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closely with the Senate than with the rat-pit, but at all events indicated a brave man’s effort to set at naught the frowns of fashion. But, alas for manly independence! all the recognition he obtained was a supercilious stare from other members, and a rebuke from the Speaker for venturing to the table of the House without uncovering. It was a gallant attempt, but it hag failed; and we entertain the melancholy conviction that if Mr Keir Hardie is to perform good service to his constituents, it must be by means of what nature has put in his head, and not what he chooses to place on it.

Mr Keir Hardie’s appearance on that memorable occasion, signalising his outset as a legislator by studied unconventionality of attire, irresistibly called to remembrance an observation of Teufelsdröckh, whose theory it was that the first purpose of vesture was not warmth or decency, but ornament. “Neither in tailoring nor in legislating,” he declared, “does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided by the mysterious operations of the mind.” The tweed cap, the flannel shirt, the reach-me-down suit of Mr Hardie, were, then, not merely the everyday attire of the horny-handed one, too intent on his lofty purpose to bestow a thought upon how he should be clothed, but the vestments thoughtfully selected from a slop-shop round the corner, as those most becoming to the flamen of a robust democracy. If the legislating is to proceed on the same lines as the tailoring, then heaven help the statute-book!

Teufelsdröckh, by bracketing tailoring with law-making, has landed us straight in the House of Commons, which, in the matter of dress, is remarkably, even monotonously, conservative. If it were possible to repeople the benches with those who occupied them thirty years ago, it would be found that the fashions of 1862 were almost identical with those which prevail now. Younger men might detect minute differences of detail in the cut of trousers, the height of hats, or the fold of neckcloths, but the general effect would be precisely the same. Mr Denison was Speaker then, and there is a legend that he was the last occupant of the Chair who took on himself to animadvert officially on the cut of a member’s coat. It is said that he once gently but firmly remonstrated with a certain Scottish baronet for appearing in a garment known, we believe, to the careless and worldly as a “shaver,” but charged for in tailors’ bills as a “lounging jacket.” Now, if that be true history, it marks a change which might otherwise escape notice, interesting as denoting a “mysterious operation of the mind.” For in this year of grace 1892, in the present Parliament, the “shaver” has received its apotheosis.

In this wise. The first duty of a new House of Commons is to elect a Speaker, and the progress of the Speaker-elect from the position of a private member to that of the First Commoner in England is marked, according to immemorial usage, by nice gradations of attire. On the first day he appears in mufti—in the morning dress of a private gentleman—and takes his seat like any ordinary mortal. Speeches are delivered moving him into the Chair, to which he replies with suitable modesty, tinged with menace to evil-doers. The House then adjourns; when it reassembles next day the Speaker takes the Chair,