"The House loves good sense and joking, and nothing else," said Sir T. F. Buxton, in 1819; "and the object of its utter aversion is that species of eloquence which may be called Philippian."[335] Sentimentality of any kind is rarely tolerated in Parliament, as may be seen by the indifference with which Burke's dagger and Lord Brougham's melodramatic prayer were greeted. When Bright, during the Crimean War, delivered himself of that famous phrase, "The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of its wings!" it was a question as to how members would take so sentimental a simile. Had the speaker substituted the word "flapping" for "beating," as Cobden afterwards observed to him, they would have roared with laughter. [335] "Memoirs," p. 89. The House of Commons, as a writer has remarked, is a body without any principles or prejudices, except against bores. "He who comes to it with a good reputation has no better chance than he who besieges it with a bad one. It rejects all pretensions it has not of itself justified, and all fame it has not itself conferred."[336] It has, indeed, always been remarkable for a great reluctance in confirming reputations for oratory gained elsewhere. Wilkes could sway the populace with his grandiloquent declamations, but failed ignominiously in Parliament; Kenealy was refused a hearing. The chastening effect of the Lower House is notorious, and many a conceited, self-opiniated individual has found his level after a brief course of subjection to what Sir James Mackintosh called the "curry-comb of the House of Commons."[337] [336] Whitty's "History of the Session" (1852-3), p. 7. [337] "Journal," vol. i. p. 342. Besides bores and demagogues, of which it is justly intolerant, the House of Commons may at one time be said to have numbered lawyers among its pet aversions. The latter are apt to lecture their fellow-members as though they were addressing a jury, explaining the most patent facts, and generally assuming a didactic air which the House finds it difficult to brook.[338] This perhaps explains the failure of such distinguished men as Lord Jeffrey and Sir James Mackintosh, both eloquent lawyers who made little or no mark in Parliament, and of many other "gentlemen of the long robe," as Disraeli contemptuously called them. [338] "Accustomed in their courts to consider every matter of equal importance," says Barnes, "they adopt the same earnest and stiff solemnity of manner, whether they are disputing about violated morality or insulted liberty, or about a petty affray where a hat, value one shilling, has been torn in a scuffle." "Parliamentary Sketches," p. 79.