[104] Speaker Lenthall once rebuked a youthful member who was sitting perched upon the topmost rung, listening to a debate, and bade him come down and not "sit upon the ladder as though he were going to be hanged." Forster's "Historical Sketches," vol. i. p. 82. On either side of the old House were ranged rows of wooden benches, hard and comfortless, with neither backs nor covering. Not even were Ministers provided with padded seats. "No satin covering decks th' unsightly boards; No velvet cushion holds the youthful Lords; And claim illustrious tails such small regard? Ah! Tails too tender for a seat so hard!"[105] [105] "The Rolliad." St Stephen's Chapel was in size quite inadequate to the needs of legislators--the only point, perhaps, in which it resembled the present House of Commons. David Hume complained perpetually of the lack of room; while Cobbett cynically referred to it as "the little hole into which we are all crammed to make the laws by which this great kingdom is governed."[106] Lined with dark wainscot and lit by three chandeliers, the gloomy chamber did not impress the stranger with the dignity or splendour of parliaments, and a visitor to St Stephen's might well have been excused for mistaking the House of Commons for a den of thieves or a crew of midnight conspirators.[107] [106] Dalling's "Historical Characters," vol. ii. p. 175. [107] Knight's "London," vol. ii. p. 68. As was only natural, the dingy surroundings exercised a detrimental influence upon the manners of members. Moritz was surprised to see many of them lying stretched out at full length on the uncomfortable benches fast asleep, while others cracked nuts or ate oranges. "The many rude things the members said to one another," he observes sadly, "struck me much."[108] Not only was the House squalid and dirty, it was also infested with rats. Speaker Manners Sutton told Thomas Moore that the only time he had ever laughed while occupying the Chair was during a debate in which members of the Opposition had been squabbling fiercely together, when he saw a large rat issue from beneath the front Opposition bench and walk deliberately across to the Treasury side of the House.[109] [108] Pinkerton's "Voyages," vol. ii. p. 508. [109] Moore's "Memoirs," vol. iv. p. 320.