Alas, poor Yorick! The final—to be precise, the penultimate—chapter of the life-story of his book has something touching in its sadness. Its price on the day of publication is not mentioned. Pencil memoranda on the fly-sheet indicate that fourscore years later the second-hand bookseller to whom its possession fell temptingly offered it at the price of one shilling. There being apparently no bidding, the shilling was crossed out and sixpence substituted. Finally, oh ye who pass by remaining obdurate or worse still indifferent, the volume, with its old-fashioned brown paper back bound with a strip of cloth, was thrown into the fourpenny box, receptacle of many unrecognised but memorable treasures. As affording a vivid peep at an historic Parliament, few have exceeded the intrinsic value of this time-and-weather-stained volume. Beginning his record in the Unreformed Parliament of 1830, Q indulged himself in the production of a series of thumb-nail sketches of eminent members long since gone to another place, whose names live in history. Here we have the men as they lived and dressed, moved or spoke, depicted by a keen-sighted independent looker-on. In this Parliament Sir Charles Wetherell, Member for Bristol, high Tory of a type now extinct, held a prominent and popular place. ‘He never opened his mouth,’ Q says, ‘but the House was convulsed with laughter, Wetherell himself preserving a countenance morose in its gravity.’ His personal appearance sufficed to attract attention. ‘His clothes are always threadbare. I never saw a suit on him for which a Jew old-clothes man would give ten shillings. They always look as if made by accident, hanging loosely about his tall figure. As for braces, he has an unconquerable aversion to them.’ There is a story about the famous Member for Bristol which Q must have heard but does not relate. When with frequent gestures he addressed the House his unbraced trousers parted from his waistcoat, displaying a considerable rim of shirt. A member, gravely rising to a point of order, once called the attention of the Speaker to the lapse. Manners Sutton, who filled the Chair at the time, with equal gravity declined to interfere. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the hon. gentleman’s only lucid interval.’ Leaving the House at a quarter past seven one morning, having fought the Reform Bill in Committee through a long series of divisions, Wetherell discovered it was raining heavily. ‘By G—,’ he said, ‘if I had known this we would have had a few more divisions.’ A contemporary of Wetherell’s, an active fellow-worker against the Reform Bill, was Croker, object of Macaulay’s particular aversion, a prejudice shared by Disraeli. Q describes him as tall, well-made, full six feet in height.