PARLIAMENT, an assembly of business men, 268; abhors rhetoric, 268; submits to ascendency of great masters of eloquence, 269; will not tolerate commonplace speeches, 269; local Houses of, 269; Houses of, burnt in 1834, 239; temporary building for the meeting of, 239; the new Houses of, several years building, 239; House of Lords side of, opened after thirteen years, 240; House of Commons side, opened after sixteen years, 240; peeresses' gallery in, 241; ladies' cage in, 242; members of (see members of Parliament); types of members, in the past, 247; more modern types of, 251; acceptance of position of delegates by, 256. PARLIAMENTARY, oratory, change in fashion of, 248; classical quotations no longer a feature of, 248; business language used in modern, 249; proceedings, foreign interest taken in, 249; hospitality, five o'clock tea on Terrace, 245; stage, and theatrical stages, parallel between, 250; humorists, a succession of, 251; children of the church, a regular supply of, 251; obstruction, methods of, practised by Parnell, 255; closure, the remedy for obstruction, 256. PAROCHIAL schools, first suggested by S. Whitbread in 1807, 134. PAUPERISM, statistics of, in England, 45; 50 per cent. less in 1897 than in 1857; enormous reduction of, in the Midlands, 88; and in Sussex, 88; reduction in, a direct consequence of Act of 1834, 88; less frequent application of workhouse test in cases of, 89. PEEL, Sir Robert, sketch of, 4; his seat on horseback, 4; popular respect in which held, 10. PEERAGES, modern, conferred on representatives of science and art, 327; on Tennyson as a poet, 327; Playfair as a physician, 327; Kelvin as a physicist, 327; Lister as a surgeon, 327. PEOPLE'S Palace, The, a fanciful sketch of Sir Walter Besant, 362; difficulties of administration in connection with, 125. PERIODICALS, magazines and reviews, their popularity, 267; used as substitutes for parliamentary speeches, 267; mutual advantages to publisher and member of Parliament of the use of, as substitutes for speeches, 267. PHELPS, pupil of Macready, his position on stage, 216. PHOTOGRAPHY, a production of the Victorian era, 333. PHYSICAL investigations, appliances for, former want of, 324; perfection of appliances now, product of Victorian era, 324. PICTURES, prices of, in 1649, 46; gradual rise in, 47; great sums paid by Russian Emperor, 48; £30,000 realised by sale of the Walpole, in 1842, 49; £60,000 by sale of the Bernal Collection of, in 1856, 50; Gainsborough's picture of the 'Sisters' sold for £6615 in 1873, 52; resold in 1887 for £9975, 52. PITT, William, peerages bestowed on wealthy men by, 13; his theory that £40,000 per annum should command a peerage, 42.