In addition to all this, the House of Lords has made provision for the appearance of lovely woman, which contrasts most favourably with the curmudgeon and churlish arrangements of the House of Commons.  In the House of Commons women have to hide themselves, as though they were in a Mahommedan country, behind a grille—­where, invisible, suffocated, and crowded, they are permitted to see—­themselves unseen—­the gambollings of their male companions below.  In the House of Lords, on the other hand, there is a gallery all round the house, in which peeresses and the relatives of peers are allowed to sit—­observed of all men—­prettily dressed, attentive—­a beautiful flower-bordering, so to speak, to the male assemblage below.  The variety and brilliancy of colour given by their fashionable clothes adds a great richness and opulence and lightness to the scene; in fact, takes away anything like sombreness, in appearance and aspect at least, from an assembly which otherwise is calculated to suggest sinister reminiscences of coming trouble and the approaching darkness of political agitation.  The benches, too, have a richness which is foreign to the House of Commons, as the members of the popular assembly sit on benches covered with a deep green leather, which is dark, modest, and unpretentious.  There is always something, to my eye at least, that suggests opulence in the colour crimson, and the benches of the Upper Chamber are all in crimson leather, and the crimson has all the freshness which comes from rarity of use.  In the House of Commons, with all its workaday and industrious life, the deep and dark green has always more or less of a worn and shabby look.  In the Upper Chamber the original splendour of the crimson cloth is undimmed; for most of the benches remain void and unoccupied for 999 nights of the thousand on which their lordships meet.

[Sidenote:  The two chambers—­a contrast.]

Whatever the cause I always associate the House of Lords in my mind with emptiness and silence, and the gloomy scenes of desertion.  And, therefore, when I see it crowded as it was on this historic Monday evening, the effect it produces is heightened by the recollection and the sense of the contrast it presents to its ordinary appearance.  The House of Commons has a certain impressiveness and splendour of air when it is very full; I always have a certain sense of exaltation by the mere looking at its crowded benches on these nights when the excitement of the hour brings everybody to his place.  But then the House of Commons is frequently full, and there is no such sense of unusualness when you see it thus that you have when you look on the House of Lords with benches teeming with multitudinous life which you have seen so often empty, lifeless, and ghostly.  Thus splendid was the scene, and yet it gave you a prevailing and unconquerable impression of gloom and lifelessness.  In the House of Commons, the member addressing the assembly is like the wind