before our assembled senators. For that reason the debates are far less interesting and memorable than they were in former times. There are still many speakers in the House to whom all must listen with pleasure and admiration. Sir W. Harcourt, Sir Henry Fowler, Mr. Morley, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Balfour, always set forth their arguments with force and dignity; and it would, I think, be generally conceded that few speakers could surpass Mr. Chamberlain in the skill and fearless forthrightness with which he enunciates his views. There are still a few debaters who might bear comparison with Sir Robert Peel in the dignified enunciation of views full of sober wisdom; or with Mr. Cobden in his "unadorned eloquence"; or with Lord Palmerston in his unstudied and lively geniality:--but since first Mr. Bright, and then Mr. Gladstone, stepped out of the political arena, anyone who could be called "a great orator" has become very uncommon in Parliamentary debates. No orator in the House has acquired, or perhaps even aims at, the fame for eloquence obtained in the political arena by men like O'Connell, Sheil, Lord Macaulay, Sir Edward Bulwer, Mr. Disraeli, John Bright, Lord Sherbrooke when he was at his best, or William Ewart Gladstone. We do not now have speeches which, like that of Lord Brougham in the House of Lords on the Reform Bill, occupied six hours in the delivery; or, like the famous "_Civis Romanus sum_" speech of Lord Palmerston in the Don Pacifico debate, are prolonged "from the dusk of a summer evening to the dawn of a summer day." [Illustration: (_Photo: Mendelssohn, Pembridge Cres._) MR. H. D. ERSKINE. (_The Present Serjeant-at-Arms._)] [Illustration: (_From an Engraving by Joseph Brown._) LORD CHARLES RUSSELL. (_Late Serjeant-at-Arms._)] [Illustration: PRAYERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. (_Conducted by Canon Wilberforce, the Present Chaplain._)] This may partly be due to the fact that we have not, for many years, passed through political crises in which the hearts of men have been so powerfully stirred as they were in the times of the first Reform Bill; or in the early struggles of the Irish party; or in the debates on the abolition of the corn laws; or during the thrilling incidents of the Crimean War. In these days speeches are shorter, less formal, less ornate, less impassioned. But if the passions of men should again be stirred as they were by those anxious issues, doubtless the same stormy eloquence might once more be evoked. In those days the hearts of millions beat like the heart of one man. One or two historic incidents may serve to illustrate the intensity of national feeling.