It was almost a pity.

It would have been such an instructive spectacle to see the whole Tory party voting that the Catholic Church in Ireland should have the right to be endowed and established; and some of the Irish members felt this so much, that they were very much inclined to force the Tories to a division.

But they let the incident pass.
[Sidenote: The triumph of the tweed coat.] It is one of the curious things about Parliamentary life in England, that the smallest detail of personal habit attracts the all-searching gaze of the entire world.

Let a man change the shape of his hat, the colour of his clothes, the style even of his stockings, and the world knows it all before almost he is himself conscious of the change.

And then, though the House of Commons consists for the most part of men well advanced in middle life--men who have made their pile in counting-house or shop, before devoting themselves to a Parliamentary career--it is also a House where wealth and fashion are very largely represented.