IN THE GALLERY.

To the press-man anywhere in the British Islands, there is but one Gallery-that which runs across one end of the House of Commons, at the back of the Speaker's chair. The visitor who has spent an evening in the Strangers' Gallery, at the other end of the House, has no doubt noticed this opposite Gallery and its occupants with some degree of curiosity. He has seen seated in it a score or two of men busily plying their pencils, and taking down, with unerring accuracy and marvellous rapidity, the utterances of the speakers on the floor of the House below. Whilst everywhere else throughout the House nothing having the appearance of business has presented itself to his view, in this portion of the chamber he cannot have failed to see with what steady regularity work-and that of a particularly arduous kind-is constantly being carried on. An evening in the Reporters' Gallery can hardly be less interesting than one spent in

the Strangers' Gallery; and as admission to the former is confined to the privileged few, we may spend a few hours profitably in taking our readers over the spot, and in explaining to them the mysterious character of the work which is constantly being carried on there.

In the corner of New Palace Yard, a little behind the carriage entrance to the Houses of Parliament, there is a modest doorway. The man who has passed through that doorway once might easily look again for it, and look in vain. The doorway leads into a low dark passage, on one side of which a second door gives access to a long flight of stairs. Stumbling up these stone stairs till your legs ache, and you pant for breath, you reach a dimly lighted landing place. Through a swinging glass door, you see a low-roofed room-more like the cabin of a ship than an apartment in the palace of Westminster-in which are gathered half a dozen reporters, waiting for their 'turn.' This room is the 'den' of the keeper of the Gallery. A fire burns briskly in it, although the state of the temperature is not such as to require any artificial means of warmth. On the fire simmers a kettle, and you thereby see that this room is not used for literary pursuits, but is devoted to purposes not less important, though

perhaps less honourable-namely, those of eating and drinking. Two reporters, seated at one of the tables, are discussing the speech, which is even now being brought to a close in the House, between the intervals devoted by them to the consumption of tea and toast. Others, it may be, indulge in. stronger potations; but everywhere you see that in this outer chamber business is forgotten, and the minds of its occupants are unbent. It is very

different in the next apartment to which you come, and which is even more cabin-like than the other. Oak-panelled walls and roof, swinging lamps, thick carpets, and fixed desks, make the resemblance to the ordinary style of naval architecture almost complete. You enter first a room of irregular shape, and you see on either side two smaller square rooms. Around the sides of all these rooms are fixed rows of desks, and here you perceive the reporters who have just left 'the House' engaged in converting their crooked cipher into 'copy' for the printers. Busy 'leaders'-the leaders or chiefs of the different staffs of newspaper reporters-pass from one man to another, asking questions, giving information, and learning the amount of copy already supplied, or still required. Here and there, on a little table in one or other of the rooms, stands the dial box of a telegraph-machine, and these are

frequently resorted to by the leaders or their subordinates, who thus hold converse with the managing authorities at the offices of the different journals. Messengers are constantly coming and going, whose work it is to convey in Hansom cabs the copy already supplied by the reporters to the various newspaper offices in Fleet Street or Printing House Square. Little is to be heard save the scratching of the rapid pens as they fly over the paper; and everything about the room tells you that business has exclusive possession of the minds of its occupants.

In the middle of the centre room there is an oak screen. Passing behind this screen, the visitor finds himself face to face with a glass door, through which the House' itself can be seen the door swings noiselessly upon its hinges to admit him, and he suddenly finds himself in 'the Gallery'to reach which is the great ambition of the reporter's life. The Gallery itself consists of two rows of seats running across the end of the House. In the front row, each seat has a separate door of access, and is fitted with a desk, at which the reporter writes. The seats behind, though they are. also supplied with narrow tables for writing purposes, are chiefly intended for the use of the reporter who is in waiting to relieve his colleague, and

are therefore not provided with accommodation like those in the front row. There are seven morning newspapers in London, each of which has its representatives in the Gallery. To each of these newspapers at least two boxes in the front row of seats are assigned. One box is occupied by the summary-writer of the paper, who sits there throughout the evening, and supplies the concise and readable history of the night's proceedings in Parliament which appears the next morning side by side with the full report; the second box is occupied by the actual reporter for the time being, whose duty it is to take full short-hand notes of the speech which is being delivered, and who afterwards retires, either to the cabins behind the Gallery, or to rooms provided elsewhere in the House, to write out and condense his notes. The number of reporters attached to each newspaper varies considerably. The Times,' for instance, has fifteen men; whilst the 'Daily Telegraph' and Daily News' have only five or six each. It need hardly be said, however, that the reports contained in the last-named papers do not aspire to the fulness which characterises those of the leading journal. The entire number of reporters who at different times during the evening take 'turns' in one or other of the boxes in the Gallery,