Just within we may turn aside into the repose of the of the Inns of Court (Middle Temple, Inner Temple, , and ), which Ben Jonson calls

the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in the kingdom.

those bricky towers,

The which on Thames' broad aged back doe ride,

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,

There whilom wont the Temple knights to bide,

Till they decayed through pride.

the King's Court.

On

March 28th

died William Brown, wash-pot of the Temple.

Before the Temple was leased by the lawyers, the laws were taught in hostels--, of which there were a great number in the metropolis, especially in the neighbourhood of , but afterwards the Inns of Court and Chancery increased in prosperity till they formed what Stow describes as

a whole university of students, practisers or pleaders, and judges of the laws of this realm, not living on common stipends, as in the other universities it is for the most part done, but of their owne private maintenance.

the hostess

Of the Inns of Court and Chancery-Justice.

The prosperity of the lawyers, however, was not without its reverses, and such was their unpopularity at the time of Jack Cade's rebellion that they were chosen as his victims. Thus, in Shakespeare's . (Pt. I. Act iv. sc. a), Dick, the Butcher of Ashford, is introduced as saying,

The

first

thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers;

Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled over, should undo a man?

Now go some and pull down the Savoy; others to the Inns of Court; down with them all!

In the end, Jack Cade really did the lawyers no harm, but their houses were pulled down in the invasion of Wat Tyler, and their books burnt in . Nevertheless the Inns of the Temple continued to increase in importance till the reign of Mary I., when the young lawyers had become such notorious fops that it was actually necessary to pass an Act of Parliament to restrain them. Henceforth they were not to wear beards of more than weeks' growth upon pain of a fine of ; and they must restrain their passion for Spanish cloaks, swords, bucklers, rapiers, gowns, hats, or daggers at their girdles. Only Knights and Benchers might luxuriate in doublets or hose of bright colours, except scarlet or crimson; and they were forbidden to wear velvet caps, scarf-wings to their gowns, white jerkins, buskins, velvet shoes, double shirt-cuffs, or feathers and ribbons in their caps.

The Temple was not finally conferred upon the lawyers till the time of James I., who declared in of his speeches in the Star Chamber that

there were only

three

classes of people who had any right to settle in London--the courtiers, the citizens, and the gentlemen of the Inns of Court.

Before any student can be admitted to either of the

aptus, habilis, et idoneus moribus et scientia.

No student can be till he. is of years' standing, and years of age: after he is called, he becomes . The call is made by the , the governing body of seniors, chosen for their

honest behaviour and good disposition,

such as from their experience are of best note and ability to serve the kingdom.

Lectures are given at each of the Inns, which are open to all its students; examinations take place and scholarships are awarded: but a man may be called to the Bar who has not attended lectures or passed examinations, though by dining in hall is an indispensable qualification.

The Inns of Court are interesting to others besides lawyers, for they are the last working institutions in the nature of the old trade guilds. It is no longer necessary that a shoemaker should be approved by the company of the craft before he can apply himself to making shoes for his customers, and a man may keep an oyster-stall without being forced to serve an apprenticeship and be admitted to the Livery of the great Whig Company; but the lawyers' guilds guard the entrance to the law, and prescribe the rules under which it shall be practised. There are obvious advantages in having some authority to govern such a profession as the Bar, but it is sufficiently remarkable that the voluntary societies of barristers themselves should have managed to engross and preserve it.-Times Journal.

A dull red-brick , by Wren (), forms the entrance to . The site was formerly occupied by a gate decorated with the arms of Cardinal Wolsey, which was erected by Sir Amias Paulet while he was the cardinal's prisoner in the other Temple Gate-house, in the hope of appeasing his displeasure.

The belonging to the was once surmounted by gables and annexed to very picturesque buildings of great extent. Only a fragment of the ornamental portion remains, adorned with the feathers of Henry, Prince of Wales. A hairdresser of lively imagination has set up an inscription declaring it to have been the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, but it was really built in the time of James I., when it was the office for the Duchy of Cornwall. Afterwards it became

Nando's,

Volat ad astera virtus,

As by the Templars' hold you go, The horse and lamb display'd In emblematic figures show The merits of their trade.

The clients may infer from thence How just is their profession; The lamb sets forth their innocence, The horse their expedition.

Oh! happy Britons, happy isle I Let foreign nations say, Where you get justice without guile, And law without delay.

Deluded men, these holds forego, Nor trust such cunning elves; These artful emblems tend to show The clients--not themselves.

»Tis all a trick; these all are shams By which they mean to cheat you: But have a care--for you're the lambs, And they the wolves that eat you.

Nor let the thought of no delay

To these their courts misguide you:

It was at No. I on the right of the (now rebuilt as Johnson's Buildings) that Dr. Johnson lived from to . Boswell describes his visit to him there.

His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt neck and the knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted

stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particulars were forgotten the moment he began to talk.

By we reach the only existing relic of the residence of the Knights Templars in these courts, their magnificent (), which fortunately just escaped the Great Fire in which most of the Inner Temple perished. The church was restored in - at an expense of , but it has been ill-done, and with great disregard of the historic memorials it contained.

It is entered by a grand Norman arch under the western porch, which will remind those who have travelled in France of the glorious door of Loches. This opens upon the Round Church of ( feet in diameter), built in recollection of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre, of the only- remaining round churches in England; the others being at Cambridge, Northampton, and Maplestead in Essex. Hence, between graceful groups of Purbeck marble columns, we look into the later church of ; these churches, built only at a distance of years from each other, forming of the most interesting examples we possess of the transition from Norman to Early English architecture. The Round Church is surrounded by an arcade of narrow Early English arches, separated by a series of heads, which are chiefly restorations. On the pavement lie groups of restored effigies of

associates

eight

images of armed knights

1. William Marshall the younger, husband of Eleanor, sister of King Richard I. and John, sheathing his sword.

2. His father, the Protector Pembroke, Earl Marshall, 1119, his sword piercing an animal. It is this William Marshall who, a man of unsullied life, is introduced by Shakspeare as interceding for Prince Arthur.

3. Unknown.

4. Gilbert Marshall, another son of Pembroke, drawing the sword which he never was able to bear to the Crusades, having been killed by a runaway horse at a tournament in 1241, when he was going to start. His wife was Princess Margaret of Scotland. This was the last of the great family of the Marshalls, whose extinction was at that time believed to be due to a curse of the Abbot of Fernes, whom the Protector had robbed of his lands. Matthew Paris narrates how the abbot came with great awe, and standing here by the Earl's tomb, promised him absolution if the lands were restored. But the dead gave no sign, so the curse fell.

I. The first Earl of Essex.

2. Geoffry de Magnaville, who was driven to desperation by the acts of injustice he received from Stephen, and fought against him. He was mortally wounded whilst attacking Burwel Castle in Cambridgeshire and died excommunicated. His body was soldered up in lead and hung up by the Templars on a tree in their orchard, till he received absolution upon its being proved that he had expressed repentance in his last moments.

3. Unknown.

4. Unknown.

The sight of these effigies will recall the lines in Spenser's Fairy Queen-- And on his breast a bloudie cross he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead, as living, ever him adored. Upon his shield the like was also scored, For sovereign hope which in his help he had.

Against the wall, behind the Marshalls, is the effigy of Robert Ros, Governor of Carlisle in the reign of John. He was one of the great Magna Charta barons, and married the daughter of a king of Scotland, but he was not a Templar, for he wears flowing hair, which is forbidden by the rites of the Order: at the close of his life, however, he took the Templars' habit as an associate, and was buried here in 1227. On the opposite side is a Purbeck marble sarcophagus, said to be that of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, but her effigy is at Fontevrault, where the monastic annals prove that she took the veil after the murder of Prince Arthur. Henry II. left five hundred marks by his will for his burial in the Temple Church, but was also buried at Fontevrault. Gough considers that the tomb here may be that of William Plantagenet, fifth son of Henry Ill., who died in infancy, and (according to Weaver) was buried in the Temple in 1256.

In olden times the Round Church was the place where the lawyers used to meet their clients and- Retain all kinds of witnesses That ply i« the Temple under trees; Or walk the Round with Knights o« the Posts, About the cross-legg'd knights, their hosts. Hudibras, pt. iii. c. 3.

Ben Jonson also speaks of this in the Alchemist.

A staircase in the wall leads to the triforium of the Round Church, which is now filled with the tombs, foolishly removed from the chancel beneath. Worthy of especial notice is the coloured kneeling effigy of Martin, Recorder of London, and Reader of the Middle Temple, 1615. Near this is the effigy-also coloured and under a canopy of Edmund Plowden, the famous jurist, of whom Lord Ellenborough said that better authority could not be cited; and referring to whom Fuller quaintly remarks, How excellent a medley is made, when honesty and ability meet in a man of his profession I There is also a monument to James Howell (1594-1666), whose entertaining letters, chiefly written from the Fleet, give many curious particulars relating to the reigns of James I. and Charles I.

Opening upon the stairs leading to the triforium is a penitential cell (four feet six inches by two feet six inches) with slits towards the church, through which the prisoner, unable to lie down, could still hear mass. Here the unhappy Walter de Bacheler, Grand Preceptor of Ireland, was starved to death for disobedience to the Master of the Templars; and hence probably it was that, with the severe discipline of the Templars, other culprits were dragged forth naked every Monday to be flogged publicly by the priest before the high altar.

The Church (eighty-two feet long, fifty-eight wide, thirty-seven high), begun in 1185 and finished in 1240, is one of our most beautiful existing specimens of Early English Pointed architecture: the roof springing, as it were, in a harmonious and accordant fountain, out of the clustered pillars that support its pinioned arches; and these pillars, immense as they are, polished like so many gems. Hawthorne. In the ornaments of the ceiling the banner of the Templars is frequently repeated-black and white, because, says Fawyne, the Templars showed themselves wholly white and fair towards the Christians, but black and terrible to them that were miscreants. The letters Beausean are for Beauseant, their war-cry.

In a dark hole to the left of the altar is the white marble monument of John Selden, 1654, called by Milton the chief of learned men reputed in this land. The endless stream of volumes which he poured forth were filled with research and discrimination. Of these, his work On the Law of Nature and of Nations is described by Hallam as amongst the greatest achievements in erudition that any English writer has performed, but he is perhaps best known by his Table Talk, of which Coleridge says, There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer. His funeral sermon was preached here by Archbishop Usher, to whom he had said upon his death-bed, I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, but I cannot recollect any passage out of all my books and papers whereon I can rest my soul, save this from the sacred Scriptures: The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity.

Mr. Selden was a person whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of such stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages, as may appear from his excellent and transcendent writings, that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability were such that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good-nature, charity, and delight in doing good and in communicating all he knew exceeded that breeding.-Earl of Clarendon, Life.

On the right of the choir, near a handsome marble piscina, is the effigy of a bishop, usually shown as that of Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, by whom the church was consecrated, but he left England in a fury, after Henry II. refused to perform his vow of joining the Crusades in person, to atone for the murder of Becket. The figure more probably represents Silverston de Eversdon, Bishop of Carlisle, . In the vestry are monuments to Lords Eldon and Stowell, and that of Lord Thurlow () by

The organ, by Father Smydt or Smith, is famous from the long competition it underwent with by Harris. Both were temporarily erected in the church. Blow and Purcell were employed to perform on that of Smith; Battista Draghi, organist to Queen Catherine, on that of Harris. Immense audiences came to listen, but though the contest lasted a year, they could arrive at no decision. Finally, it was left to Judge Jefferies of the Inner Temple, who was a great musician, and who chose that of Smith.

By the side of a paved walk leading along the north side of the church to the , is the simple monument of Oliver Goldsmith, who died . It is only inscribed,

Here lies Oliver Goldsmith.

Let not his faults be remembered; he was a very great man.-Dr. Johnson.

He died in the midst of a triumphant course. Every year that he lived would have added to his reputation.-Prof. Butler.

The wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and expose vice; and he accomplished his task in a manner which raises. him to the highest rank among British authors.-Sir Walter Scott.

The preacher at the Temple is called

the Master,

learned and

judicious

It was a place,

which he rather accepted than desired,

I am weary of the noise and opposition of this place; and, indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. ... I shall never be able to finish what I have begun unless I be removed into some quiet parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of mother earth, and eat my own bread in peace and privacy.

At the Temple one day, Sherlock taking a boat,

The waterman asked him, Which way will you float?

Which way? says the Doctor; why, fool, with the stream!

To St. Paul's or to Lambeth was all one to him;

In the registers of the Temple, kept in the Master's House, perhaps the most interesting of many remarkable records is that which attests the marriage--the surreptitious marriage--of Mr. Sidney Godolphin with Margaret Blagg, the lady whose lovely and lovable life was portrayed by Evelyn and published by Wilberforce: The entry is not entered on the regular page, but pinned in afterwards, apparently when the event was made public, the lady having been previously provided with her

marriage lines.

The labyrinthine courts of the Temple are all replete with quaint associations. The Inner Temple is the least so. Most of it was destroyed by the great fire of , which even

licked the windows

At the Inner Temple, on certain grand occasions, it is customary to pass huge silver goblets (loving cups) down the table, filled with a delicious composition, immemorially termed sack, consisting of sweetened and exquisitely flavoured white wine: the butler attends its progress to replenish it, and each student is restricted to a sip. Yet it chanced not long since at the Temple, that, though the present number fell short of seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were consumed! -Quarterly Review

is so called from Nicholas Hare (), Master of the Rolls in the time of Mary I. was the birthplace of Charles Lamb, who afterwards lived in , , whence he wrote,

The rooms are delicious, and Hare's Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden.

I am going to change my lodgings,

he wrote,

I have partly fixed upon most delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a lip-toe) over the Thames, and Surreyhills; at the Upper end of King's Bench walk, in the Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I desire to hold free converse with any immortal mind. I shall be airy, up four pair of steps, as in the country; and in a garden, in the midst of enchanting, more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest, drab-frequented alley, and her lowest bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain.

It was in that William Murray, afterwards Earl of Mansfield, had chambers (No. ), and here that he was visited as client by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who came late in the evening, and was disgusted at finding him gone out to a supper party.

I could not tell who she was,

for she would not tell me her name, but she swore so dreadfully that I am sure she must be a lady of quality.

In , on this side of the Temple, old Mrs. Duncomb with her companion Elizabeth Harrison and her maid Anne Price, were murdered in by Sarah Malcolm, a washerwoman of the Temple, who having, after her execution in (opposite ) been buried against all rules in St. Sepulchre's churchyard, was dug up again, and is now exhibited as a skeleton at the Botanic Garden at Cambridge. She was extremely handsome, and, days before her execution, she dressed up in scarlet and sate to Hogarth for her portrait.--Immediately above Tanfield Court, adjoining what is now the Master's Garden, stood the old refectory of the knights, only pulled down within the last few years.

Turning to the Middle Temple, it will be interesting to remember that Chaucer was of its students in the reign of Edward III., and, while here, gave a sound thrashing to a Franciscan friar who insulted him in . On

Then welcome business, welcome strife,

Welcome the cares, the thorns of life,

The visage wan, the purblind sight,

The toil by day, the lamp by night,

The tedious forms, the solemn prate,

The pert dispute, the dull debate,

The drowsy bench, the babbling hall,--

For thee, fair Justice! welcome all!

mourners without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to

weep for; outcasts of the great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable.

The pleasantest part of the Middle Temple is the , with its little fountain, low enough now, but which, Sir Christopher Hatton says, sprang

to a vast and

Fountain Court, Temple

almost incredible altitude

The fountain's low singing is heard in the wind,

Like a melody, bringing sweet fancies to mind;

Some to grieve, some to gladden; around them they cast

The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.

Away in the distance is heard the far sound

From the streets of the city that compass it round,

Like the echo of mountains or ocean's deep call;

Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.

Charles Dickens has left a pretty description of Ruth Pinch going to meet her lover in this court-

coming briskly up, with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the fountain, and beat it all to nothing;

merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling dimples twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a laugh against the basin's rim and vanished.

In this court is the , an admirable Elizabethan building (of ) with a screen, which is very handsome, though it is not, as is often said, made from the spoils of the Spanish Armada, being years earlier in date. The order of the military monks is preserved here during dinner, the Benchers on the dais representing the knights, the Barristers the priors or brethren, the Students the novices. The old Cow's Horn is preserved, by the blowing of which the Benchers used to be summoned to dinner. It is a fact worth notice as showing the habits of these Benchers in former days, that when the floor of the Middle Temple Hall was taken up in , no less than a pair of (very small) dice were found beneath it, having slipped through between the ill-adjusted boards. In the time of Elizabeth the Benchers were so quarrelsome a body that an edict was passed that no should come into hall with other weapons than a sword or a dagger! The feasts of Christmas, Halloween, Candlemas, and Ascension were formerly kept here with great splendour, a regular Master of the Revels being elected, and the Lord Chancellor, Judges, and Benchers opening the sports by dancing solemnly times around the sea-coal fire.

Full oft within the spacious walls,

When he had fifty winters o«er him,

My grave Lord-Keeper led the brawls;

The seal and maces danced before him.

This dance called forth many satires-especially from Buckingham in his play of , from Prior in his , and Dr. Donne in his . In Pope's we find-

The judge to dance, his brother serjeant calls.

In this Hall Shakspeare's , was performed soon after its production, ; and it is probably the only remaining building in which of his plays was seen by his contemporaries. Sir John Davys was expelled the Society for thrashing his friend Mr. Richard Martin (the Bencher to whom Ben Jonson dedicated his ) in this hall during dinner.

Truly it is a most magnificent apartment; very lofty, so lofty, indeed, that the antique oak roof is quite hidden, as regards all its details, in the sombre gloom that broods under its rafters. The hall is lighted by four great windows, on each of the two sides, descending half-way from the ceiling to the floor, leaving all beneath enclosed by oaken panelling, which, on three sides, is carved with escutcheons of such members of the society as have held the office of reader. There is likewise, in a large recess or transept, a great window, occupying the full height of the hall and splendidly emblazoned with the arms of the Templars who have attained to the dignity of Chief-Justices. The other windows are pictured, in like manner, with coats of arms of local dignities connected with the Temple; and besides all these there are arched lights, high towards the roof, at either end, full of richly and chastely coloured glass, and all the illumination of that great hall came through those glorious panes, and they seemed the richer for the sombreness in which we stood. I cannot describe, or even intimate, the effect of this transparent glory, glowing down upon us in the gloomy depth of the hall.-Hawthorne, English Note-Books.

The expression

moot (mot) point

Near the Hall is the erected by . Its garden has a tree-Catalpa Syringifolia-said to have been planted by Sir Matthew Hale.

Sun-Dials in the Temple have mottoes. That in ,

Pereunt et imputantur;

Vestigia nulla retrorsum;

Time and Tide tarry for no man.

I was born, and passed the

first

seven

years of my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said--for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places!-these are my oldest recollections.... What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the

first

arrests of sleep !

Ah, yet doth beauty like a dial-hand

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived!

Charles Lamb.

is the place where Shakspeare makes the partisans of the Houses of York and Lancaster choose a red and white rose as their respective badges.

Suffolk.Within the Temple Hall we were too loud: The garden here is more convenient. ... Plantagenet.Let him that is a true-born gentleman, And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this briar pluck a white rose with me Somerset.Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me. ... Plantagenet.Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset Somerset.Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet? ... Warwick.This brawl to-day, Grown to this faction in the Temple Gardens, Shall send, between thered rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night. First Part of Henry VI. Act i. sc. 4.

There are charming views of the river--the busy silent highway, from the gardens, though on Lord Mayor's Day you can no longer

Stand in Temple Gardens, and behold London herself on her proud stream afloat; For so appears this fleet of magistracy, Holding due course to Westminster. Shakspeare's Henry V.

No roses will live now in the smoke-laden air, but the gardens are still famous for their autumnal show of Chrysanthemums, the especial flowers of the Temple. Near a dial given by

Henricus Wynne, Londini,

1770

,

So, O Benchers, may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still flourish! So may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers! So may the sparrow, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks! So may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! So may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised the parade before ye.-Charles Lamb.

Opposite the Temple, occupying a space of acres, in the clearance of which as many as wretched

A little farther down is the entrance of , a long winding street where the great Lord Strafford was born () and where Izaak.Walton,

the father of angling,

Long Chancery Lane retentive rolls the sound.

and its surrounding streets have a peculiar legal traffic of their own, and abound in wig makers, strongbox makers, and law stationers and booksellers. In former times when the Inns of Court were more like colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and when the students which belonged to them lived together within their walls, dined together, and shared the same exercises and amusements, the Inns of Court always had Inns of Chancery annexed to them. These were houses where the younger students underwent a course of preparation for the greater freedom of the colleges of the Inns of Court, to which, says Jeaffreson, in his they bore much the same position as Eton bears towards at Cambridge, or Winchester to New College at Oxford. Now the Inns of Chancery are comparative

On the right of , behind St. Dunstan's Church, are the dark brick courts of , originally intended only for judges and the serjeants-at-law who derive their name from the of the Knights Templars. The serjeants still address each other as brothers. The degree of Serjeant is the highest attainable in the faculty of law, and indispensable for a seat on the judicial bench. The buildings were sold in , and the little Hall ( ft. by ) and Chapel ( ft. by )-both with richly stained windows--will probably ere long be pulled down.

The courts of join those of the earliest foundation of those Inns of Chancery which we have been describing, (entered from ), which is so called because the land on which it stands was devised in the reign of Edward II. () to

our beloved and faithful Robert de Clifford.

Farther down , on the same side, is an old dingy courtyard containing the and The latter was originally built in the time of Henry III., but rebuilt by Inigo Jones in , when Dr. Donne preached the consecration sermon. Bishop Atterbury and Bishop Butler were Preachers at the Rolls, and also Bishop Burnet, who was dismissed on account of the offence given

Save me from the lion's mouth; thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

It is little known that within the walls of this ugly chapel is of the noblest pieces of sculpture which England possesses, a tomb which may be compared for beauty with the famous monuments of Francesco Albergati at Bologna,

bridechest,

Here lies an honest lawyer, that is-Strange,

He was a just judge: very slow, and ready to hear any thing that was offered, without passion or partiality. He was a very pious and devout man, and spent at least an hour in the morning and as much at night in prayer and meditation. And even in winter, when he was obliged to be very early on the bench, he took care to rise so soon that he had always the command of that time, which he gave to those exercises.-Burnet.

, the name of a wretched court on the left of , still commemorates the town-house of the Bishops of Chic Hester, built in by Bishop Ralph Nevill, Chancellor in the time of Henry III.

On the left of the lane is the noble brick of , bearing the date , and adorned with the arms of Sir Thomas Lovell, by whom it was built in the

some gentlemen pitying that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did of their bounty manumize him freely to follow his own ingenious inclinations.

The name came from Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, . , whose town-house once occupied its site. Its courtyards have a greater look of antiquity than those of the Temple. On the left of the ground-floor, at No. in the

Old Buildings

of the old gables have sun-dials with the mottoes-

Qua redit, nescitis horam,

Ex hoc momento pendet

aternitas.

to walk under the chapel, by agreement.

thereby set some furious spirit on work to destroy those harmless goodly windows to the just dislike of that worthy society.

Crossing end of the old-fashioned brick square of , we reach a handsome group of brick buildings by , -, comprising the and the In the former are a great fresco by (-), representing

The Origin of Legislation,

Venez manger

The ancient

Walks of Lincoln's Inn

Under the elms,

perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the Law,

Where Lincoln's Inn, wide space, is rail'd around,

Cross not with venturous step; there oft is found

The lurking thief, who, while the daylight shone,

Made the walls echo with his begging tone:

That crutch, which late compassion mov'd, shall wound

Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground.

Though thou art tempted by the linkman's call,

Yet trust him not along the lonely wall;

In the mid-way he'll quench the flaming brand,

And share the booty with the pilfering band,

Still keep the public streets where oily rays

Shot from the crystal lamp o«erspread the ways.

hanged, bowelled, and quartered, even in the place where they used to meet and conferre of their traiterous purposes.

His whole behaviour looked like a triumph over death... He parted with his lady with a composed silence: and as soon as she was gone, he said to me, The bitterness of death is passed ; for he loved and esteemed her beyond expression, as she well deserved it in all respects. She had the command of herself so much that at parting she gave him no disturbance.... Some of the crowd that filled the streets wept, while others insulted; he was touched with the tenderness that the one gave him, but did not seem at all provoked by the other. He was singing psalms a great part of the way; and said, he hoped to sing better very soon. As he observed the great crowds of people all the way, he said, I hope I shall quickly see a much better assembly. ... He laid his head on the block, without the least change of countenance: and it was cut off at two strokes.-Burnet.

On the north side of the square, beyond the handsome , is (No. ) the eccentric , formed in his own house and bequeathed to the nation by Sir John Soane (. ), who was the son of a bricklayer at Reading, but, being distinguished as a student in the Royal Academy, and sent to Rome with the Academy pension, lived to become the architect of the . The museum, which Mrs. Jameson calls

a fairy

palace of

virtu

,

Room I.

Sir J. Reynolds. The Snake in the Grass or Love unloosing the zone of Beauty--bought at the Marchioness of Thomond's sale. In very bad condition.

Canaletto. The Grand Canal at Venice--a glorious picture, full of light and air, with sparkling waves and animated figures-so different to the wooden abortions usually attributed to this injured artist, that few can be said to have made his acquaintance, who have not looked upon it. From the Fonthill collection.

Hogarth. The Election. A series of four pictures. 1. The Entertainment. It is the end of the feast. The mayor is seized with apoplexy from a surfeit of oysters and the barber is bleeding him in vain. A candidate is flattering an old woman. A crowd of the opposing faction have thrown brickbats into the room, one of which has struck a lawyer on the head. A virago resents the refusal of a bribe by her tailor husband, whose son exhibits his need of it by showing his worn-out shoe. 2. The Canvassing. Bribery is exhibited in all its forms. In the background is the Excise Office.--Hogarth's quaint wit is shown in the man at the end of the beam to which the crown is suspended, busily engaged in sawing it down, forgetful that he must fall with it. 3. The Polling. The rival candidates are seated in a booth to receive votes. A Chelsea pensioner is objected to by a lawyer, because he cannot lay his right hand, but only a stump, on the book. A man is bawling into the ear of another who is deaf the name of the person he is to vote for. A dying man is carried to vote in blankets. In the background is Britannia upsetting in her coach, while her servants are playing cards on the box. 4. The Chairing of the Successful Candidate. The new Member, represented by Bubb Doddington, is in danger of being upset in his chair, one of his bearers having had his head broken by the club of a country. man who is fighting with a Greenwich pensioner. The tailor of the former scene is beaten by his wife; an old woman is thrown down amongst the pigs. In the midst of the confusion the cooks are carrying in the dinners. Hogarth painted life as he saw it. He gives no visions of by-gone things--no splendid images of ancient manners; he regards neither the historian's page nor the poet's song. He was contented with the occurrences of the passing day--with the folly or the vice of the hour; to the garb and fashion of the moment, however, he adds story and sentiment for all time.--Allan Cunningham.

Room III.-(Breakfast Room.) Francesco Goma. Portrait of Napoleon, 1797. Isabey. Miniature of Napoleon, painted at Elba. Upper Floor. Hogarth. The Rake's Progress, a series of eight pictures.1. The Rake comes into his Fortune. The accumulations of the relation whose fortune he has inherited are displayed, while the starved cat and the woman bringing chips to the empty grate refer to the penury in which the miser has lived. The heir, an empty-headed lout, is being measured for fine clothes. A girl whom he has seduced, accompanied by her mother, with her lap full of love-letters, vainly seeks the fulfilment of his promises. A villainous attorney, who has been employed in making an inventory, is stealing a bag of gold from the table. 2. The Levee of the Rake. His chamber is crowded with sycophants, and persons seeking his patronage. Amongst the portraits introduced are those of Dubois the fencing-master, Figg the prize-fighter, and Bridgeman the king's gardener. 3. The Orgies of the Rake. A woman picks the pocket of the drunken rake of his watch which she hands to an accomplice. On the floor are the lanthorn and staff of a watchman with whom he has been fighting. Everything indicates the most vicious dissipation. The harlot in the background, setting fire to the world, is peculiarly Hogarthian. 4. The Arrest of the Rake. He is arrested in his sedan chair, when he is going to court on the queen's birthday, indicated by the leek in the Welshman's cocked hat (St. David's Day being the birthday of Queen Caroline). St. James's Palace is seen in the background, with White's Chocolate House, where the Rake has probably completed his ruin at the gaming-table. The lamplighter, while gaping at the scene beneath, lets his oil stream down on the Rake's peruke. A touch of human sympathy is shown in the neglected girl of the first: picture, who appears here as having redeemed the past, and who, accidentally seeing her faithless lover in trouble, offers her pulse to save him. 5. the Marriage of the Rake. Discharged by the assistance of the girl hi has injured, the Rake again deserts her to redeem his fortunes by marrying a hideous but rich old woman. While placing the ring upon her finger, he leers at her maid in the background. The neglected girl and her mother try to forbid the marriage, but are ejected from the church by the pew-opener. The absurdity of the courtship is parodied in that of the two dogs in the background. The scene is the old Church of Marylebone, then (1735) in the country and the resort of couples seeking to be privately married--the Commandments are cracked across, the Creed is effaced, the poor-box is covered with cobwebs; all is significant. 6. The Rake at the Gambling Table. At White's (where the incident of the fire pourtrayed here really occurred in 1733), the Rake loses the second fortune for which he has sold himself. 7. The Rake in Prison. The Rake is seated in despair, his wife is cursing him; only the girl whose early affections he won, remains kind, and comes to visit him, but faints on seeing his misery. A rejected tragedy by which he has tried to obtain money lies upon the table. In contrast to this scene of poverty, an alchemyst is at work in the background. 8. The Rake in Bedlam. Having reached the last stage of degradation, we see the Rake, naked and shaven, still sustained by the one friend who has refused to desert him. All phases of madness-the man who thinks himself an astronomer- the man who thinks himself a king, the melancholy madness of religion, the simpering idiocy of love --are introduced; and to visit and ridicule them, as was then permitted, come two fine ladies. The other pictures here are unimportant. We may notice- Turner. Van Tromp's barge entering the Texel. W. Hilton (1786-1839). Marc Antony reading Caesar's will. Sir C. Eastlake (1793-1865). The Cave of Despair.

In the dimly-lit under chambers, surrounded by an extraordinary and heterogeneous collection, is the magnificent sarcophagus of Osiris, father of Rameses the Great, discovered by Belzoni () in the valley of Behan el Malook. It is covered with hieroglyphics, and is cut out of a single block of the substance called by mineralogists aragonite.The beautifully-illuminated manuscripts of this museum are well deserving of study, the finest being the Commentary on Epistles by Cardinal Marino Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileja, with exquisite miniatures by Giulio Clovio. Amongst other literary curiosities preserved here, is the original MS. of the Gerusalemme Liberata of Tasso.

At the north-western corner of is (with a double staircase to its entrance), built in I by the Marquis of Powis, who followed James II. into exile, and was created Duke of Powis by him. It was inhabited by the insignificant prime minister of George II.'s reign, the Duke of Newcastle, of whom Lord Wilmington said,

he loses half an hour every morning, and runs after it all the rest of the day, without being able to overtake it.

In , which leads from hence into , Lord Herbert of Cherbury lived, and wrote the part of his -

justly deemed inimical to every positive religion.

In Great Queen Street Sir Godfrey Kneller lived next door to Dr. Ratcliffe; Kneller was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he permitted the latter to have a door into his garden, but Ratcliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut the door. Ratcliffe replied peevishly, Tell him he may do anything with it but paint it. -- And I, answered Sir Godfrey, can take anything from him but physic. Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.

Nos. and are good specimens of street house architecture. The fleur de lis, which till lately might be seen on the fronts of some of the houses on the south of , was in compliment to Henrietta-Maria, after whom it was named.

On the west side of , No. , , afterwards (marked by its little semi-circular portico), was built by Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, Charles the 's general, who fell in the battle of Edgehill. Close to a low massive archway, leading into , is the , built in , the year before Charles I. was beheaded, being the oldest foundation now in the hands of Roman Catholics in London. It was partially destroyed in the Gordon Riots, when Protestantism hung a cat dressed in priestly vestments to the lamp-post in front of it, with the holy wafer in its paws. It is the church frequented by the Savoyard organ boys who live on .

In a house opposite the chapel Benjamin Franklin lived in , when he was a journeyman printer in the office of Mr. Watts in . He lodged with a Roman Catholic widow lady and her daughter, to whom he paid a rent of a week. When kept at home by the gout he was frequently asked to spend the evenings with his

Our supper,

was only half an anchovy each, on a very little slice of bread and butter, and half a pint of ale between us: but the entertainment was in her conversation.

Water- American.

[ (right) takes its name from Humphrey Wild, Lord Mayor in . Wild House was afterwards the Spanish Embassy, and the ambassador escaped with difficulty by its back door in the anti-papal riots under James II. The site of the house is now occupied by a Baptist Chapel, where a sermon is annually preached on the great storm of , in which more than houses were laid in ruins in London alone.

and lead into , of the great arteries of the parish of St. Clement Danes, an aristocratic part of London in the time of the Stuarts.[n.92.1]  It takes its name from Drury House, built by Sir William Drury in the time of Henry VIII. From the Drurys it passed into the hands of William, Lord Craven, who (the grandson of a Yorkshire carrier's boy who rose to be Lord Mayor) was so celebrated in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus. He

Aubrey mentions that the Duchess of Albemarle, wife of General Monk, was daughter of of the female barbers of , celebrated in the ballad-

Did you ever hear the like, Or ever hear the fame, Of five women barbers That lived in Drury Lane?

This was the

plain and homely dowdy

ill-look'd woman

Oh may thy virtue guard thee through the roads

Of Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes!

was opened in with an address by Dryden, who extolled the advantages of its then country-situation over those of

the Duke's Theatre

Our House relieves the ladies from the frights

Of ill-paved streets and long dark winter nights.

The burning of the theatre () is rendered memorable by the publication of the [n.94.1]  the famous jeu d«esprit of James and Horace Smith, the

very best imitations,

that ever were made,

The Jump,

[ leads into (named in honour of Catherine of Braganza), where and its surroundings have obliterated the recollections and annihilated the grave-stones of the Burial Ground of St. Clement Danes, where Nathaniel Lee, the bombastic dramatist (-), author of and was buried, having been killed in a drunken street brawl. Here also was the monument with an interesting epitaph to

Honest Joe Miller,

Father of Jokes

The (right of entrance) was founded by and is chiefly due to the exertions of Hunter; and

was intended to illustrate, as far as possible, the whole subject of life, by preparations of the bodies in which its phenomena are represented.

If we follow into , a long series of gables of the time of James I. breaks the sky line

Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking on the public way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old Bourne that has long since run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to each other, let us play at country; and where a few feet of garden mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover it is one of those nooks which are legal nooks; and it contains a little hall, with a little lantern in its roof: to what obstructive purposes devoted, and at whose expense, this history knoweth not.-Dickens-Edwin Drood.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his visit to London, says-

I went astray in

Holborn

through an arched entrance, over which was

Staple Inn,

and here likewise seemed to be offices; but, in a court opening inwards from this, there was a surrounding seclusion of quiet dwelling-houses, with beautiful green shrubbery and grass-plots in the court, and a great many sun-flowers in full bloom. The windows were open; it was a lovely summer afternoon, and I have a sense that bees were humming in the court, though this may have been suggested by my fancy, because the sound would have been so well suited to the scene. A boy was reading at

one

of the windows. There was not a quieter spot in England than this, and it was very strange to have drifted into it so suddenly out of the bustle and rumble of

Holborn

; and to lose all this repose as suddenly, on passing through the arch of the outer court. In all the hundreds of years since London was built, it has not been able to sweep its roaring tide over that little island of quiet.

Beyond the miniature Hall-- picturesque, with its high timber roof and lanthorn, its stained windows and ancient portraits and busts of the Caesars--in a court containing some admirable modern buildings on a raised terrace (by , ), of the architecture of James I., devoted to the offices of the taxing masters in Chancery. It was to Staple Inn that Dr. Johnson removed from , and here that--to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral and fulfil the few debts she left behind her-he wrote, what he described to Miss Porter as a little story-book-i.e. his

A little lower down on the same side of a

On the opposite side of the street is , which was called after a Sir William Furnival, who once owned the land. It was an Inn of Chancery attached to . Its buildings are shown by old prints to have been exceedingly stately, and were for the most part pulled down in the time of Charles I., and it was entirely rebuilt in . A statue of Henry Peto, , stands in the modern courtyard. Sir Thomas More was a

reader

Very near this was Scroope's Inn, described by Stow as of the

faire buildings

Old Borne Hill,

On the opposite side of the street, close to where St. Andrew's Church now stands, was Thavie's Inn, the most ancient of all the Inns of Court, which in the time of Edward III. was the

hospitium

Apprentices of the Law.

leads from the north of to , which is the Inn of Court in importance. It derives its name from the family of Gray de Wilton, to which it formerly belonged. Its vast pink-red court, with

the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of Queen Elizabeth,

Sir William Gascoigne, the just judge who committed Henry V. as Prince of Wales to prison for contempt of court; Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Bishop Gardiner; Lord Burleigh; Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the great Lord Bacon, were members of , as were Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Hall, and Archbishop Laud. Lord Bacon wrote the here, a work which, in spite of King James, who declared it was

like the peace of God which passeth all understanding,

Of this blest man let this just praise be given,

Heaven was in him before he was in Heaven.

Gray's Inn is a great quiet domain, quadrangle beyond quadrangle, close beside Holborn, and a large space of greensward enclosed within it. It is very strange to find so much of ancient quietude right in the monster city's very jaws, which yet the monster shall not eat up-right in its very belly, indeed, which yet, in all these ages, it shall not digest and convert into the same substance as the rest of its bustling streets. Nothing else in London is so like the effect of a spell, as to pass under one of these archways, and find yourself transported from the jumble, rush, tumult, uproar, as of an age of week-days condensed into the present hour, into what seems an eternal Sabbath.-Hawthorne, English Note Books.

is described by Dickens in The trees in (now closed to the public) were originally planted by Lord Bacon, but none remain of his time. On the west side of the gardens stood till lately, answering to his recommendation in his -

a mount of some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high, to look abroad into the fields.

When church was done, my wife and I walked to Graye's Inne, to observe the fashions of the ladies, because of my wife's making some clothes.

In Howell wrote of them as

the pleasantest place about London, with the choicest society,

I was no sooner come into

Gray's Inn

Walks, but I heard my friend (Sir Roger de Coverley) upon the terrace, hemming twice or thrice to himself with great vigour, for he loves to clear his pipes in good air (to make use of his own phrase) and is not a little pleased with any

one

who takes notice of the strength which he still exerts in his morning hems.

The characteristics of the Inns of Court are summed up in the distich-

Gray's Inn for walks, Lincoln's Inn for wall,

The Inner Temple for a garden, and the Middle for a hall.

[n.72.1] He took and furnished these rooms with £ 400 received for The Good-natured Man.

[n.90.1] Hallam, Lit. Hist. of Europe.

[n.92.1] she Duchess of Ormond was living in Great Wild Street in 1655.

[n.94.1] Supposed to have been presented for competition at the opening of the new house.