In pointing out what is peculiar to the House of Lords, I am aware that there is danger of falling into the error of stating what is already familiar to some of my readers.  And yet a traveller’s narrative is not always tiresome to the tourist who has himself visited the same localities and witnessed the same scenes.  If anxious for the “diffusion of useful knowledge,” he will cheerfully consent that the curiosity of others, who have not shared his good fortune, should be gratified, although it be at his expense.  At the same time, he certainly has a right to insist that the extraordinary and improbable stories told to the too credulous voyageur by some lying scoundrel of a courier or some unprincipled valet-de-place shall not be palmed upon the unsuspecting public as genuine tales of travel and adventure.

The House of Lords is composed of lords spiritual and lords temporal.  As this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops, twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates.  The lords temporal are three peers of the blood royal, twenty dukes, nineteen marquises, one hundred and ten earls, twenty-two viscounts, two hundred and ten barons, sixteen Scotch representative peers, and twenty-eight Irish representative peers.  There are twenty-three Scotch peers and eighty-five Irish peers who have no seats in Parliament.  The representative peers for Scotland are elected for every Parliament, while the representative peers for Ireland are elected for life.  As has been already intimated, this enumeration applies only to the present House of Lords, which comprises four hundred and fifty-eight members,—­an increase of about thirty noblemen in as many years.

The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers, military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged importance in commercial life.  Lord Macaulay is the first instance in which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled, that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was unmarried.  With his untimely death the title became extinct.  Lord Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his well-deserved promotion.  But these infrequent exceptions, these rare concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.  Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable.  Brown may reach the highest range of artistic excellence,