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still take' their seats on the treasury bench in all the gorgeousness of scarlet robes and chains-a rich personification of aldermanic dignity. The mover and seconder of the address are still bound to appear in uniform or in court dress. The Master of the Rolls was accustomed to sit in his wig, and gown and bands, and the Speaker and the clerks are still attired in professional costume. The last Speaker of the unreformed House of Commons, with the red riband of the order of the Bath thrown across his person, looked an admirable impersonation of the departed grandeur of apparel. Even Fox, who afterwards assumed the uniform of Washington, a blue frock coat and buff waistcoat, was seen by Wraxall in the House, apparelled en petit-maître, with a hat and feather. The American Revolution, amid the wreck of things of greater moment, demolished court suits, and black swords, and bag-wigs; and Mr. Pitt's sumptuary tax completed the discomfiture of hair-powder. The French Revolution carried forward the republican principle in dress, and encouraged that sombre taste.

-a sort of citizenship of attire-which has levelled all distinctions, and rendered the hope of attaining notoriety, except by some eccentric departure from the established mode, difficult, if not impossible.

Since then, each has dressed himself as seemed good in his own sight. The cant phrase of a "shocking bad hat" may not improbably trace its origin to the head-gear sported by some honourable members in the House; whilst the pride of others has been shewn in those threadbare coats which none but the wealthy feel themselves privileged to wear. These affectations

Wraxall's Memoirs.

A gen

of lowliness form, however, excepted cases. tlemanly character is preserved by the great majority, with little aid from the tailor, and none from the perruquier; the best rule for dress has been a total absence of restraint, save that which respect for society enjoins, unpretending simplicity and elegant neatness, the avoiding of singularity, and concealment of all pretensions to effect.

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CHAPTER XIV.

EQUALLY unaffected with their dress is the general deportment of members. The contrast is remarkable, indeed, between them as an audience and their primitive predecessors, to whose simplicity of manners may be ascribed many of those traits of indecorum which would now be deemed intolerable, and those decisive methods of interruption which would be perfectly shocking to the staid notions of modern propriety. "An old doctor of the civil law spoke, but because he spoke too long and too low, the House hawked and spat, to make him make an end." Even then this disagreeable mode of coughing down a member was not permitted to pass without rebuke. Sir Francis Hastings stood up and said:" My masters, I utterly mislike this strange kind of course in the House! It is the ancient usage, that every man here should speak his conscience, and that both freely and with attention, yea, though he speak never so absurdly; I beseech, therefore, that this way may be amended, and this troubling of any man in his speech no more used."

The House, however, soon relapsed into their bad habit, for, though seldom inattentive to a member

MEMOIRS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 425

who says anything worth their hearing, they are, as a body, most intolerant critics, exhibiting no mercy for pedantic dullness, and openmouthed dislike to the garrulity of lawyers. In 1601, "Serjeant Heale affirmed in his speech, "The queen hath as much right to all our lands and goods as to the revenues of her crown,' (a strong proposition, undoubtedly) at which all the House hemmed and laughed and talked. 'Well,' quoth Serjeant Heale, all your hemming shall not put me out of countenance.' So Mr. Speaker stood up and said: 'It is a great disorder that this should be used, for it is the ancient use of every man to be silent when any one speaketh, and he that is speaking should be suffered to deliver his mind without interruption.' So the serjeant proceeded, and when he had spoken a little while, the House hemmed again, and so he sat down."

The whole scene thus graphically told by Sir Symonds D'Ewes has been repeated innumerable times in more courtly fashion, for the Speaker must rejoice in secret at the triumph of his audience over the prosing serjeant who will vex the dull ear of the House. However proper the interruption, the sibilant method of making it was so indefensible, so injurious to the feelings of the party assailed, so unbecoming the assailants, and likely to lead to a breach of the peace, that a motion against the practice seems to have met with general assent. In 1604 a member makes a motion against hissing "to the interruption and hindrance of the speech of any man in the House, as a thing derogatory from the dignity, not becoming the gravity, and as much crossing and abating the honour and privileges of the House as any other abuse whatsoever. The motion is well approved." Indeed, from this pe

riod, the bad habit appears to have been silently discontinued.

A more inoffensive mode of hinting weariness and disgust was adopted by the witty Harry Martin, whose good-humour and pleasantry almost betray us into forgetfulness of the regicide. He was wont to sleep much, Aubrey tells us," in the House, but afterwards explained that it was dog-sleep, a means to intimate fatigue on hearing a prosy oration. He was nodding his head, when Alderman Atkins moved "that such scandalous members as slept, and minded not the business of the House, should be put out." Harry Martin stood up-" Mr. Speaker, a motion has been made to turn out the nodders. I desire the noddees may also be turned out." The House laughed at the repartee, but would not incur the risk of being counted out, if Martin's hint were zealously enforced.

With equal freedom, but with more pleasure to the orator, would the House hum satisfaction-a token of approbation then tolerated at church. We read of an eloquent doctor at Cambridge, sitting down in the pulpit to enjoy the particularly loud hum which had rewarded the close of one of his most striking passages. Even this harmless, though somewhat drowsy method of assent, was objected to by some parliamentary purist, who may not have been often encouraged to proceed in his effusions by the droning sound. "I move," said Sir William Wheeler, "for candles, and also that humming be forborne, which is not parliamentary, nor ever used but at orations and in schools."

A more exhilarating cheer of encouragement, the cries of "hear, hear!" as sweet music to the orator as Aubrey's Letters.

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