returned, the ambitious youth was thrown into gaol for an insignificant tavern bill of merely £250 for eleven days. What cruelty! What talent, what hope, what failure, have there not been in the Reporters’ Gallery! And those who know it, if they wanted, could find abundance of material there with which “To point a moral or adorn a tale.” Perhaps, after all, in nothing is the astonishing improvement made in these latter times so conspicuous as in our system of parliamentary reporting. The House was in terror when reporters first found their way into it. “Why, sir,” said Mr. Winnington, addressing the Speaker, “you will have every word that is spoken here misrepresented by fellows who thrust themselves into our gallery. You will have the speeches of this House printed every day during your session, and we shall be looked upon as the most contemptible assembly on the face of the earth.” In consequence of such attacks as these, the reporters became frightened, and gave the debates with the speakers disguised under Roman names, though nothing could be more wearisome than the small type of the political club, where Publicola talked against turnpike-gates and Tullus Hostilius declaimed on the horrors of drinking gin. Nor is it to be wondered at that the House grew angry when such reports as the following professed to be a faithful account of its proceedings: “Colonel Barré moved, that Jeremiah Weymouth, the d---n of this kingdom, is not a member of this House.” Even when the reporters triumphed, the public were little benefited. Nothing can be more tantalising than such statements as these, which we meet with in old parliamentary reports: “Mr. Sheridan now rose, and, during the space of five hours and forty minutes, commanded the admiration and attention of the House by an oration of almost unexampled excellence, uniting the most convincing closeness and accuracy of argument with the most luminous precision and perspicuity of language; and alternately giving force and energy to truth by solid and substantial reasoning, and enlightening the most extensive and involved subjects with the purest clearness of logic, and the brightest splendour of rhetoric.” Sheridan’s leader fared no better. “Mr. Fox,” we are told, “was wonderfully pleasant on Lord Clive’s joining the administration.” Equal injustice is done to Mr. Burke. We read, “Mr. Burke turned, twisted, metamorphosed, and represented everything which the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Pitt) had advanced, with so many ridiculous forms, that the House was kept in a continual roar of laughter.” Again: “Mr. Burke enforced these beautiful and affecting statements by a variety of splendid and affecting passages from the Latin classics.” It is no wonder, then, that a prejudice should have existed against the reporters. On a motion made by Lord Stanhope, that the short-hand writers employed on the trial of Hastings be summoned to the