Members of Parliament are threatened with a new and most
frightful danger, much worse than the explosion in the crypt which is to blow them into the air. A mechanician named Gensoul has invented a machine which reports speeches verbatim. The idea is the same as that which governed the " mechanical compositor," from which such great things were once hoped. The reporter sits down before a piano, and plays, as it were, upon the keys, each stroke placing part of a word upon his copy. When in full practice he can outstrip the swiftest speaker. There are very few speakers in either House whose speeches, thus reported, would not be wearisome in the a extreme, full of repetitions, mental stammerings, and mistakes, which the reporter at present omits. Perhaps four men in the Commons, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, Mr. Disraeli, and Sir J. Coleridge, could stand it ; but to the majority of speakers photo- graphic reporting would be ruin.
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