ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P. House of Commons, Monday, April 27.-House met to-day as usual at three o'clock; adjournment of business automatic at clang of midnight. House being model business assembly, divided its opportunity into two parts. Up to nine o'clock it talked about how it would do its business. At the end of sixth hour it got to work upon one of most important bills of Session; a measure SQUIRE OF MALWOOD describes as revolutionising system of local taxation, and HENRY FOWLER denounces as the alternative iniquitously selected by Ministers, in place of taking off a penny from burden of long-suffering income-tax payer

However this be, there is involved in measure subvention of a million and a half a year, drawn from pocket of taxpayer paid into pocket of agricultural ratepayer. To ordinary intelligence seems more useful to discuss this than to question whether private Members' time is or is not being taken earlier than usual this Session. House, of course, is far above range of average intelligence. It knows best. and it gave six freshest hours of sitting to animated dicussion of order of procedure, leaving dregs of sitting to discussion of Agricultural Rating Bill.

Nor is this all calculated to dumbfounder Average Intelligence, represented by Man in Strangers' Gallery. Whilst procedure under discussion benches crowded. In one division 463 voted. Laughter and cheers from time to time rang through House. When the second reading Rating Bill came on, beggarly array of empty benches fronted SQUIRE OF BLANKNEY, as he frizzled up SHAW-LEFEVRE vainly trying to hide himself in a top-coat under Gallery. TANNER so touched by this lamentable condition of affairs that, in midst of one of SQUIRE's towering sentences, he moved a Count. Members trooped in in numbers sufficient to make a House, but fled from the wrath yet to come from BLANKNEY. It was all meant for SHAWLEFEVRE; but spluttering sparks are not discriminating in their fall, and Members were safer outside.

SHAW-LEFEVRE not a Member of the House now, or of course wouldn't be under the Gallery. Is President of Royal Commission on Agriculture still sitting. Under CHAPLIN's lead it mutinied; put the Captain under hatches; then marooned him and altered the log-book. Castaway rescued by passing whaler; worked his way home; wrote letter to newspapers attacking CHAPLIN and his Bill. The SQUIRE now rejoins with terrific force.

Doesn't seem to have much to do with second reading of Agricultoral Rating Bill, but is quite in keeping with the genus of the sitting. Business done.-Talkee-talkee.

Tuesday.-No more morning sittings. The Assyrian of Treasury Bench has come down like a wolf on the fold of the private Member; eaten up his last ewe lamb, fluffy tail and all. Bitter complaints, more particularly of earliness of raid. Private Member, accustomed to being bullied, argues that at least he might have been left alone a little longer.

"Never knew such thing done before Whitsuntide," says OSBORNE MORGAN. "Thank your stars it isn't before Easter," says the SQUIRE OF MALWOOD, who is in ominously cheerful mood. "Reminds me of a story O'NEILL DAUNT used to tell. Politically a dreadful man DAUNT. Worse than DAVITT; but great friend of LECKY'S. Must therefore be respectable man. Story about widow of Irish farmer riding home from her husband's funeral on crupper of a neighbour's horse. When they had trotted about quarter of mile from last resting-place of first husband, the farmer asked the widow to marry him. Of course I will,' she said. Why didn't you speak sooner ?' That's what I say to PRINCE ARTHUR. He comes down on 27th of April and takes last vestige of Private Members' time. Why didn't you speak sooner,' I ask him."

This, the first appropriated day, used to push forward second reading Agricultural Rating Bill. Great interests touched. As DON JOSE, whilst still in state of sin, described situation, Ministers are robbing PETER to pay PAUL-PETER being the landless millions, PAUL the many-acred landlord. In such circumstance might expect benches crowded; House seething with excitement. On contrary, benches empty, save for Members who had prepared short essays, and jump up en masse in effort to catch SPEAKER's eye when another, having finished reading his paper, drops the envied orb.

Only one man rises above level of depressing circumstances. ROBSON, Q.C., stirs sluggish pool with breezy speech. Admirable in matter, delivered straight out from the shoulder. Best thing yet done by new Member. SARK, nothing if not precise, says ROBSON not new Member, but second-hand. Been in before. That is trifling. He is new with this Parliament, and if he spares time to its debates will make his mark in it. But no man can serve two masters, especially when one is the insatiable House of Commons.

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"All very well to laugh at FINCHEY," said SARK: but he 's quite right. In old times of all-night sittings often seen a man stretching himself to welcome dawn with open arms; and open mouth too. We used to call it yawning. But FINCHEY is too poetic to put it that way.' Business done.-Debate on Agricultural Rating Bill.

May Day, 2 A.M.-Second reading Agricultural Rating Bill, carried by swinging majority. Had been big talk of all-night sitting. Members hurrying home or out to dinner froze the social circle with gloomy countenance. 'Not a pleasant thing, you know," they said, "to be kept out of your bed all night listening to reiterated argument, or walking round and round the lobby as if it were a lap in a ten-mile heel-and-toe match, but it must be done. Country expects it, and no man should shirk his duty."

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So they moodily sipped an extra glass of port and went off, ready to suffer all things, even grilled bones and devilled kidneys between two and three in the morning.

But present House isn't up to all-night sittings. By one o'clock, when JOKIM resumed seat after lively round with SQUIRE OF MALWOOD, there were hungry cries for the division. LoUGH moved adjournment. PRINCE ARTHUR pounced. Where there is amendment to original question, Closure involves three divisions. Each division takes from fifteen to twenty minutes. So, early on this May morning, round and round the division lobbies we went, as our forefathers footed it round the maypole. By putting on spurt, got through this process of legislation just inside fifty minutes; and so home to bed, with proud consciousness of having literally walked the Agricultural Rating Bill past a second reading.

SARK has given AKERS-DOUGLAS private notice of his intention to ask whether, in view of saving public time, there would be any objection to laying down cycle tracks in division lobbies. Has, with bis usual thoroughness, gone into figures; finds that, without putting on dangerous speed, at least eight minutes would be saved on every division; equal in Session of ordinary duration to nine days. Business done. - Agricultural Rating Bill read second time, by 333 votes against 156.

Friday night.-There was a Member of the 1874 Parliament who made a reputation by concluding his speech with the remark, "And now Mr. SPEAKER, I will sit down by saying." To-night, CALDWELL beat him hollow. As usual in Committee of Supply, he was well to front, saying nothing in speeches of prodigious length. STUARTWORTLEY, in Chair, kept tight grip upon him.

"I must remind the hon. Member," he said, after CALDWELL had been rambling round for twenty minutes, "of the standing order against tedious repetition."

"I was only just finishing up," CALDWELL pleaded. "Yes, but you've long since finished up your audience," responded STUART-WORTLEY. This, of course, sotto voce.

An hour later, he again came in contact with the inexorable Chair. Called to order, he shewed disposition to argue point. Rebuked with increased sternness, he said," Of course, Mr. STUART-WORTLEY, I am perfectly willing to sit down upon the point."

ROUNDABOUT READINGS.

TOM HOOD AS A POET.

THERE has lately been issued a new edition of the poems of THOMAS HOOD, and here and there a reviewer has thought it worth his while to devote a cursory line to the revived memory of the dead poet. Some of these notices were sympathetic; some hinted that Hoop's fame, such as it was, rested rather on his skits, his word-contortions, and his playful fooling, than on his serious efforts: and one went so far as to quote a beautiful verse from the "The Haunted House," with the surprising comment that "this sounds strange at the present day." Very few, however, seemed to think that the compilers of his poems (my edition bears date 1857) were justified in the belief, which they expressed in their short and touching preface. "that in any future recital of the names of writers who have contributed to the stock of genuine English poetry, THOMAS HOOD will find honourable mention."

BUT surely the belief is justified. No man, it was said of GRAY, ever passed over to the immortals with a smaller bundle under his arm. HooD's bundle is almost as small as GRAY'S, but, such as it is, it has passed him through into the green fields and happy regions just as surely as if he had staggered in with a huge load upon his shoulders. He has thought and feeling, he has music, he has time's great antiseptic, style; there is in his verse the sense of tears in mortal things, there is elevation, there is a deep and sincere piety, and there is the refinement which goes hand-in-hand with power and insight. Where shall you find a better equipment for an immortal?

To write indifferent sonnets is as easy as throwing pebbles into the sea; to write good sonnets is a tremendous task, and few are those who have performed it, and have been able to fix a shining truth or a genuine emotion in a perfect setting of fourteen musical lines. HooD's efforts in this direction were all good, and two of them are, to my mind, supreme. Take, for example, this sonnet on Death:

It is not death, that sometime in a sigh

This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In Sunlight to the Sun, shall set in night;

That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow;
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright
Be lapp'd in alien clay and laid below;
It is not death to know this, but to know
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go
So duly and so oft,-and when grass waves
Over the past-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.

AND here is my second example, a sonnet in the same sad vein of submission to fate and circumstance and obliterating forgetful

This kind of thing, no doubt, "sounds strange at the present day," but its strange. ness is due to the fact that our ears have

grown unused to the sound of so pure a note, be said of HOOD in the words of another of struck with so certain a hand. Truly it may his own sonnets:

Yet few there be who pipe so sweet and loud,
Their voices reach us through the lapse of space :
The noisy day is deafened by a crowd
Of undistinguished birds, a twittering race;
But only lark and nightingale forlorn
Fill up the silences of night and morn.

BUT read, also, "The Haunted House," which our pert critic found so strange. Is there in all poetry a finer example of mystery, of eeriness, of midnight feeling in that troubled half-sleep, in which strange sounds strike upon the startled ear with a sense of portent, and the shadows grow and grow until they assume ghostly and terrific shapes.