But the most impressive view of the Palace to the eye is obtained from the opposite bank of the Thames. Standing beneath the aged and hoary Lambeth Palace on the Surrey side—town house of the Archbishop of Canterbury—and looking across the river, especially when the mighty waterway is at its full tide, one realizes more completely the Gothic stateliness of this temple of legislation, the outcome of the constructive genius of Sir Charles Barry, and the graceful fancy of Augustus Welby Pugin. The long façade above the river wall and terrace, its uniform symmetry, the lightness and grace of its stone carving, the many steeples and pinnacles—beginning with the delicate tracery of the lofty Clock Tower, close to Westminster Bridge, and terminating with the solid massiveness of the colossal Victoria Tower—form altogether a most imposing masterpiece in architecture, worthy of the ancient and august National Assembly which deliberates within its walls, that mother of representative institutions which perhaps is the greatest gift of the English race to mankind. So it is that something of the secret of the high place which Parliament holds in popular esteem and pride may be found in the grandeur of its home. At any rate, the spectacle presented by the Palace of Westminster does impress the mind with the glory of the purpose of Parliament and its might. Here we see the apotheosis of politics, the science of the progress and well-being of humanity, and the temple in which it is fittingly served. Thus at Westminster we have not only the flower or the fruit of the national life in the guidance of the State aright, but its roots and fibres going deep down to the very bedrock of the past. For more than six centuries the grand inquest of the Nation has sat at Westminster. At first it was a council of the great and wise summoned by the King personally. When Edward I, “the great law-giver,” sent to the sheriffs writs for the election of two knights for each shire, two citizens for each city, two burgesses for each borough, in addition to himself calling together the prelates and the nobles, the principle of popular election came into operation. The Parliament thus elected and known as the “Model Parliament” was really representative of the Nation at large. It met in the Palace of Westminster so long ago as November, 1295. For over a century the three estates of the realm—the Prelates, the Nobles, and the Commons—deliberated together. The division of Parliament into two Houses—one for the Peers, spiritual and temporal, and the other for the Commons—took place in 1377, the last year of the reign of Edward III. The Lords have always met in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons for the best part of two centuries assembled in the Chapter House, or the Refectory, of Westminster Abbey. They held their last sitting there on the day that Henry VIII died.