Notes and Queries, Number 36, July 6, 1850 | Page 4

the house." This state of things had passed away: and for a
long series of years strangers had been admitted to a gallery in the
House of Commons in the face of the sessional order, by which your
correspondent CH. imagines their presence was "absolutely
prohibited."
When I speak of strangers being admitted, it must not be supposed that
this was done by order of the House. No, every thing relating to the

admission of strangers to, and their accommodation in the House of
Commons, is effected by some mysterious agency for which no one is
directly responsible. Mr. Barry has built galleries for strangers in the
new house; but if the matter were made a subject of inquiry, it probably
would puzzle him to state under what authority he has acted.
Mr. Christie wished to make the sessional order applicable to existing
circumstances; and, it may be, he desired to draw from the House a
direct sanction for the admission of strangers. In the latter purpose,
however, if he ever entertained it, he failed. The wording of his
amendment is obscure, but necessarily so. The word "gallery," as
employed by him, can only refer to the gallery appropriated to
members of the House; but he intended it to apply to the strangers'
gallery. The order should have run thus, "admitted into any other part
of the house, or into the gallery appropriated to strangers;" but Mr.
Christie well knew that the House would not adopt those words,
because they contain an admission that strangers are present whilst the
House is sitting, whereas it is a parliamentary fiction that they are not.
If a member in debate should inadvertently allude to the possibility of
his observations being heard by a stranger, the Speaker would
immediately call him to order; yet at other times the right honourable
gentleman will listen complacently to discussions {84} arising out of
the complaints of members that strangers will not publish to the world
all that they hear pass in debate. This is one of the consistencies
resulting from the determination of the House not expressly to
recognise the presence of strangers; but, after all, I am not aware that
any practical inconvenience flows from it. The non-reporting strangers
occupy a gallery at the end of the house immediately opposite the
Speaker's chair; but the right hon. gentleman, proving the truth of the
saying, "None so blind as he who will not see," never perceives them
until just as a division is about to take place, when he invariably orders
them to withdraw. When a member wishes to exclude strangers he
addresses the Speaker, saying, "I think, Sir, I see a stranger or strangers
in the house," whereupon the Speaker instantly directs strangers to
withdraw. The Speaker issues his order in these words:--"Strangers
must withdraw."

C. Ross.
Strangers in the House of Commons.--As a rider to the notice of CH. in
"NOTES AND QUERIES," it may be well to quote for correction the
following remarks in a clever article in the last _Edinburgh Review_,
on Mr. Lewis' Authority in Matters of Opinion. The Reviewer says (p.
547.):--
"This practice (viz., of publishing the debates in the House of
Commons) _which, &c., is not merely unprotected by law--it is
positively illegal_. Even the presence of auditors is a violation of the
standing orders of the House."
ED. S. JACKSON.
* * * * *
FOLK LORE.
_High Spirits considered a Presage of impending Calamity or Death_:--
1. "How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry!
which their keepers call A lightning before death."
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act v. Sc. 3.
2. "C'était le jour de Noel [1759]. Je m'étais levé d'assez bonne heure,
et avec une humeur plus gaie que de coutume. Dans les idées de vieille
femme, cela présage toujours quelque chose do triste.... Pour cette fois
pourtunt le hasard justifia la croyance."--_Mémoires de J. Casanova_,
vol. iii p. 29.
3. "Upon Saturday last ... the Duke did rise up, in a well-disposed
humour, out of his bed, and cut a caper or two.... Lieutenant Felton
made a thrust with a common tenpenny knife, over Fryer's arm at the
Duke, which lighted so fatally, that he slit his heart in two, leaving the
knife sticking in the body."--_Death of Duke of Buckingham_; Howell.
_Fam. Letters_, Aug. 5, 1628.

4. "On this fatal evening [Feb. 20, 1435], the revels of the court were
kept up to a late hour ... the prince himself appears to have been in
unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe
the cotemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that
a king should that year be slain."--Death of King James I.; Tytler, _Hist.
Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 306.
5. "'I think,' said the old