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of the founder's decease. But it was most carefully restored by Bolton; and the fact is significant of its antiquity. As the latter found, no doubt, a labour of love in making these reparations, so Time itself seems to have seconded his efforts, and to have shared in the hopes of its builders that a long period of prosperity should be granted to it, by touching it very gently. Here and there the pinnacles have been somewhat diminished of their fair proportions, and that is pretty well the entire extent of the injury the work has experienced. The monument, it must be added, is richly painted as well as sculptured, and shows us the black robes of Rahere and of the monks who are kneeling at his side-the ruddy features of the former, and the splendid coats of arms on the front of the tomb below. Each of the monks has a Bible before him, open at the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah. And often and often, no doubt, has Rahere, as he read such verses as that (the third) we are about to transcribe, received fresh accession of strength to complete his arduous task, until what he had first looked upon as holy words of encourage. ment only became to his rapt fancy a prophecy which he was chosen to fulfil. When others spake of the all but impossible task (for such it was generally esteemed) he had undertaken, of cleaning and building upon the extensive marsh allotted, he smiled in his heart to think what One had said greater than they :"The Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody."

[Prior Bolton's Rebus.]

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XXX.-THE HOUSE OF COMMONS:-No. 1.

OF the associations connected with the House of Commons, some attach themselves to the old building or apartment in which the representatives of the people had held their meetings for nearly three centuries previous to its destruction in 1834, but many also derive their interest from passages in the history of this branch of the legislature, or peculiarities of its forms and usages, which have little or nothing to do with any particular locality. And even for the former class, the walls at least are still standing, and will be preserved, that echoed the eloquence of the senates of other days, and the spot which their long occupation has consecrated is to be kept separate, and unappropriated to any meaner use, for the imagination to re-erect on it at will the whole structure of that narrow, dingy room which, to an unaccustomed eye, looked more like the prison than the palace of the

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genius of our English legislation. A strange, underground, cavernous air it had, indeed, with its one great table occupying half the penurious floor, and its five tiers of horseshoe benches carried back to the wainscoted walls, and round about so economically into every angle and coigne of vantage, and the strips of gallery running over-head along each side and at the one end, and the chandeliers hung, not high near the ceiling, but low down in mid air, as if there had been some ground-haze, or other palpable murkiness, floating about and filling the place, which would have otherwise intercepted the light. The scene, truly, was apt to awaken the most awkward fancies. A mind disordered, or thrown off its balance, by the shock of the sudden, harsh, and complete bouleversement of all its previous impressions of the dignity and splendour of parliaments, might have been excused, looking down from that end gallery, for mistaking at the first glance the assembled wisdom, speaker's wig and all, for some den of thieves, or a crew of midnight conspirators. Yet, on better acquaintance, the contracted, unadorned, well-packed apartment revealed a character that was not inappropriate-an earnest, business, workshop character; so that, at last, one's fancy wandered neither to the dungeon and doleful shades of Milton's devils, nor to the Fehm Gerichte or Invisible Tribunals of medieval Germany, nor even to Gil Blas feeling as if he were caught like a rat in a rat-trap when he found himself shut up with the robbers in their subterranean retreat, but rather to Virgil's description of the hollow cave under Ætna where the fabricators of the thunderbolts plied their labours:

"The Cyclops here their heavy hammers deal;
Loud strokes and hissings of tormented steel
Are heard around; the boiling waters roar;
And smoky flames through fuming tunnels soar.

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And, indeed, to say that it is composed of fire, flatulence, and fog, seems about as proper a description of parliamentary as of any other thunder.

Remembering that Westminster Hall stands nearly duè north and south, or parallel to the course of the river at this place, the reader will understand exactly the position of the old House of Commons when we state that the House and the Lobby together formed an oblong building placed at right angles to the Hall, and attached to it at its south-east angle. Of course it extended from that angle towards the river, from which its eastern end was divided by a portion of the Speaker's Garden. The garden extended along the river-bank almost as far as to a point opposite to the northern wall of the Hall, where is the great entrance from New Palace Yard: the corner between the Hall and the House of Commons was occupied by the Speaker's house and the buildings connected with it, which were arranged round a court, and formed an irregular square mass, stretching up to about the middle of the eastern wall of the Hall. The stables, indeed, which were divided from the Hall by St. Stephen's Court, ex

tended considerably farther to the north. The entire length of the House of Commons and the Lobby together was about half that of the Hall, and their breadth was also about half that of the Hall; so that their entire area was about a fourth of the area of that building. But of this space the Lobby occupied considerably more than a third; leaving the length of the House of Commons not quite equal to the breadth of Westminster Hall, and room upon the ample floor of the latter for at least half a dozen of the former. The one, indeed, was a mere closet compared to the other.

The room which in later times served for the meetings of the Commons was, as every reader knows, originally a chapel, founded by King Stephen, by whom it was dedicated to the saint of his own name, and rebuilt by Edward III., who made it a collegiate church, with an establishment of a dean, twelve secular canons, twelve vicars, four clerks, six choristers, a verger, and a chapel-keeper. The restoration of St. Stephen's Chapel by Edward III. was a work of great cost and labour; it was not finished till the year 1347, although it appears to have been begun at least seventeen years before; and the extraordinary magnificence of decoration lavished upon it was attested by the richness and beauty of the numerous paintings in oil with which the walls were found to be covered when the wainscoting of the House of Commons was taken down in 1800 to enlarge the apartment for the admission of the Irish members. In the fury of the Reformation, when St. Stephen's Chapel, with all the other monastic foundations in the kingdom, was suppressed, all this splendour was recklessly sacrificed; indeed, it was no doubt held in contempt and abhorrence by the austere and violent spirit now abroad; and the paintings might have had a worse fate than that of being merely boarded up, or even being covered over with whitewash, as, we believe, those in some adjoining apartments were found to be. What was more disgraceful than the treatment they received in the excitement of such a crisis as that of the Reformation, when men's minds, occupied and wrapt by subjects far transcending any concerns of time, might well be excused for an indifference to whatever did not appertain to the great business in hand, and an impatience of whatever seemed to interfere with it, was the disregard with which these curious works of ancient art were treated on their accidental discovery in our own day, when they were no sooner brought to light than they were destroyed, and it was left to the taste and zeal of a private individual to preserve and communicate to the public such copies of them as he could manage to snatch with hurried pencil while the workmen were actually tearing them down and the noise and dust of their operations filled the place. To this gentleman, however, Mr. J. T. Smith, who accidentally heard of what was going forward, we are indebted for engravings, coloured after the originals, of between two and three hundred of these pictures, which adorned the old Chapel of St. Stephen's and the other buildings of the Palace of which it formed a part, and not one of which, we believe, now remains, except in the record of them thus preserved in his 'Antiquities of Westminster.' It is stated that when they were first brought to light, the colours, then four centuries and a half old, appeared as fresh as if they had been newly laid on.

St. Stephen's Chapel was a portion of the original, afterwards distinguished as the Old, royal palace of Westminster, the memory of which is still preserved in

the name of Old Palace Yard given to the open space on the south-west side of this mass of buildings. The Old Palace of Westminster was founded by the Con

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fessor. When Westminster Hall was built by William Rufus, that portion of the pile appears to have received the name of the New Palace, and the open space adjacent to it that of New Palace Yard, which it still retains. But properly the entire mass of building was the King's Palace at Westminster. This palace, however, was deserted as a royal residence in 1512, when a great part of it was burnt down; "since the which time," says Stow, "it hath not been reedified; only the great Hall, with the offices near adjoining, are kept in good reparation, and serveth, as afore, for feasts at coronations, arraignments of great persons charged with treasons, keeping of the courts of justice, &c.: but the princes have been lodged in other places about the City, as at Baynard's Castle, at Bridewell, and Whitehall, sometime called York Place, and sometime at St. James's." From this date the Palace at Westminster appears to have been usually styled the Old Palace. In the act of parliament passed in 1536, by which, as stated in a former number,* the limits of the Palace were extended so as to comprehend York Place, now called Whitehall, the Old Palace is described as "the King's Palace at Westminster, builded and edified there before the time of mind, by and nigh unto the Monastery and Abbey of Saint Peter of Westminster in the county of Middlesex;" and it is stated then to be, and of long time to have been, " in utter ruin and decay." After mentioning the King's new buildings at York Place, and the Parks thereunto adjoining, "walled and environed with brick and stone," which he had also recently made-the present St. James's Park-the act goes on to declare that "all the said soil, ground, mansion, and buildings, and the said Park, with all other things, commodities, and

*London,' vol. i. p. 339.

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