Most of them live well, and are protected against the inclemencies of the weather.  The reporters of the Daily News and Times come down in cabs, but they appear delicate hothouse plants; though, after all, they do not look worse than a popular M.P., such as Lord Dudley Stuart or Mr. Milner Gibson, at the end of a session.  As a class, we have already hinted, the reporters are intellectual men; among them are many who have embraced literature as the noblest of all professions, and have as sacredly devoted themselves to it as, in old times, priests did to the service of their gods.  You can tell these by their youthful flush and lofty foreheads.  A time may come when the world may seduce them from the service, when all generous aspirations may fade away, when crushing

selfishness shall make them common as other men.  Then there are others to whom reporting is a mere mechanical calling, and nothing else; who do their week’s work and take their week’s wages, and are satisfied; but most of the parliamentary reporters are clever men, and all aspire to that character.  The mistake is one a little self-love will easily induce a man to make.  Men of infinite wit and spirit have been in the gallery; therefore, the men in the gallery now are men of infinite wit and spirit.  A gorgeous superiority over other men is thus tacitly assumed.  You will hear of such a one, that he was a reporter on the Times, but he was not clever enough for that, and so they made him an M.P.  But, after all, no man of great genius will report long if he can help it: reporting is a terrible drudgery.  A man who can write his thoughts well will not willingly spend his time in copying out the thoughts of others.  Dickens was a reporter for the Morning Chronicle, but he, though his talent in that way was great, though he could perform almost unparalleled feats as a reporter, soon left the gallery.  At one time Angus Reach was in the gallery; there, till recently, might have been seen that accomplished critic and delightful novelist Shirley Brooks.  For a literary

man reporting is a capital crutch: he is well paid, and it often leads to something else.  The Times’ reporters are divided into three classes, none of whom get less than seven guineas a week.  The other papers do not pay quite so well; but a literary man, if he be in earnest, can live on less than that till the day comes when the world owns him and he becomes great; and if his dream of fancied greatness be but a dream—if hope never realise the flattering tale she at one time told, still he has a means of respectable livelihood, and may rise from a reporter into an editor.  Mr. James Grant, editor of the Morning Advertiser, was at one time reporter for that paper.  In some cases the ambition of the reporter does not end quite so successfully.  Only recently a reporter for one of the morning papers contested an Irish borough.  Unfortunately, instead of being returned, the ambitious youth was thrown into gaol for an insignificant tavern bill of merely £250 for eleven days.  What cruelty!  What talent, what hope, what failure, have there not been in the Reporters’ Gallery!  And those who know it, if they wanted, could find abundance of material there with which

“To point a moral or adorn a tale.”