Were they followed by gentlemen of Hebrew extraction, with those mysterious little slips of paper which contain letters of such magic power, they could not walk faster. As you listen, utterances of doubtful and dire import fall from their lips. “Palmerston is up,” says one. You are alarmed; you think the bottle-holder is in a rage, and you tremble for the consequences. Again you hear, “Lord John is down;” you are distressed at the intelligence, the old champion of civil and religious liberty you hoped would long have been preserved from such a catastrophe. The gentlemen around you, however, listen to such statements with the coolness of stoics, paying little or no regard to such announcements. One says to another, “When are you on?” another demands of his friend, whether he is off; another says he comes on at nine. You are puzzled to know what manner of men you are amongst. They are not strangers fresh from the country—they have too pale and town-like a look for that; they are not members—because members feast in another part of the house. You will soon see what they are! you leave that room and enter another, in which are a few well-dressed personages transcribing hurriedly, as if for life. The truth flashes upon you. “These men are the reporters,” you exclaim. For once, my good sir, you are right; and if you go through that glass-door you will find yourself in the REPORTERS’ GALLERY. We will suppose that for this time only the doorkeeper has relaxed his usual vigilance, and you have managed to effect an entrance. There is as much difficulty in getting a stranger into the Reporters’ Gallery as in getting Baron Rothschild into the House. As the gallery will not hold more than thirty, it is quite right this should be the case. On the back seats the reporters are sitting idle—some criticising the speakers in a manner anything but complimentary—some sleeping—some reading a quarterly; but on the front seat you see some dozen or thirteen, each in a little box to himself, busily engaged. If the speaker be a great gun, the reporter puts forward his utmost energies and takes down every word—if he be one of the illustrious obscure the task is less difficult, and a patient public is saved the painful duty of reading the _ipsissima verba_ of Smith or Brown. Beside the reporter, in some cases, sits another gentleman, who has, comparatively speaking, an easier office to perform. He is the gentleman that does the parliamentary summary to which you instinctively turn, instead of wading through the eight or nine columns that give the debate itself. I believe the summary writer in the gallery remains all night, while the reporters take their turns, which last on an average half an hour. Thus, no sooner has a reporter been at his post for that time, than he leaves the house and rushes up to the office to copy out his notes; this may take him an hour. He then returns, and is ready to go on again when he is due.