Should Mr. Barclay have kept notes of his long experience at the helm of the House, what a book he could make. His calm, judicial mind would be sure to do justice to all parties. No reporter in the gallery of “the gods” over his head--no statesman on the floor below--could give so many fascinating pages. He could describe the men who sat in the House when Cobb was Speaker,--most of them now gathered to their fathers. He could tell us of the finished orator, James McDowell, of Virginia, and of that great speech of his, in 1850, which electrified the country; of George C. Drumgoole, of the same State, calm and clear even in his potations; of the knight of later strifes, the spotless patriot and pure rhetorician, Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland; of Hotspur Keitt, and handsome, hectoring Brooks, of South Carolina; of dandy Dawson, of Louisiana; of gifted but self-destroying McConnell, of Alabama; of quick George W. Young, of Tennessee; of young Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, when he first came into the House, wearing a Byron collar; of haughty Toombs; logical Stephens; jolly T. H. Bayly; quiet Mr. Aiken; nervous Clingman; dominating David Wilmot; brilliant D. K. Carter, and eloquent Henry M. Fuller. He could narrate many a side-scene in the great drama, when the actors got behind the curtain and sported in their own green-room. He could show how the great struggle grew from words to blows, from blows to battles, and from battles to defeat. With Cobb and Orr, and Banks and Pennington, and Grow and Colfax, Barclay was on terms of equality and intimacy. He could describe the discomfiture of Barksdale when he lost his yellow wig; of Potter, when he answered Pryor and offered to fight him; of the quarrel between Cutting and Breckinridge; of Douglas in his prime, and of Adams in his decay; and of the whole procession of life, fun, frolic, sorrow, failure, disgrace, and death; of the pages who grew to be generals, of the generals who became Congressmen, and of the Congressmen who longed to be President. Write us a book, Colonel Barclay. You are still in your prime. Take a reporter to your room, and let him interview you, if you won’t jot it off in your own clerkly hand; and if Congress don’t vote you a pension, or retire you on a solid annuity, you and your posterity can live on the proceeds, and be honored in the inevitable credit it will confer on your name.