Ministers were, of course, not slow in replying, and I had a chance of beholding some of the expiring grimaces of Lord John Russell, whose feeble government was just ready to fall to pieces of itself. I knew the man as soon as I saw him in the House. There he sat, under a hat that seemed to extinguish his features, trying to laugh and look good-natured. At last he rose, and I observed that the familiar caricatures of _Punch_ were in fact good likenesses. He is his own caricature. A diminutive utterer of “great, swelling words;” paltry, and yet pompous; and altogether as insignificant a person as I ever saw dressed in brief authority. He had only a few plain things to say, and yet he contrived to utter them, as if he were saying—“I am Sir Oracle.” Cries of _divide_ had circulated pretty freely during the whole debate, and now I saw a division. A personage who had been very polite to me during the evening, volunteered to put me where I might see the whole process. Just before the division, members came running in from the clubs, and the “whipper-in” returned to his seat, having discharged his duty in securing the attendance of votes for the Government. Members had been pairing off the whole time, apparently to attend a ball or the Opera, as the pairs were nearly always in full dress. Their negotiations seemed to be made near the bar of the House, and the Speaker was constantly silencing the buzz of members and spectators, by the cry of “order—order,” or “order at the bar,” which Mr. Shaw Lefevre knows how to speak most potently. At length for the division, the galleries were cleared at the sound of certain bells, which the Speaker appeared to pull; but my kind Mentor clapped me into a sort of lobby, like a closet, in the door of which was a pane of glass, through which I saw the entire performance at my ease, and quite by myself. Less fortunate visitors were entirely ejected, and then the members themselves went into the lobby, and so passed in again, their names being pricked by the tellers as they passed, and the whole operation taking but a few minutes. The Ministry had a handsome majority. Before the House rose that evening, there was another division; and it so happened that I heard most of the men of mark. Sir Charles Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hume and Bright, the amusing Colonel Sibthorp, and the Milesian Reynolds, all talked, and some of them several times. Mr. Keogh excited the significant cry of _oh, oh_, with laughter, and made some sport by rejoining, “the gentlemen may cry _oh_, but still it is true.” An allusion to the Scottish Universities brought Sir Robert Inglis to his feet, and he said a few pertinent words, in a manner worthy of himself as the best specimen in the House of a true English gentleman of the old school. Mr. Sidney Herbert spoke in a handsome manner, and Mr. Gladstone also made a very spicy little speech, which seemed to annoy his opponents not a little. The House sat till two o’clock, but I finally