In their struggles, though often violent, the blows are always generous, and aimed in front. However, the noise of the interruptions by which approbation or discontent is expressed, would astonish and terrify a stranger—above all, one unaccustomed to the discordance of English pronunciation. The sound is unusual, striking, and the more astonishing, as at first you are unable to tell whence it proceeds. There are six hundred men, seated, uttering savage cries of joy or anger, their bodies all the while remaining immovable, their features preserving their usual phlegmatic and calm expression. These tumults produce quite a fantastic effect. _Hear! hear!_ is the cry of satisfaction and encouragement. Listen to the speaker!—his discourse penetrates and touches the soul of the question; let us listen to him—hear him. _Spoke!—spoke!_ indicates impatience, ennui, lassitude. You abuse your privilege—you have said enough—you have spoken! This reproach is imperative—it is rarely resisted. _Order! order!_ is the call to order; it is a summons to the speaker to notice and reprimand the offending member who has passed the boundaries of propriety—for, to the speaker alone belongs the right to pronounce judgment on such occasions. The speaker centres in himself the omnipotence of the chamber of which he is the representative. His authority is supreme, within as well as without the walls of the Parliament house. His situation renders him a personage of very high importance. He has his official palace, he holds his _levees_, to which none are admitted unless in court dress. Singular inconsistency! the very same Commoners who enter booted, spurred, with their over-coats and their hats on, into their own hall, would find the doors of their own speaker closed against them, if they should present themselves without ruffles and dressed _à la Française_. This rigorous particularity is unreasonable. Mr. Hume, however, in a recent attack upon this absurd etiquette, found himself unable to succeed against the powerful prejudice by which it is upheld. The sound sense of his objections only passed for radical folly. Thus it is that with the English the ancient forms of etiquette have deeper root than even their old abuses. You may be certain that they will have reformed the church, the aristocracy, and perhaps the crown itself, before the grotesque wigs of their magistrates. Their entire revolution will have been completed, while their new liberty will be still distinguished by the manners and dress of the _ancien regime_.