The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-10 00:00:00

SBORT-HAND WRITERS AND REPORTERS.

Tits gentlemen who report the parliamentary de-
bates get on the whole a fair public acknowledg-
ment of their duties. They are complimented
at every opportunity by the legislators whose
speeches they preserve, and can enjoy each year
through their benevolent society an elaborate
eulogy addressed exclusively to themselves. But
there is a branch of the profession of short-
hand writers which is not so frequently
heard of, though their achievements aro equally
noteworthy and valuable. The people who
have sat through the examination of witnesses during
the progress of an inquiry by a parliamentary com-
mittee are, after all, comparatively few. Such
of that number who are moderately observant
can scarcely fail to have overlooked the
gentleman sitting at the table in front of the Chair-
man, writing at the top of his speed. Few
sittings pass in which he is not appealed to as an
authority. Half-a-dozen questions are asked at
once ; confused replies are half made and with-
drawn ; and to the ordinary spectator the
scene is for the moment simply one of
confusion. Ten minutes afterwards he is
surprised to find the Chairman or a member
of the committee referring to the gentleman of the
note-book for the exact character of a particular
observation occurring at the very height of the
hubbub. The short-hand writer, for such he is,
turns back his leaves and reads question and answer
as readily as from a book. But this is the
easiest part of his labour. In correction of
some recent mis-statements as to the supposed
mechanical nature of committee-room reporting,
the pleasant and thoughtful essayist who assumes
the name of Merrill:iv BaowNE gives us, through
the medium of a letter to the Spectator,
the character of the work done in committee-
rooms in a different light. Mr. BROWNE, who
states that he is communicating the result of per-
sonal experience, declares that this work is, gene-
rally speaking, more difficult than that done in
the gallery of the house. In the presentation in a
Blue-book of discussions and decisions according to
the forms of Parliament a great deal of minute and
troublesome abstracting has to be gone though.
You may get in evidence in half an hour more
" apparently incoherent and certainly unchockable
" detail than you get in a week in the gallery
" (except on rare occasions), and the intellectual
" strain' of taking up matter of this kind for, say, four
" hours at a stretch, is no joke." And Mr. BROWNS
proceeds to suggest that if one of the writers who
has seemed to disparage the achievements of the
committee rooms as mechanical, " will look in
" upon me some hot evening next session, when
" I am getting out the evidence, say, of north
" country mariners (their utterance barely intern-
'. gible, and as rapid as the most rapid convene-
' tion) oiinautical matters; the evidence of scientific
or mechanical experts ; or the cross-examina-
' tion of the accounts of some department, he will
have opened to him a door of knowledge which
will very much help even his supreme imagine..
tion. It would confound the most physical

precieuse in France : with all her materialism

" ;he could scarce call me a machine." With
another remark from MArruw BaovntE we also
cordially concur. We read too many blue books
in the course of the year not to feel grateful to the
gentlemen to whom the indexing of those tomes
is committed. No praise can be too high for the
manner in which they do the abstracting of the
evidenoe, and we agree with Mr. Baovna when he
says that the brains may be easily sucked out of a
very long Blue-book if you only put the indexed
summary at the end to its proper use.

WHILE new theatres are being built in London,
old ones are being altered and re-named, and in
September the Marylebone Theatre will no longer
exist under the same title. It has lately fallen into
the hands of a new lessee, who is reconstructing
the interior, and who proposes to call it the " Royal
" Allred Theatre," naming it after the Duke of
EDINBURGH. The Marylebone, it may be remem-
bered, had once a " legitimate " reputation under
the management of the late Mrs. WARNER, and it
obtained even more notoriety under the manage-
ment of that Mr. Werra who robbed the Globe
Assurance Company, dabbled in playhouses, aid
committed suicide within the space of a couple of
years. The Marylebone, standing in Church-
street, Paddington, was originally started to pro-
vide the north-west suburbs with a good local
theatre, but the experience of a few years seemed to
prove that the neighbourhood required nothing but a
minor house, managed on what we may call trans-
pontine principles. In its second or transition
state it was very ably governed by Mr. J. A.
Cevz, and it is now about to return to something
like its original character under the direction of
Miss An SEDGIVICIL One of the anomalies of
our licensing system is shown in the dramatic
license of this house and that of the Bijou
Theatre—a little place at Bayswater, about a mile
further west. The Marylebone is licensed to per-
form stage-plays by the Loan CiwsIIKRIAIN, but
the Bijou has to go to the magistrates at quarter
sessions for a similar authority.

Lady Leith, of Weethall, has deducted 10 per
cent. from the rent of gram parks lot by her this season,
in conaequenoe of the drought.

There were (says the Northern inig) some cir-
cumstances in connection with Lord Downshire's death
which are worth noting. He died on his 56th
birthday, having been born on the 6th of
August, 1812, and died on the 6th day of August,
1868. His father, the third marquis, was also 56 when he
died. His grandfather, the second marquis, died at 52.
On Thursday morning last, the foy.bells of Hillsborough
were rung in the morning to celebrate his birthday, and
in the evening the same bells tolled to announce his
death.

Two assize sermons, preached at Winchester by
the Rev. Mr. Young, the father of the celebrated author
of "Night Thoughts," have been presented to the public
library at Winchester, and an ♦byrinian stroll of prayer
found in Magdala hes boss presented to the Winchester
Masers.