The benches, too, have a richness which is foreign to the House of Commons, as the members of the popular assembly sit on benches covered with a deep green leather, which is dark, modest, and unpretentious.

There is always something, to my eye at least, that suggests opulence in the colour crimson, and the benches of the Upper Chamber are all in crimson leather, and the crimson has all the freshness which comes from rarity of use.

In the House of Commons, with all its workaday and industrious life, the deep and dark green has always more or less of a worn and shabby look.

In the Upper Chamber the original splendour of the crimson cloth is undimmed; for most of the benches remain void and unoccupied for 999 nights of the thousand on which their lordships meet.
[Sidenote: The two chambers--a contrast.] Whatever the cause I always associate the House of Lords in my mind with emptiness and silence, and the gloomy scenes of desertion.

And, therefore, when I see it crowded as it was on this historic Monday evening, the effect it produces is heightened by the recollection and the sense of the contrast it presents to its ordinary appearance.