And then the walls at the end obtain additional splendour from the fine pictures that there stand out and confront you--pictures full of crowded life, movement, and tragedy.

The Throne, too, with all its gilded splendour, remains, even in its emptiness, a reminder of that stately and opulent lordship which our institutions give to a great personage above all parties and all classes.
[Sidenote: Lovely woman.] In addition to all this, the House of Lords has made provision for the appearance of lovely woman, which contrasts most favourably with the curmudgeon and churlish arrangements of the House of Commons.

In the House of Commons women have to hide themselves, as though they were in a Mahommedan country, behind a grille--where, invisible, suffocated, and crowded, they are permitted to see--themselves unseen--the gambollings of their male companions below.

In the House of Lords, on the other hand, there is a gallery all round the house, in which peeresses and the relatives of peers are allowed to sit--observed of all men--prettily dressed, attentive--a beautiful flower-bordering, so to speak, to the male assemblage below.

The variety and brilliancy of colour given by their fashionable clothes adds a great richness and opulence and lightness to the scene; in fact, takes away anything like sombreness, in appearance and aspect at least, from an assembly which otherwise is calculated to suggest sinister reminiscences of coming trouble and the approaching darkness of political agitation.