of fence follow each other in swift succession, striking and parrying, the centre of an excited ring. A prevalence of the growing custom of reading laboriously-prepared papers will speedily bring it down to the level of the Congress meeting at Washington. There the practice has reached its natural and happy conclusion, inasmuch as members having prepared their papers are not obliged to read them. They hand them in to the printer, and, at a cost to the nation willingly borne in view of compensating circumstances, they are printed at length in the Congressional Globe.
"Reeling it off."
Perhaps when we have our official report of debates in the House of Commons this also will follow. It is easy to imagine with what eagerness the House would welcome any alternative that should deliver it from the necessity, not of listening to these musty harangues—that, to do it justice, it never suffers—but of giving up an appreciable portion of its precious time to the gratification of ponderous, implacable, personal vanity.
THACKERAY ON THE SUBJECT. There is one gleam of light flickering about this intrinsically melancholy topic in connection with the name of Thackeray. I have read somewhere that it was a kindred calamity of a public speaker which led Thackeray's first appearance in print. At a time when the century was young, and the author of "Vanity Fair" was a lad at Charterhouse, Richard Lalor Sheil, the Irish lawyer and orator, had promised to deliver a speech to a public meeting assembled on Penenden Heath. In those days there were no staffs of special reporters, no telegraphs, nor anything less costly than post-chaises wherewith to establish rapid communication between country platforms and London newspaper offices. Sheil, rising to the height of the occasion, wrote out his speech, and, before leaving town, sent copies to the leading journals, in which it, on the following morning, duly appeared.
Alack! when the orator reached the Heath he found the platform in possession of the police, who prohibited the meeting and would have none of the speech. The incident was much talked of, and the boy Thackeray set to and wrote in verse a parody on the printed but unspoken oration. Here is the last verse, as I remember it:―
Quoth he to his friend Canonical;
"My speech is safe in the Times, I wot,
And eke in the Morning Chronicle."
[The original drawings of the illustrations in this Magazine are always on view, and on sale, in the Art Gallery at these offices, which is open to the public without charge.]
