First Commissioner of Works a squalid cheapness has reigned supreme.  Deal and paint are everywhere; doors that won’t shut, bells that won’t ring, and curtains that won’t meet.  In two articles alone there is prodigality—­books and stationery.  Hansard’s Debates, the Statutes at Large, treatises illustrating the work of the office, and books of reference innumerable, are there; and the stationery shows a delightful variety of shape, size, and texture, adapted to every conceivable exigency of official correspondence.

It is indeed in the item of stationery, and in that alone, that the grand old constitutional system of perquisites survives.  Morbidly conscientious Ministers sometimes keep a supply of their private letter-paper on their office-table and use it for their private correspondence; but the more frankly human sort write all their letters on official paper.  On whatever paper written, Ministers’ letters go free from the office and the House of Commons; and certain artful correspondents outside, knowing that a letter to a public office need not be stamped, write to the Minister at his official address and save their penny.  In days gone by each Secretary of State received on his appointment a silver inkstand, which he could hand down as a keepsake to his children.  Mr. Gladstone, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, abolished this little perquisite, and the only token of office which an outgoing Minister can now take with him is his dispatch-box.  The wife of a minister who had long occupied an official residence, on being evicted from office said with a pensive sigh, “I hope I am not avaricious, but I must say, when one was hanging up pictures, it was very pleasant to have the Board of Works carpenter and a bag of the largest nails for nothing.”

The late Sir William Gregory used to narrate how when a child he was taken by his grandfather, who was Under-Secretary for Ireland, to see the Chief Secretary, Lord Melbourne, in his official room.  The good-natured old Whig asked the boy if there was anything in the room that he would like; and he chose a large stick of sealing-wax, “That’s right,” said Lord Melbourne, pressing a bundle of pens into his hand:  “begin life early.  All these things belong to the public, and your business must always be to get out of the public as much as you can.”  There spoke the true spirit of our great governing families.