In this view a debate seems a much more earnest and real
thing than as we read it in a newspaper. Think of the debaters meeting
each other's eyes, their faces flushing, their looks interpreting their
words, their speech growing into eloquence, without losing the
genuineness of talk! Yet, in fact, the Chamber of Peers is ninety feet
long and half as broad, and high, and the Chamber of Commons is still
larger.
Thence we went to Westminster Hall, through a gallery with statues on
each side,--beautiful statues too, I thought; seven of them, of which
four were from the times of the civil wars,--Clarendon, Falkland,
Hampden, Selden, Somers, Mansfield, and Walpole. There is room for more
in this corridor, and there are niches for hundreds of their marble
brotherhood throughout the edifice; but I suppose future ages will have
to fill the greater part of them. Yet I cannot help imagining that this
rich and noble edifice has more to do with the past than with the future;
that it is the glory of a declining empire; and that the perfect bloom of
this great stone flower, growing out of the institutions of England,
forbodes that they have nearly lived out their life. It sums up all.
Its beauty and magnificence are made out of ideas that are gone by.
We entered Westminster Hall (which is incorporated into this new edifice,
and forms an integral part of it) through a lofty archway, whence a
double flight of broad steps descends to the stone pavement.
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