19. In the case of a parson preaching a sermon, this would come to be of great service. If he had it written in shorthand, when he looked at his manuscript he could take in at a glance a whole sentence, and by this means he would have all the advantages of extempore preaching combined with the accuracy and finish of a written discourse. When his attention is not continually engaged in looking down on his manuscript, he has more freedom. It has been said of Archbishop Sharp that "his knowledge of shorthand contributed not a little to the acceptableness of his delivery, for he so disposed his characters as to take- in a whole sentence, or as much as could be distinctly pronounced in the same breath, with one transient glance of the eye, and so disposed those sentences distinctly under each other as to be able, when he had taken his eye off, without any difficulty to recover the place where it had left the page; and so expert was he at this, that he has been sometimes thought to have preached by heart, or to make little or no use of his notes; which gave him all the outward advantages of extempore preaching, without subjecting himself or his audience to any of its disadvantages. For hereby he was at liberty to execute whatever is usually thought graceful and ornamental with respect to posture or movements. This advantage is in a great measure lost by any one who is perpetually bound to attend to his notes, and is not often found well improved by any person who has matter to consider rather than manner, and is bound to watch more over his words than his behavior, and who, through the entire disuse of notes, wants even those seasonable restraints which they will give to redundancy of action, and perhaps in some cases to extravagancies of gesture." Dr. Chalmers nearly always preached his sermons from shorthand notes, and he did this so skillfully that it has been said, unless one were near him to observe the fact, it was difficult to know he was reading.

20. To return, however, to our subject; a good Gallery-man must have a knowledge of law and legal proceedings. An attentive perusal of the four volumes of Blackstone's Commentaries will give him a good insight into the law of England. It is not absolutely necessary that he should have a quotation from a legal writer at his fingers* ends, it is sufficient if he knows where to find it when required, and the same with the Latin and Greek authors: he should have a sufficient acquaintance with them to be able to lay his hands on any particular passage that may be quoted in the ourse of a debate. " Knowledge," says Dr. Johnson, " is of wo kinds; we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." He should be tolerably conversant with Shakspere, and have a general knowledge of English literature. He should also possess the pen of a ready writer and be a good hand at composition..

21. To a reporter, no knowledge is useless: knowledge is to him power: he cannot be toowell educated. He must also possess the valuable qualification of being able to epitomize and condense his reports when required, and to turn the speeches to shape; and this is no easy task. An Indian Mail may arrive, an express from Paris, a report of an exciting trial may come in unexpectedly. The parliamentary reports are ordered by the editor to be reduced in length, which must be done forthwith. When Barnes filled the editorial chair in Printing-House-Square, he one evening gave orders for the report to be cut down one-half. One of the reporters had just been undergoing the process of "trying." He had taken his " turn " in the gallery, and verbatim notes of everything he had heard, sense or nonsense. When he arrived at the " Times " office and was informed of the announcement of the editor, he went to that gentleman for a little explanation, and told him his "turn" would occupy three columns. " Three columns," exclaimed the editor, "why you must be mad: I can only do with half of that: a column and a half is quite sufficient." "With the simplicity of a raw countryman, and a coolness which was quite refreshing, he enquired which half of the report he should cut out. Barnes stared at him in indignant surprise, ordered him out of the room, and immediately gave him his conge " Never more be officer of mine."

22. We may perhaps, without any fear of wasting time and space, mention how the invaluable art of shorthand may be acquired. Every one must have felt the tediousness of writing in the ordinary mode. " Who, that is much in the habit of writing, has not often wished for some means of expressing by two or three dashes of the pen, that which, as things are, it requires such an expenditure of time and labor to commit to paper ? Our present mode of communication must be felt to be cumbersome in the last degree, unworthy of these days of invention: we require some means of bringing the operations of the mind and of the hand into closer correspondence."

23. We have looked carefully into the multitude of systerns of shorthand which have been given to the world since the art was invented - and they are

" Thick as autumnal leaves that, strew the brook. Of Vallombrosa," and we have come to the conclusion that for clearness, easiness, beauty, and dispatch, none have excelled or even come up to Pitman's Phonography. This is not a biassed opinion. We do not say it from any personal motives. "We ourselves write a system of shorthand published long, long ago, so lengthy and complicated in comparison, that were it not for the inconvenience that would inevitably result from a change, we should discard it forever, and begin afresh with a shorter method. Phonography has now become thoroughly developed, a process that has occupied upwards of twenty years, and has attained a degree of perfection which we can scarcely suppose will be superseded until one's words can be photographed on paper. Books exceedingly cheap and intelligible have been published, showing the way to learn this useful art, so that the most rapid speaker may literally be reported verbatim.