a foothold seem to move in continual fear for their security, and begin to barricade themselves against encroachment. I ran up against some earthworks of the kind this morning in a mansion off Fleet Street. The buildings filled half a street. On the ground floor was a smell of new mahogany and brass; pale and stiff young men sat at desks copying and pasting slips into a book; liveried messenger-boys were running in and out; a lift was ascending and descending with awfu! solemnity; and a whir of distant machinery came from somewhere underground. How differently, I thought, must the sound of those engines strike the permanent staff and the outside applicant for work.

"I wanted to find an old friend, now the editor of The Weekly-" (Cross mentioned a successful journal), "and drag him off to lunch. The offices of "The Weekly,' I was told, were on the first floor. "Turn to the right when you get up the stairs,' a porter told me, 'then the first turning to the left. A hand on the passage wall confirmed these directions, and I found three doors, marked 'Private,' 'Manager, “Weekly —,"' 'Editor, "Weekly

-" I opened one, and was confronted by two strangers, who stood stiffly and glared resentment, as if expecting an attack. 'Smith not in, I suppose. No answer; neither spoke. I might have been a conspirator detected in a crime. A door was flung open on the other side of the passage, and an excited attendant ran in.

"Who is it you want to see, sir? Mr. Smith? I will inquire, sir. Will you remain in the passage?'

"He dived through the door marked 'Private,' and reappeared.

"Mr. Smith is out, sir. Will you leave a message? I am afraid it is against the regulations to give a gentleman's address.'

"These were the men who are winLIVING AGE. VOL. XXXIV. 1772

ning," Cross explained. "It was necessary to secure themselves against invasion. The attendant ought to have been in the passage. I had broken through the fortifications, and was naturally taken for an enemy. Perhaps they scented a manuscript, a prospectus, or an application. The precautions were sane enough, but Smith missed a good lunch.

"I don't know why, but those desks and chairs and defensive doors reminded me of old Wali Muhammad's story of going home to his valley in the Kakka Khel country through the Khuzrogis. When he put in for leave he used to invent a false route, because he was afraid that Firoz of his own company would follow him up and put an end to the tribal blood-feud by sniping him on the border. It was not good form to settle these things in the regiment, or even on the Khyber Road. So Wali Muhammad used to skulk in the maize-fields and travel only at night.

So long as he was in the Khuzrogis country he existed only on sufferance, like most of the men you see here in the street; but he always had the chance of doing a little sniping on his own account, and that is where the parallel ends. His rifle symbolized the primitive way of holding on to life and securing his own, and it seemed to me a healthier and happier one than this London skirmishing. All the way down the steps, as I passed doors behind which disciplined and bun-fed clerks were transferring accounts from a day-book into a ledger, scheming how not to lose their situation, with the only idea, it seemed, of absorbing one day at the desk that they might endure countless more, I was thinking of the strong sunshine of Kila Sher Sang, the rare little green patches of terraced maize-fields, and the irrepressible camel-thorn scrub thrusting its roots into the rock.

"Instead of lunching with Smith I came here and ran into you, so perhaps it is as well. But I am sorrier than ever for the men who have to climb stairs in search of work. The encounter was jarring enough as it was, but it would have been detestable if I had wanted anything from these 'Weekly' men. Their air of looking round for a policeman brought home to me the tragedy of unemployment more forcibly than anything I can remem. ber: it made me understand that money means very much more to the unemployed than mere food and clothes, though these are hard enough to come by.

"Why, I often wonder, don't the submerged, when they have nothing to lose, give themselves over to organized loot. They seem, if anything, to respect their conquerors. The Napoleon who emerges from the crowd he has sweated and over-reached comes in for just as much awe as if he had won his way by the sword. It is an odd characteristic this of the London crowd, a kind of chivalry or Christian altruism that makes the partially or totally submerged derive pleasure from the mere contemplation of success even where there is no hope of contact with it. A titled millionaire enters a barber's shop, and an assistant on a pound a-week and tips is set to shave him. You would think the young man would be glad of the opportunity to cut the grandee's throat. Not a bit of it. He is proud to touch him, and elated at his good fortune for the rest of the morning. "That, sir,' a young barber said to me, 'is Captain Asterisk, the third captain that 'as been in 'ere this morning. He belongs to the Duke of Asterisk's family. Perhaps you may 'ave met him on a military campaign?'"

I began to be glad that Cross had. fallen foul of the editors. It gave him an impetus. I felt as if the Khyber

was standing in judgment over Fleet Street.

"It is a truly British hair-shirt instinct," he went on, I cannot convey his extraordinary gift of invective, though I recollect enough of what he said to be conscious that my version of it all is merely a paltering imitation, "and it filters through all classes. Among the more well-to-do one comes across a type with whom open admiration gives place to the make-believe, in which men hover round the fold of the elect, repeat second-hand gossip about them, reckon on third cousinships by marriage and affect to regard a casual spider's-thread connection as a permanent bridging of the gulf. They like to think they have come out top in their mêlée though they have only stuck half way, and this, I fancy, is the only imaginative side you will find in the average middle-class cockney.

"Even among the elect there are degrees, until the point is reached where the hair-shirt instinct vanishes. The only difference, then, is that the degrees are recognized as merely artificial decorations on a foundation of equality. Yet here, too, in the fold you will find rings, and an honest revolt against exclusion even where inclusion would be distasteful. There is the eminent man's wife, who for impressment is not above a shift to let you know she was born in Mayfair, lest you should think she could only soar there on her husband's pinions. Editors who know us in the aggregate better than we know ourselves are quick to detect the weakness, and profit by an open or insidious appeal to it.

"And now that the standard of popular taste is guided and reflected by the halfpenny press, it is not difficult to delineate the Londoner in aggregate. Every issue of a popular journal must be a sort of glorified edition of his tastes and interests, prejudices and

ideals, boiled down and served up in essence, the product representing the point of view of the ordinary man, or rather the point of view he would like to have if he had any at all. And if this hideous aggregate man, the personification of the popular taste, ceased to be a composite picture of a dozen different kinds of vulgarity, the newspaper would cease to exist.

"One cannot help admiring the man who can look into that grim physiognomy-a Medusa's head to the sensitive, -read the vulgar inwardness of it, and reproduce it every day, always with the same radiant smirk of self-sufficiency. For, take it which way you will, the monster has only two grimaces, either combative and vicariously intrepid as it leaps and shrieks and mafficks on the safe side of the ropes, or feebly and hysterically subversive as it indulges in a riot of futile declamation and yells its aggressive sermon of meekness. Surely it is an achievement in candor for men who must have some inkling of what is beautiful to pre sent Demos with such an exact portrait of himself, so that Demos rising every morning from his bed may hug his own image-shake hands with himself, so to speak-with a semi-bibulous content, and go to his desk or counter with the complacency that only wine or worth inspire.

"Take the headlines for the features, -to preserve the metaphor,-the pervading sentimentality in Jingo and radical alike for the set expression of the face, and you will be struck more than anything else by the amazing lack of proportion in the lineaments. 'Duke's son baptized,' 'Lord Blank's daughter Blackwood's Magazine.

jilted,' 'Admiral kicks off,' are human little touches that tell their own story, and coming from men who know what counts, show an admirable suppression of the salient.

"Perhaps it is as well that these artists are content to produce the same picture every day, and do not hope to exercise a formative influence on the people. For Demos, if he is to be saved, has more chance of working his own salvation."

Cross leaned out of the window. Outside in the street the traffic was locked, and the sudden lull and cessation of wheels seemed to bring him to a standstill. An enormous hearse, with its following of mourning-coaches, was causing a block. The black plumes, the white everlastings, the over-caparisoned horses, the podgy and histrionic mutes, the hideous parade of the old bourgeois conception of woe that makes death more terrible than pathetic, left him almost without words.

"Look at that," he moaned, raising his shoulders and thrusting his hands into his pockets with a pressure which relieved him of saying that our last appearance is the most unnatural of all -that the manner of it crystallizes the substance of our ideals, and is the last triumph of sunlessness.

Cross called a waiter and lit one of his pungent Burma cigars. We drank, but we were sunk in gloom.

Perhaps in lonely parts of the earth our illusions will come back to us, and London will appeal to us again, as we think only of its pleasant back-waters, and forget the ugliness of the main stream.

In

The sittings of the House of Lords in its appellate capacity are absolutely independent of the adjournment, prorogation, or even the dissolution of Parliament. The House sits as it pleases according to its list of appeals during term. The public are freely admitted to the House. It is seldom that a visitor, inspired solely by curiosity, finds his way there, and yet to see a sitting of the highest court of justice in the land is an interesting experience. its composition, its procedure, and its environment it is utterly unlike any other Court. The Lord Chancellor enters the Chamber, wearing his long flowing robe and full-bottomed wig. He is preceded by the Sergeant-atArms, bearing the Mace on his shoulder, and by another functionary called the Purse-Bearer, carrying a gorgeously embroidered satchel supposed to hold the great Seal, of which the Chancellor is the Lord Keeper. The other Law Lords are already in their places. The Lord Chancellor takes his seat on the Woolsack, and the Mace is placed behind him. The presence of the Mace indicates that the House is sitting. The House of Lords always opens its proceedings with devotions. When it meets for legislative business, prayers for Divine light and leading in the deliberations are recited by one of the Bishops. Similar invocations are now offered up by the Lord Chancellor, and

the responses are given by the other Law Lords.

But the doors of the Chamber have not yet been opened to the litigants and their counsel. Besides the Lord Chancellor and the Law Lords the only persons present at devotions are the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Purse-Bearer, one of the clerks of the House, who takes minutes of the proceedings of the Court, its orders and judgments, and the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod. After prayers the clerk reads the title of the first appeal case on the list. "Call in the parties in the case," says the Lord Chancellor to Black Rod, and thereupon the doors of the Chamber are thrown open. Immediately inside the portals is a low oak partition or barrier running across the Chamber. This is the famous Bar. Here the lawyers, litigants, and general public assemble. In the centre of the barrier there is a sort of pen, in which the Speaker stands when the Commons are summoned by Black Rod to the House of Lords, and within it counsel for both appellant and respondent, with their solicitors, are accommodated when the House sits as the Court of Appeal. The Lord Chancellor comes down from the Woolsack and takes his seat at a temporary table, spread with a scarlet cloth, placed near to the Bar. other Law Lords sit on the front benches to the right and left of the Bar, each with a small movable table before him provided with pens, ink and paper, and a copy of a book, purplebound, containing the statements of the case on which the rival parties in the appeal respectively rely. Unlike the Lord Chancellor, the Law Lords are in ordinary morning attire. It seems strange that while in all the lower courts the judges wear the imposing

The

trappings of their office, here, in the Supreme Court of Appeal, the Lord Chancellor alone sits in wig and gown. The reason is that despite a statute regulating the formation and practice of the Court, it remains, at least in theory, no Court at all, but one of the Houses of Legislature sitting in a judicial capacity. It will be observed, too, that the forms and procedure of a legislative body, rather than of a Court, are observed throughout the proceedings.

Every Peer has the right to take part in the proceedings of the House of Lords, whether it sits as the final Court of Appeal or as a branch of the Legislature. But in practice lay Peers never interfere in the appellate jurisdiction of the House, and the hearing of appeals is left entirely to the Law Lords. By an Act passed in 1824 every lay Peer was bound to attend the House when it sat as a Court of Appeal, at least once in a Session, under a penalty of £50. Three Lords constitute a House for judicial as well as for legislative purposes, and the object of the statute in compelling the attendance of lay Peers by rotation was to secure a quorum for appellate business. The Court often consisted of the Lord Chancellor, or one of his surviving predecessors in office, and two lay Peers, but the decision in the appeal was left to the Law Lord. The lay Peers were simply dumb figures brought in to comply with the Standing Order, which requires a quorum of three before business can be proceeded with. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to remedy this state of things before a satisfactory solution was found. With a view to strengthening the legal element in the House, by increasing the number of Lords who had been judges of the High Court, the Queen, on the advice of Lord Palmerston's Government in 1856, revived the right of the Crown to make life Peers,

which had been in abeyance for four hundred years, and issued a patent creating Sir James Parke, formerly a Baron of the Exchequer, Lord Wensleydale "for and during the term of his natural life." The Lords were jealous of their rank and privileges as a hereditary order. "The very essence of nobility," said Lord Malmesbury on a subsequent occasion, "is in the succession of the title to posterity." They disputed the right of the Crown to create peerages for life. The question was the subject of many stormy debates in the Upper Chamber. Finally, the Peers passed a resolution that the patent conferred only the empty title of "Lord," without the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords, and the Government, bowing to the decision, created the peerage afresh by making Baron Wensleydale a hereditary Peer, with the customary right of succession to heirs male of his body lawfully begotten.

Sixteen years elapsed before the constitution of the House of Lords as the final Court of Appeal again became the subject of public discussion. In 1872 Lord Hatherley, the Lord Chancellor of Gladstone's Administration, brought in a Bill to abolish the appellate jurisdiction both of the House of Lords and of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council-which hears appeals from India and the Colonies-and to create instead an Imperial Supreme Court of Appeal for the decision of all cases which went hitherto to these separate and independent tribunals. The feeling among the Lords was strongly against any invasion of their ancient privilege to revise on appeal the judgments of the Courts of Law, and the Bill consequently had to be withdrawn. In the following year Lord Selbornewho had succeeded to the Woolsack in the same Administration on the resignation of Lord Hatherley owing to failing eyesight-introduced another Supreme