The several divisions of the benches were generally thus filled: the front row, on the floor, and to the right of the Speaker, when seated in his chair, was called the Treasury bench, and was occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or leader of the House of Commons, and the Cabinet Ministers, or public secretaries near him. The benches rising behind this were filled by the avowed adherents of the Ministry. On the benches extending from these, onward to the door of entrance, and still on the right of the Speaker, or on the left of the visiter as he entered, sat the independent members, who, though not pledged to support the Ministry on all occasions, were considered to be rather inclined to assist them than otherwise, to approve of their policy generally, and to give them the benefit of all doubts that might arise in any difficult questions.

The opposite side of the House was appropriated nearly in a similar manner. The Opposition benches were directly over against those on which the Ministers sat, the front range being occupied by the most distinguished and most determined opponents of the existing administration; and the ranges behind by those next in order of intensity, or determination in their general disapproval of ministerial measures; while the benches onward, towards the door, were occupied by independent members, not pledged to support the Opposition in all their views, but rather inclined to oppose the Ministers than other wise.

The whole of the house was lined with wainscot, and the benches of the members had cushions, covered with leather. The galleries which ran along the west end, and the north and south sides, were supported by slender iron pillars, crowned with gilt Corinthian capitals.

The galleries were thus disposed of: the end one, over the entrance door, had in its front a large clock, and was opened to the reporters of the press, and to visiters; and the whole gallery would contain about 200 persons. The side galleries were rarely used, and then only by members.

These separate divisions of the House were estimated, as to capacity of accommodation for members, as follows: the lower part of the House, including the two sides, at 200 each; the cross benches, recesses, and parts behind the Speaker's chair, at about 100 more, making 500 at the utmost, when closely packed. The side galleries might contain, if crammed full, 150 each, or 300 in the whole; and the end, or Stranger's gallery, 200 more—making 1,000 in all; but that would be at the risk of probable faintings and suffocation from want of air, and the certain discomfort of all persons present.

The whole of these fittings, "which converted the finest chapel in the kingdom into the worst imaginable chamber of legislation, have withered away like a burnt scroll, and revealed the original walls and proportions of the building," (as shown in the Cut, at page 328,) with much of the original mouldings and tracery, carving and embellishment, having the sharpness and beautiful finish of yesterday. Indeed, the strength and thickness of the gilding, so to speak, are surprising.

The

It has been stated in the Morning Herald, that several of the apartments connected with the ancient service of the Chapel were long used as coal, wood, and lumber rooms. An exquisite octagonal chamber in the chapter-house served as a scullery and bakehouse; and an oratory above it, of the same admirable proportions, was used as a lumber place, and footman's sleeping-room. present Speaker has, however, restored these apartments at last to the dignity of parlours. In the chapter-room is the identical table on which lay the mace, when Cromwell ordered his soldiers to "take away that shining bauble, and lock up the doors." The Herald states it to be a handsome table, well-made, and in high preservation, adding that "it has been traced to the time of Queen Elizabeth, when it was manufactured out of the first cargo of mahogany received in this country." There must be an error in the last lines; for, although Raleigh is said to have employed mahogany in repairing his ships, the first cargo of this beautiful wood was not received in England until the year 1724, or only 110 years since. We, therefore, suspect the age of the table to be considerably less than is set down by our contemporary.

TALLIES.

Ar the present moment, the origin of this antiquated mode of reckoning may be acceptable to our readers.

The custom may be traced in the Roman symbolum, which was a piece of wood or metal, broken into two parts, one of which was consigned to each contracting party. Olaus Wormius has given a representation of the tallies used by the ancient Danes, of which each party kept one; but, it appears that we are indebted to our Norman Conqueror for the establishment of this rude contrivance of registering in England, at the period of his Conquest.

Sir John Fenn says a talley, or taille, (from the French tailler, to cut,) was a straight, well-seasoned cleft stick of hazel or willow, both parts of which were notched, according to the sum advanced, one part remaining with the creditor, the other with the debtor.

"The sum of money was not only marked on the side with notches, by the cutter of tallies, but likewise inscribed on both sides by the writer of the tallies. The smallest notch signified a penny, a larger one a shil ling, and one still larger a pound; but other notches, increasing successively in breadth, were made to denote ten, a hundred, or a thousand. The stick was then cleft through the middle by the deputy chamberlains, with a knife and a mallet; the one portion being called the talley, and the other the countertalley, or folium." (Knowledge for the People, Origins and Antiquities, Part iii.) Tallage was a tax raised by tallies and was part and parcel of the tyranny of the Norman government in England and the feudal system. "The inferior subjects of the crown were oppressed by tallages. The demesne lands of the king and all royal towns were liable to tallage; an imposition far more rigorous and irregular than those which fell upon the gentry. Tallages were continually raised upon different towns during all the Norman reigns, without the consent of parliament, which neither represented them nor cared for their interests. The itinerant justices in their circuit usually set this tax. Sometimes the tallage was assessed in gross upon a town, and collected by the burgesses: sometimes individually at the judgment of the justices. There was an appeal from an excessive assessment to the barons of the Exchequer. Inferior lords might tallage their own tenants and demesne towns, though not, it seems, without the king's permission."* (Hallam's Hist. Mid. Ages, v. ii. p. 441.)

Reckoning by tallies was the system adopted in the Exchequer, or that branch of the king's court, in which all matters relating to the revenue were exclusively transacted. In time, the tallier of the Exchequer, became corrupted into the teller of the Exchequer.

Giving tallies was a royal mode of contracting debts by our early sovereigns, as Exchequer bills have been the means of raising loans in our times: indeed, the Exchequer bill was the counter-tally, or folium of the tally; and the court of Exchequer has existed in its late order since the days of Edward I., by whom it was regulated and reduced from the institution of the ancient Norman Exchequer, introduced here by Wil liam the Conqueror."

circulated as money: for, "during the great recoinage," (1697,) says Sir W. D'Avenant, all great dealings were transacted by tallies, bank-bills, and goldsmiths' notes."

In like manner are we indebted to these wooden notes of hand for the first standing army raised in our quarter of the world. About the middle of the fifteenth century, Charles VII. established companies of ordonnance, the basis of the regular French army, in order to protect the country from the pillage of military ruffians, who infested the high roads and villages of France. They consisted of about 9,000 soldiers, all cavalry, of whom 1,500 were heavy armed; a force not very considerable," says Hallam, “but the first, except mere body-guards, which had been raised in any part of Europe as a national standing army. These troops were paid out of the produce of a permanent tax, called the taille; an innovation still more important than the former."

We are inclined to consider the "Clog," or "Perpetual Almanack," made upon a square stick, to have been a kind of tally. Dr. Robert Plot, in 1686, described a variety of these old almanacs then in use in Staf fordshire. Some he calls "public," because they were of a large size, and commonly hung at one end of the mantel-tree of the chimney: others he calls "private," because they were smaller and carried in the pocket. Dr. Plot represented one of these clogs in his History of Staffordshire, which our ingenious contemporary, Mr. Hone, has judiciously adopted as a frontispiece to the second volume of his treasurable Every-day Book. There are three months upon each of the four edges of this clog; and the days, weeks, and months, are denoted by different strokes, similar to the pence, shillings, and pounds, of the money tally. There are, besides, hieroglyphics and other characters too numerous to mention. Hence also the perpetual calendar of schooldays; and not a few readers may join ourselves in the recollection of notching a hazel stick with the days to the holidays and dulce domum, a notch being cut away with each passing day. Such was the tally of our boy. hood-our Time's Exchequer-which a painstaking boy would now and then finish with pen-and-ink letters and figures to denote the days and dates. But, let it not be supposed that we ever imitated royalty by contracting debts or raising money by tallies. Your school loans are raised in pence instead of millions.

In more recent times, tallies have been For the important subject of tallages, see Madox, Hist. Excheq. c. 17.

vice, when the senior alderman below the chair steps forward, and chops a single stick. To descend from great to small things, the only relics of the tally within our recollection are the tally of the milkman, (although he employs chalk instead of notches,) and the tally-trade, or the custom of paying for goods by instalments.

It should here be added that the Receipt of Exchequer, the most ancient revenue department in the state, with all its "complicated machinery" of tallies and checkssuch as auditor, clerk of the Pells, tellers, deputy tellers, examiners, &c. terminated on the various accounts of the last quarter being made up, and the new establishment came into practice the next day. The comptrollers' department will, for the present, be carried on in the old building in New Palace Yard. The paymaster's department is at the Treasury, where all pensions and public moneys will, in future, be dispersed by check on the Bank of England. In lieu of the revenue being received at the Exchequer, the different receivers will pay it into the Bank of England, to the public account, a new office having been established there for this purpose. The expense in salaries, &c. of the Old Exchequer was about 45,000l. per annum.*

As one of the Exchequer apartments was filled with the old tallies, it became advisable to destroy them, and an order was issued from the Board of Works to burn these ancient relics; although it was intimated that " persons curious in such matters would like to purchase bundles of them for museums and collections." The tallies were, accordingly, burnt in the principal stove of the House of Lords, and to the consequent overheating of the flues proceeding in every direction from this stove through the woodwork of the House, is attributed the late fire.

PHILO.

Since the preceding was written, a column or two of well-compiled antiquarian and historical particulars of tallies has appeared in the Times journal, from which we shall select such details as are not included in the present article.

A Correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine remarks: "The mode of checking by tallies (bois tailli) or cleft sticks, for ages set forgery at defiance; the recent change, it is said, has already encouraged two attempts. An old Exchequer tally will now be a relic of price."

The Sketch Book.

THE PORTRAIT.

(From a Correspondent.) CHARLES BEAUVERGER was a promising young artist of the French capital. Devoted to his profession, he spent one-half of his time in the gallery of the Louvre, though it must be confessed, that he was an equally

constant visiter to the pit of the Grand Opera. The sister arts were his passion; and, if he wanted studies from nature, the Boulevards might answer his purpose as well as the Bois de Boulogne.

Among his companions, Charles bore the character of a very Solon, the beau-ideal of juvenile steadiness; nor was there a young painter in Paris, who could have procured a better certificate from the Préfecture de Police. He did not belong to a single political society, nor had he joined the far-famed club of the suicides, who draw lots in the morning to fix upon the lucky member that fortune may have destined for their evening's amusement. The individual, on whom the lot may fall, is expected, (by the particular desire of his friends and the public,) to take a leap into the "dark unknown," after eating a good supper at some fashionable restaurateur.

Like other people, Beauverger had proved his patriotic zeal for the honour of la belle France, by repeatedly discharging an old fowling-piece at the heads of the Swiss guards, during the three memorable days of July, 1830. It has, moreover, been suspected that he could sing the Marseillaise, but he never spoke in admiration of the great Robespierre, nor carried a dagger under his coat, nor ventured to show himself in the Palais Royal with a St. Simonian beard, or even a blood-red, thorough-going, out-andout rebel cravat. In fine, he had not committed any of those marvellous absurdities, which have lately so distinguished the youth of Paris.

The reader will by this time have judged,. that he was not without good sense and good feeling, the sole preservatives from the influence of a general or epidemic folly. He possessed, indeed, not only these, but a considerable share of talent, with an imagination of no little warmth. Unhappily for his professional fame, he was very poor, and where money and credit are totally wanting, the most shining abilities, or solid acquirements, in Paris, as in other places, are, to borrow a commercial phrase, rather at a discount.

Hitherto he had lived on, sufficiently contented with his humble lot, when, led by the music of Robert le Diable, and not having the fear of the tender passion before his eyes, he took his ordinary place at the opera, one winter's evening, before the rising of the curtain. His fate was irrevocably sealed by one glance at the boxes.

Almost in the centre of a group of bright faces, there sat one of the most lovely demoiselles that ever smiled on a Parisian audience. The simple arrangement of her coal-jet hair, the light elegance of her dress, and, above all, the modest grace of her demeanour, accorded well with the appearance of extreme

youth, Her figure could hardly have been surpassed on this side of fairy-land, and the beauty of her intellectual forehead, with the bright fulness of her eye, could bear comparison with the fairest creations of Italian art. Such was the charming person that inspired the painter with emotions which he vainly attempted to combat. He gazed upon her till his whole inner man reeled in the drunkenness of enjoyment: he heard not a single note of the fine music-he saw none of the splendid scenes of magnificent diablerie-for his heart was in the dress circle, bound by the magic spells of a sweeter enchantment.

At the close of the performance, he flew to the doors of the theatre, but he only succeeded in getting a momentary glimpse of the fair unknown, just as she was on the point of stepping into a carriage, which almost immediately drove off.

From that evening, poor Beauverger was haunted by a restless and uncontroulable desire of ascertaining the name and residence of his beautiful enslaver. He wandered about Paris like a troubled spirit, frequented all the places of public amusement, (to the great injury of his failing purse), visited all the

churches, (till the beadles took him for a pious devotee), curtailed his allowance of meat, drink, and sleep; and became, in consequence of this habitual abstinence, very thin, very pale, and the living picture of morbid melancholy.

After a time, despairing of success in his manifold researches, he adopted another resolution, which will appear no less romantic: than his preceding course of action. Having purchased the necessary materials, he began to trace upon canvass the lovely features: which had caused him so much tribulation, and, his whole mind being fixed on the work, he soon completed an excellent portrait of his adorable charmer.

Spring had now returned, without effecting: the smallest change in the nature of his ideas. He had spent a whole forenoon, according to his custom, or, if you will, his caprice, in contemplating, with a sorrowful kind of pleasure, the labour of his own hands. The sun had reached its meridian. before he condescended to recollect that he had had no breakfast, and was in the fair way of having no dinner. The fact was, that his finances were totally exhausted, for the reader will readily suppose that his late occupations had

not been quite so productive in a pecuniary as in a poetical sense.

Hunger is a great moralist on the vanity of human wishes-almost as bad as Dr. Johnson himself-so that when Charles came to the door of the traiteur's, and putting his hand into his pocket, drew it out empty, he felt himself rather awkwardly situated, and much more inclined to be sober in his future desires. To starve would be, by no means, a pleasant mode of terminating a love adventure; besides, he would soon have to pay his landlord, the tailor had been pressing for a settlement of his little account, and his heart swelled at the bare thought of his angry washerwoman.

Torn by conflicting feelings, (but rather disposed to blush for the romantic delusion, which had brought him to the want of actual necessaries,) he hurried through the noisy streets, regardless of the giddy votaries of pleasure, who swarm, like flies in the sunshine, wherever Paris extends her dissolute dominion. After wandering for some hours without any very settled purpose, he found himself in the midst of the tombs, the garlands, and the crucifixes of Père la Chaise.

By the side of a little mound of turf, green as an emerald, tastefully decorated with flowers, and inclosed round about with a neat iron railing, stood an old gentleman, whose dress and mien brought to the mind of the beholder a thousand recollections of l'ancienne France. He wore a well-powdered wig, from which descended a queue of no puny dimensions; his waistcoat would have made from three to five of the modern articles of that name; and his roquelaure, (to use the favourite expression of my Uncle Toby,) was made of a species of satin. When to these parts of his attire, we add the glories of knee-buckles and shoe-buckles, we have little more to say respecting his appearance, except that his clothes were all of the deepest black, and that his pale countenance bore evident signs of a secret and absorbing sorrow. He looked upon the grave beside him, and his eyes filled with tears.

Grief opens the heart to sympathy, and teaches us to pity the grief of others. When the old gentleman turned "with ling'ring steps and slow" from the tomb, which had spoken to his feelings, and told of severed affection, he saw the slender figure of Charles Beauverger at no great distance. Struck by the melancholy looks of the painter, he approached him with a benignant mien, and, in the kindest, as well as the most delicate manner, he begged to know if he could be of any service. The young artist blushed and stammered, but the stranger continued his inquiries with so much perseverance, and yet with so much urbanity, that he soon learned the position of our luckless hero.

"I see it all!" said the good old man.

"You are poor, and you are proud; so were the great poets and painters of antiquity. Believe me, there is nothing to blush for in their company; it does you honour, Monsieur, it does you honour. Pray, do me the pleasure of dining with me!"

This invitation was by far too welcome to be refused, and the new friends proceeded together to a splendid hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain, the residence of the Marquis de V - Beauverger had every reason to be satisfied with the hospitality of his entertainer, who still, however, continued to be depressed by a dark melancholy.

Before they parted, the Marquis requested the address of his young friend, and the next morning, Charles was not a little surprised by a visit from his host of the preceding night.

"I come," said he, "to see what can be done for you. I am thought a tolerable. judge of paintings, and shall be willing to purchase one of yours. Let me have the advantage of viewing them."

Beauverger changed colour, and produced a few sketches, the work of a former period. "These cannot be all," continued the old gentleman; "show me some of your finished productions."

"They were all sold about six months ago," replied the artist.

"And what have you been doing ever since ?" asked the warm-hearted visiter, with a smile of incredulous astonishment.

"I have a picture," said Charles, 66 but, poor as I am, I would not sell it for a thousand times its weight in gold !"

"You will show it, I suppose," continued the Marquis.

Beauverger drew aside a green curtain, behind which was the famous portrait. "Good God!" cried the old gentleman. "My daughter! my lost Gabrielle !"

A torrent of tears flowed down his furrowed cheek, and his utterance was checked by frequent, audible sobs.

"Your daughter!" said the youth, sinking back in a chair.

"Yes!" replied the Marquis; " my beloved, my lamented daughter! She died, poor girl, of a consumption; and when I met you yesterday, Monsieur Charles, I had just been to visit her grave. But where did you know her, and how came you to take this admirable likeness ?"

With a tone of real feeling, that served to palliate the previous absurdity of his conduct, and exhibit the fine qualities of his heart in the most favourable light, did Beauverger begin to relate his romantic adventure. When he had finished, the Marquis took him by the hand, and thus addressed him:

"We part no more, my young friend! You shall not sell your picture, but you shall come with it, even as it now hangs there, to my