blous valley of the sha

bricky

ames' broad age

udious lawyers h

nt the Templar

yed through pr

f calm, collegiate aspect, of infinite peace; a peace that seems perhaps more intense in contrast with the outside, just as the London "close" of greenery seems all the greener for its being set amid the surrounding grime, shining "like a star in blackest night." Historic houses, indeed, in every sense, are these old Inns, with their worm-eaten wooden staircases, worn into holes by the passage of countless feet; their panelled walls inscribed with many names; their floors often crazy and slanting as the decks of a ship in mid-ocean. Even the so-called "laundresses" who act as caretakers and servants in these establishments, seem as though they belonged to former centuries, and were, in a manner, impervious to the flight of

t show of cheerfulness, of the frowsy "laundress," a Dickensy lady

nsday. Though not to deceive you 'm, the larst gemp

do?" I inquir

e did away with 'isself; that's wher

b, and the shadow of a dusky Roman pointing from the ceiling (as in Dickens's murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn) threateningly at that darker stain? "'Orro

y lace ruffles and knee-breeches of that picturesque period in dress. If London stones could speak, what stories could they tell! The old elm trees, planted by Bacon (Lord Verulam) that shade so charmingly the cool green sward of Gray's Inn, were comparatively youthful when Mr. Pepys walked with his lady-wife in that historic enclosure "to observe the fashions of the ladie

t saddened all his life; the murder of his mother by the hand of his dearly-loved sister, in a fit of insanity. After this terrible occurrence, the brother took his sister Mary into his charge, never after to part from her, except only for her occasional necessary periods of restraint in an asylum. In Colebrook Row, Islingto

and hi

ronghold of the Knights Templars, that powerful fraternity, so masterful in the picturesque Middle Ages; and, though the only substantial relic of them that yet exists here is the old Temple Church, their memory still lingers about these courts and gateways, adorned with their arms. And Charles Lamb,-the real child of the Temple,-has,

ur 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 immediate

beauty, like

figure, and no

oses; in late autumn it is the chrysanthemums, the special flowers of the Temple, that have their turn. Chrysanthemums are London's own flowers, and care little for soot; as for the roses, they are brought hither in masses from the country, "to make a London holiday." And, surely, never were seen such blooms as at these annual rose-shows! A Heliogabalus would indeed be in his glory. Every year new flowers, ne

brawl

faction in the

ween the red ro

ls to death an

at the average amount of sunshine yearly registered in the City was considerably

ht was s

ials point

r-dials hin

when, on some festival held at the Inner Temple, less than seventy students consumed among them thirt

ibed on one in Temple Lane; in Brick Court it is "Time and Tide tarry for no man"; in Essex C

urt," well known to lovers of Dickens. The great writer has caught the spirit of the place; where in London, indeed, has he not done so? He is, par excellence, the novelist of the city in

th had come to meet him, then he would see her; ... 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.... The Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of

ver, John Westloc

ling dimples twinkled and expanded more and more, until they

before the queen and her splendid court; "the only locality remaining where a play of Shakespeare's was listened to by his contemporaries." Even in winter Fountain Court is pretty, and its ivied trellises and arches are well kept and tended; a lovely view, too, may be enjoyed from it, down over the verdant grass sl

lath and plaster, with overhanging upper floors, and shops beneath stuffed with law stationery and requirements; the houses somewhat crumbling and dilapidated, and "with an air," like Krook's shop in Bleak House, "of being in a legal neighbourhood, and of being, as it were a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law." Every now and then, about the Temple, in odd and unexpected nooks and corners, you come upon the arms of the Knights Templars; in the Middle Temple it is th

an archway under a hairdresser's shop, which shop is inscribed somewhat romantically as "the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." (As a matter of fact it was built in James I.'s time, and belonged to Henry,

Templar's h

and lamb

matic fi

ts of th

s may infer

is their

s forth thei

their ex

e Temple Church, begun in 1185, was one of the four round churches built in England in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, after the Templars' return from the first and second crusades; mercifully escaping the Great Fire, it has not entirely escaped the hardly less dangerous ravages of the "restorer." Through a fine Norman arch, under the western porch, the Round Church of 1185 is entered. In architecture it is Norman, wi

l. They are probably the "eight images of armed knights" mentioned by Stow in 1598: some few are thought to be identified. Strange, unearthly objects! relics of a bygone order and a vanished faith,-s

east a bloudie

embrance of h

sake that glorio

living, eve

ld the like w

ope which in hi

nor lie in it), with slits towards the church so that mass might still be heard. Here the unhappy Walter le Bacheler, Grand Preceptor of Ireland,-for disobedience to the all-powerful Master,-was starved

however, the order of succession must, one thinks, have fallen into some contempt; for the church became greatly dilapidated, and the painted ceilings (according to the usual Puritan barbarism) were whitewashed, though the effigies themselves mercifully escaped destruction. Lawyers, also, us

are delicious, and Hare's Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden." Garden Court (now rebuilt), where Dickens's "Pip" lived; "Lamb Court," with the shades of Thackeray's Warrington, Pen, and Laura. Tanfield Court, less pleasantly, recalls a murder, that of old Mrs. Duncomb, killed by a Temple laundress; the murderess sitting, dressed in scarlet, to Hogart

s. The day is waning, and all too soon Embankment and gardens, river and sky, will have changed, by some mysteri

ht well live in London all one's life and never know of it. There is a certain not unpicturesque squalor about New Inn and its purlieus; it has, like so many of these places, a pathetic air as of having seen better days. Possibly, New Inn sees only too well the fate that awaits it, in the towering red-brick offices close by, that once were old Clement's Inn! "Will they 'talk of mad Shallow yet' in Clement's Inn? Alas! I fear that the dwellers in the new mansions will read little of the old traditions of the site

se, as the lair of Mr. Vholes, the grasping Chancery lawyer, is typical of many of these rusty and decaying nests. Symond's Inn, indeed, no longer exists. "

disposition retiring and in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner, and blinks at a dead wall. Three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning, and encumbered by a black bulkhead of cellarage staircase, against which belated civilians generally strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale, that one clerk can open the door without getting off his stool; while the other, who elbows him at the same desk, has equal facilities for poking the fire. A smel

reservation, that he has no eye for the picturesque interest, but is all eye for the human. Were these places dirtier in Dickens's time? That can hardly be. Why, one reflects, is there a kind of tradition in such things? even as regards the eternal cats and the equall

bouring Chancery Lane! Is she the aged pensioner of some departed inhabitant, and does she, perchance, hope to steal, unperceived, some scrap from that unsavoury basket? As she slinks along the outer railings of the Clifford's Inn enclosure, and across the irregular cobble-stones of the court, one notices that what is by courtesy termed a "garden" is merely a cat walk. It is a railed-in garden of desolation, its turf long ago forgotten, its gravel-paths even obliterated, a dingy strip of earth under a

ble trade and profession had made up its mind to live, in deadly rivalry, within the same few cubic feet of mother earth. Here, for instance, a smart kitchen, well-appointed, with shining pots and pans, looks straight into the windows of a dirty law-stationer's; there, a printing-press rumbles, cheek-by-jowl with a Fleet Street tea-shop; here a theatre stage-door ogles, at a convenient distance, the inviting back entrance of a pawnshop (both of them discreetly placed in a retiring side-alley); and there, the much populated "model" looks across, somewhat yearningly, to

of St. Dunstan's, that used to strike the hou

days would hardly now recognise the locality. A new Record Office, palatial and imposing, in the Tudor style, now extends from Chancery Lane across to Fetter Lane, covering what used to be Rolls Yard; and the old Rolls Chapel is now incorporated in the newer building. In

oln'

d for a moment to cry out against the modern taste in variegated brick-work; till on closer examination one finds it to be a faithful copy of the older style, only not yet darkened by age! So true is it, as Millais has said, that "Time is the greatest of the old Masters." And the smoke of London ages buildings quickl

8 by Sir Thomas Lowell, whose arms it bears, as well as the date of its erection. Here, tradition says, "Ben Jonson, a poor bricklayer, was found working on thi

hambers. The Protector is said to have visited his secretary here one day, and disclosed to him a plot for seizing the young princes, sons of Charles I. The plans had been discussed, when Thurloe's clerk was discovered, apparently asleep, in the room. Cromwell was for killing him, but this

or thieves and footpads, for the pillory, and also, more tragically, as a place of execution. Here the conspirators in Mary Queen of Scots'

ne state, an ancient grandeur well described in Bleak House. Here is an acc

ges, and antechambers still remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache-as would

lds to-day: and poor "Allegory" is now there for ever at a discount. The fine mansions, with their paved forecourts and massive gate-posts, have had their day, an

ve repaired and saved from destruction this historical "bit" of Old London. The picturesque gables of Staple Inn, its well-known lath-and-plaster front, would, indeed, be sadly missed if they disappeared from the line of Holborn. Nothing so well gives the idea of the London of the Tudo

seat placed, in countrified fashion, round a tree trunk; the old Hall of the Inn forming the background. It is a charming spot enough, with a mos

sion of quiet dwelling houses, with beautiful green shrubbery and grass-plots in the court, and a great many sunflowers in full bloom.... There was ... not a quiet

s thus wri

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 i

ewgious). The chambers where that gentleman is supposed to have dwelt a

ancery Lane by the new "Government Patent Office," an admirable structure as yet untouched by the mellowing London smoke. The buildings of the "Birkbeck Bank" opposite, which, in their turn, tower over the little Staple Inn Hall and garden, show,-in painful contrast both to their unobjectionable Holborn front, and to the fine simplicity of the Patent Office,-a very ornate medley of terra-cotta and Doulton-ware; a chaos of bluish-green pillars and aggressive plaques and tiles, for which, indeed, some covering of London soot is greatly to be wished. One might almost think that one had got into Messrs. Spiers and Pond's refreshment-

er L

rrow alley becomes even more wretchedly ruinous, is a barn-like place labelled "Newton Hall." It seems at a first glance to be the very abomination of desolation; its rusty door padlocked, with an air, too, of never-being-opened. Is there anything, I wondered at a first glance, more dismal in all London? Yet, on looking nearer, I seemed to see something comparatively clean shining on the wall of "Newton Hall," amid the surrounding grime. Can it be,-yes, it is,-a label,-and apparently affixed there within the memory of man: "Positivist Society." Surely, I re

dy to buy a house and garden here from Dr. Barebones, a descendant of the "Praise-God-Barebones" of Puritan times. Sir Christopher Wren concurred in the purchase, and ￡1,450 was paid for the freehold. In this house the Royal Society held their meetings till they removed to Somerset House in 1782; and they built on its garden the present "Newton Hall,"-which hall, some say, is really fr

n intense red-brick. Lastly, Barnard's Inn (originally Mackworth's Inn), a charming little Holborn Inn on a tiny scale, with small courts, trees, a miniature hall and lanthorn, has been bought up by the Mercers' Company and is used by them as a school. This Inn is therefore not now accessible to the casual visitor; its Holborn entrance may, indeed, easily be missed; "Mercers' School," in big gilt letters, adorns its narrow doorway. What a delightful private residence, one thinks, for some rich man, would such a little Inn as this have made! Strange that no rich

Gray's Inn are green and spacious, and its courts and quadrangles have a sober solidity that is very attractive. This Inn aff

s description of G

ws, 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 li

Lamb also

orgotten-have the gravest character, their aspect being altogether reverend and

on in the "Essay on Gardens"; "A mount of some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high, to look abroad into the fields." Gray's Inn Walks were, in Stuart times, very rural a

ned complaint of "the 'orrors!" And yet, with all these drawbacks, do not the suites of rooms in the Inn emanate a semi-historic charm, a charm that the newer "flats" can never, never possess? Even apart from mere history, places where people have lived and experienced and suffered, always, I think, breathe a certain humanity.... And I would rather, for my part, have a dinner of herbs in Gray's Inn, in a low-roofed panelled parlour, with windows open on to the green enclosure below,

t. For some of you, that all-invading iconoclast, the builder, will alter and destroy old landmarks; for others, but few springs, maybe, will return to awake and gladden you into green beauty of plane and elm.

actions o

and blossom