24. The average rate of public speaking in general is about one hundred and twenty words per minute, and a tolerably quick longhand writer can only write about twenty-six words per minute. Now let us see what any one must do if he wish to take these one hundred and twenty words per minute. If he take our advice he will buy the " Manual of Phonography." In this book the fundamental principles, etc., are concisely set forth, and can be thoroughly under-Stood in an hour or so. One often sees among the advertisements in the newspapers an announcement of a new system of "Stenography," " shorter and easier than any Other hitherto published, and which can be thoroughly understood in the course of a few hours." The quacks who publish these books must mean prophetic hours; it is the principles, not the practice, that can be so easily attained.

Believe us, there is no royal road to so valuable an accomplishment as shorthand. If any one wish to excel in it he must

"Doff his sparkling cloak, and fall to work With peasant heart and arm."

25. He must read over the "Manual" in such a manner that he may get a general idea of its contents, and then pursue the plan laid down therein. When any one learns to write at school, the first thing he has to do is to acquaint himself with. the form of each letter. It is the same with Phonography, but it will not take so long a time, for the letters are very simple in their formation. Phonography, being writing by sound, it will be found, of course, that all words are spelled as they are pronounced. By the study of the "Manual," and an hour's daily practice, any one of moderate abilities will in three months be enabled to write at least sixty words a minute. He must then obtain the "Reporter's Companion," which will cost a half-a-crown, and study it thoroughly and diligently, and in the course of a further period of three months, provided he has an hour's daily practice, he will find himself able to take down a speech verbatim, and his pen, to use a Yankeeism, moving on his paper as fast as an express train down an incline.

26. The Gallery view of the oratory of our legislators is of course somewhat different from that taken by the public in general. A reporter does not care so much about your crack speakers, unless they are slow of speech. Lord Palmer -ston is liked very much, although generally speaking his ipsissima verba have to be taken down. He is not a quick speaker and by no means a fluent one, especially in the beginning of a speech. He is like an old coach-horse, whose limbs are rather stiff at first, but work better when the blood gets warm and the circulation quicker. It is so, decidedly, with "the bottle-holder;" he hums and hahs, and - ur __as - -ur - though - as though - he - ur - was unaccustomed to it. Now he proceeds very hesitatingly and with caution: and presently, all on a sudden, he proceeds briskly with a few sentences - somewhat in the style of walking along the street and treading on a piece of orange-peel by accident. He is an easy man to report: he delivers his words as though they were precious, and should not be lost to those for whom they were intended. He is undoubtedly a very deliberate speaker, and being a popular and a leading man, whenever he is on his legs the House is remarkably quiet; button-holdings are abandoned, and private conversations cease. He is no "orator as Brutus is." Fox once said that speeches were made to be heard, not read: it is, however, the reverse with those of the Premier.

27. Lord Stanley is not so bad; he speaks with a tolerable fluency, but is very distinct in articulation. His father, Lord Derby, is by no means a friend of the reporters; for a great deal of "copy" has to be written out whenever he opens his lips. Bright is fluent, distinct - and often wrist-aching. So are Gladstone and Sir George Grey. Vice - Chan-cellor Page Wood, when in the House of Commons, was a very unpopular man, ( we mean of course in the Gallery. | but on many occasions his speeches were not injured by passing through the gallery-sieve, as they often bore marks of hasty preparation. In fact, as we have often said before, speeches in general are improved by that process, unless indeed they go through "flatting mills," as Coleridge has pithily expressed it. Page Wood has, if possible, increased his speed since he has been on the bench in Lincoln's Inn. Lord John Russell is not much liked; his words are by no means few, and often very indistinctly delivered.

28. Macaulay, when in the Lower House, was the terror of reporters, as he had a most rapid delivery, and rarely stammered or hesitated for an apt mode of expression, as he generally prepared his orations before hand. In the year 1836 he delivered a most brilliant oration at an anti-slavery meeting. At the close of the meeting Mr. (afterwards Mr.

Justice) Therry told Mr. Macaulay that from his rapid mode of speaking, and from so much of the merit of the speech being dependent on the accurate collocation of the words in which his many metaphors and figures were expressed, it would be only an act of justice to himself to furnish a report of the speech. At first he hesitated, and expressed some doubts whether he could furnish sufficiently ample notes for the purpose. However, on Mr. Therry telling him due attention should be made to any notes he thought proper to furnish, if he forwarded them to the " Morning Chronicle" office by eight o'clock that evening, he agreed to do so. On going to the office of that Journal at the above hour, Mr. Therry found a large packet, containing a verbatim report of the speech as spoken,- the brilliant passages marked in pencil, and the whole manuscript well thumbed over, furnishing manifest denotement that no speech in "Enfield's Speaker" was more laboriously and faithfully committed to memory, than that delivered by the great historian of the age.

29. Disraeli is not much disliked, notwithstanding that his words flow freely from his mouth. Sir George Cornwall Lewis is a bad one to report, and his speeches, were they given exactly as they are uttered, would by no means tend to elevate him in the eyes of his many admirers. He makes a statement - stops - corrects it, hums and stammers, and seems as though he were desirous of favoring his hearers with a first and second edition of his words at one and the same time. " It is impossible," says the Saturday Review, "for those who have not heard him to gather from the reports the faintest idea of the soporific power of thi3 organ of the constitution. His words are squeezed out of him at intervals, like milk from a cow. He has read the dictum of Demosthenes - that action is the first, second and third requisite of an orator. Accordingly, gluing his elbow to his side, he slaps the table at fixed intervals with the palm of his hand. But this clock-work proceeding, being in no way governed by the sense of the speech, the slaps generally go to emphasize the prepositions. A sentence printed as really spoken, using dashes to express the minute-gun succession of his phrases, would run thus: ' I ought to state - I may state - I ought ( slap ) to state that my noble friend at the (slap) head of the Government - at the bead of the Government - my noble friend the member '(slap) for the city of London, who was then at the head of the Government, (slap,) while he assented,' etc."

30. Lord Campbell, the present Lord Chancellor, when a young man, was a parliamentary reporter for the " Morning Chronicle." Hazlitt had laid down the brush of an artist, and picked up the pen of a parliamentary reporter. Charles Dickens was a reporter on the " Chronicle." In fact, that Journal has had the honor of "educating" many eminent men. John Payne Collier, the Shaksperian commentator, was for a number of years connecetd with it: so was Mr. Sergeant Spankie. Barnes was a parliamentary reporter for the "Times," until he was called out of the Gallery, by Mr. Walter, to take take the editorial chair of the "Thunderer." The late Mr. Justice Talfourd, the author of the immortal tragedy of "Ion," Samuel Carter Hall, the able editor of the "Art Journal." So was "Special Correspondent" Russell. Mr. Russell, as a reporter in the Gallery of the House of Commons, was selected for every occasion requiring peculiar vividness of description.