It may be said that I am prejudiced by receipt of personal favours. You took me literally out of the streets to be your daily companion, and, at friendly though still humble distance, to consort with the Beauty and Brilliance that throngs your court. But for you I might years ago have followed the historic precedent, gone mad to serve my private ends, bit some unwholesome person and died. But you took me by the paw, lifted me into your company, placed me on the pedestal of your ever-increasing but never-swelling bulk of volumes, whence it was an easy matter to step on to the lower level of the floor of the House of Commons. The prestige of your name was sufficient to secure for me the suffrages of one of the most important and one of the most enlightened county constituencies of this still undivided Empire. As I sit here alone in this dimly-lighted chamber there glide along with silent footfall an interminable procession of familiar faces and figures that have passed through this room since I first took the oath and my seat for Barkshire. DIZZY walks past, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but conveying to the mind of the onlooker a curious impression that he sees all round; and here comes kindly STAFFORD NORTHCOTE and burly BERESFORD-HOPE, and TOM COLLINS, with the faded umbrella he used to bring down through all the summer nights and solemnly commit to the personal charge of the doorkeeper. And there goes dear ISAAC BUTT, wringing his hands because of Major O'GORMAN'S revolt, and W. P. ADAM, disappointed after his long fight which ended with victory for his Party and something like a snub for himself. Here is NEWDEGATE frowning at the scarlet drapery of a reading lamp; and behind him, WHALLEY, wondering whether he was really in earnest when he denounced him before the House of Commons as "a Jesuit in disguise." Here, too, poor Lord HENRY LENNOX with his trousers turned up, and Sir THOMAS MAY with a Peerage looming within hand's reach, and Captain GOSSET steering his shapely legs towards his room to drink Apollinaris and read up Hansard. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces, and the New Year, which the bell-ringers are waiting to welcome in, is nothing to them. Over there in the corner are the two chairs on which the form of JOSEPH GILLIS reclined on the first all-night sitting that ever was, when, the thing being fresh to Members, they were eager to stop up all night, to walk round the recumbent form, dropping pokers and heavy volumes with innocent attempt to disturb the slumberer. But JOSEPH GILLIS slept, or seemed to sleep. He was giving the Saxon trouble, and was not greatly inconvenienced himself.