Punch, or the London Charivari, October 23, 1841 (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...ourselves to devote our present essay to a serious discussion of the various pictures that are, or ought, to decorate the interior of the new House of Commons. As for the House of Lords, we see no necessity whatever for lavishing the fine inspirations of art on that temple of wisdom; inasmuch as the sages who deliberate there are, for the most part, born legislators, coming into the world with all the rudiments of government in embryo in their baby heads, and, on the twenty-first anniversary of their birthday, putting their legs out of bed adult, full-grown law-makers. It would be the height of democratic insolence to attempt to teach these chosen few: it would, in fact, be a misprision of treason against the sovereignty of Nature, who, when making the pia mater of a future peer of England, knows very well the delicate work she has in hand, and takes pains accordingly. It is different when she manufactures a mob of skulls which, by a jumble of worldly accidents, or by the satire of Fortune in her bitterest mood, may ultimately belong to Members of the House of Commons. These she makes, as they make blocks in Portsmouth-yard, a hundred a minute. All she has to do is to fulfil her contract with the world, taking care that there shall be no want of the raw material for Members of Parliament, leaving it to Destiny to work it up as she may. We have not the slightest doubt, by-the-by, that poor Nature is often very much confounded by the ultimate application of her own handiwork. We can fancy the venerable old gossip at her business, patting up skulls as serenely as our lamented great grandmother (she wrote a very pretty book on the beauties of population, and illustrated the work, too, with portraits from her own hand) was wont to pat up apple-dumplings: