member before being called. The members of the several universities, &c., may, however, be called after three years' standing.

The Inner Temple Garden, three acres in extent, has probably been a garden from the time when the white-mantled Templars first came from Holborn and settled by the river-side. This little paradise of nurserymaids and London children is entered from the terrace by an iron gate (date, 1730); and the winged horse that surmounts the portal has looked

present; and when Paper Buildings were erected, part of this wall was dug up. The view given on this page, and taken from an old view in the Temple, shows a portion of the old wall, with the doorway opening upon the Temple Stairs.

The Temple Garden, half a century since, was famous for its white and red roses, the Old Provence, the Cabbage, and the Maiden's Blush; and the lime trees were delightful in the time of bloom. There were only two steamboats on the river then;

down on many a distinguished visitor. In the centre of the grass is such a sun-dial as Charles Lamb loved, with the date 1770. A little to the east of this stands an old sycamore, which, fifteen years since, was railed in as the august mummy of that umbrageous tree under whose shade, as tradition says, Johnson and Goldsmith used to sit and converse. According to an engraving of 1671 there were formerly three trees; so that Shakespeare himself may have sat under them and meditated on the Wars of the Roses. The print shows a brick terrace faced with stone, with a flight of steps at the north. The old river wall of 1670 stood fifty or sixty yards farther north than the

but the steamers and factory smoke soon spoiled everything but the hardy chrysanthemums. However, since the Smoke Consuming Act has been enforced, the roses, stocks, and hawthorns have again taken heart, and blossom with grateful luxuriance. In 1864 Mr. Broome, the zealous gardener of the Inner Temple, exhibited at the Central Horticultural Society twenty-four trusses of roses grown under his care. In the flower-beds next the main walk he managed to secure four successive crops of flowers-the pompones were especially gaudy and beautiful; but his chief triumphs were the chrysanthemums of the northern border. The trees, however, seem delicate, and suffering from the cold

In the secluded Middle Temple Garden is an old catalpa tree, supposed to have been planted by that grave and just judge, Sir Matthew Hale. On the lawn is a large table sun-dial, elaborately gilt and embellished. A magnificent new library was opened here in 1868. From the library oriel the Thames and its bridges, Somerset House and the Houses of Parliament, form a grand coup d'œil.

The revenue of the Middle Temple alone is said to be £13,000 a year. Of the savings the outside world is entirely ignorant. The students' dinners are half paid for by themselves, the library is kept up on very little fodder, and altogether the system of auditing the Inns of Court accounts is as incomprehensible as the Sybilline oracles; but there can be no doubt it is all right, and very well managed.

In the seventeenth century (says Mr. Noble) a benevolent member of the Middle Temple conveyed to the benchers in fee several houses in the City, out of the rents of which to pay a stated salary to each of two referees, who were to meet on two days weekly, in term, from two to five, in the hall or other convenient place, and without fee on either side, to settle as best they could all disputes submitted to them. From that time the

He who can enumerate the wise and great men who have been educated in the Temple can count off the stars on his finger and measure the sands of the sea-shore by teacupsful. To cull a few, we may mention that the Inner Temple boasts among its eminent members - Audley, Chancellor to Henry VIII.; Nicholas Hare, of Hare Court celebrity; the great lawyer, Littleton (1481), and Coke, his commentator; Sir Christopher Hatton, the dancing Chancellor; Lord Buckhurst; Selden; Judge Jeffries; Beaumont, the poet; William Browne, the author of "Britannia's Pastorals" (so much praised by the Lamb and Hazlitt school); Cowper, the poet; and Sir William Follett.

From the Middle Temple have also sprung swarms of great lawyers. We may mention specially Plowden, the jurist, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Overbury (who was poisoned in the Tower), John Ford (one of the latest of the great dramatists), Sir Edward Bramston (chamber-fellow to Mr. Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon), Bulstrode Whitelocke (one of Cromwell's Ministers), LordKeeper Guildford (Charles II.), Lord Chancellor Somers, Wycherley and Congreve (the dramatists), Shadwell and Southern (comedy writers), Sir William Blackstone, Edmund Burke, Sheridan, Dunning, (Lord Ashburton), Lord Chancellor Eldon, Lord Stowell, as a few among a multitude.

So rich is London in legend and tradition, that even some of the spots that now appear the blankest, baldest, and most uninteresting, are really vaults of entombed anecdote and treasurehouses of old story.

Whitefriars-that dull, narrow, uninviting lane sloping from Fleet Street to the river, with gasworks at its foot and mean shops on either sidewas once the centre of a district full of noblemen's mansions; but Time's harlequin wand by-and-by

turned it into a debtors' sanctuary and thieves' paradise, and for half a century its bullies and swindlers waged a ceaseless war with their proud and rackety neighbours of the Temple. The dingy lane, now only awakened by the quick wheel of the swift newspaper cart or the ponderous tires of the sullen coal-wagon, was in olden times for ever ringing with clash of swords, the cries of quarrelsome gamblers, and the drunken songs of noisy Bobadils.

In the reign of Edward I., a certain, Sir Robert Gray, moved by qualms of conscience or honest impulse, founded on the bank of the Thames, east of the well-guarded Temple, a Carmelite convent, with broad gardens, where the white friars might stroll, and with shady nooks where they might say their "office." Bouverie Street and Ram Alley were then part of their domain, and there they watched the river and prayed for their patrons' souls. In 1350 Courtenay, Earl of Devon, rebuilt the Whitefriars Church, and in 1420 a Bishop of Hereford added a steeple. In time, greedy hands were laid roughly on cope and chalice; and Henry VIII., seizing on the friars' domains, gave his physician-that Doctor Butts mentioned by Shakespeare-the chapter-house for a residence. Edward VI.—who, with all his promise, was as ready for such pillage as his tyrannical father-pulled down the church, and built noblemen's houses in its stead. The refectory of the convent, being preserved, afterwards became the Whitefriars Theatre. The mischievous right of sanctuary was preserved to the district, and confirmed by James I., in whose reign the slum became jocosely known as Alsatia from Alsace, that unhappy frontier then, and later, contended for by French and Germans-just as Chandos Street and that shy neighbourhood at the north-west side of the Strand used to be called the Caribbee Islands, from its countless straits and intricate thieves' passages. The outskirts of the Carmelite monastery had no doubt become disreputable at an early time, for even in Edward III.'s reign the holy friars had complained of the gross temptations of Lombard Street (an alley near Bouverie Street). Sirens and Dulcineas of all descriptions were ever apt to gather round monasteries. Whitefriars, however, even as late as Cromwell's reign, preserved a certain respectability; for here, with his supposed wife, the Dowager Countess of Kent, Selden lived and studied.

In the reign of James I. a strange murder was committed in Whitefriars. The cause of the crime was highly singular. In 1607 young Lord Sanquhar, a Scotch nobleman, who with others of his countrymen had followed his king to England, had an

eye put out by a fencing-master of Whitefriars. The young lord-a man of a very ancient, proud, and noble Scotch family, as renowned for courage as for wit-had striven to put some affront on the fencing-master at Lord Norris's house, in Oxfordshire, wishing to render him contemptible before his patrons and assistants-a common bravado of the rash Tybalts and hot-headed Mercutios of those fiery days of the duello, when even to crack a nut too loud was enough to make your tavern neighbour draw his sword. John Turner, the master, jealous of his professional honour, challenged the tyro with dagger and rapier, and, determined to chastise his ungenerous assailant, parried all his most skilful passadoes and staccatoes, and in his turn pressed Sanquhar with his foil so hotly and boldly that he unfortunately thrust out one of his eyes. The young baron, ashamed of his own rashness, and not convinced that Turner's thrust was only a slip and an accident, bore with patience several days of extreme danger. As for Turner, he displayed natural regret, and was exonerated by everybody. Some time after, Lord Sanquhar being in the court of Henry IV. of France, that chivalrous and gallant king, always courteous to strangers, seeing the patch of green taffeta, unfortunately, merely to make conversation, asked the young Scotchman how he lost his eye. Sanquhar, not willing to lose the credit of a wound, answered cannily, "It was done, your majesty, with a sword." The king replied, thoughtlessly, "Doth the man live?" and no more was said. This remark, however, awoke the viper of revenge in the young man's soul. He brooded over those words, and never ceased to dwell on the hope of some requital on his old opponent. Two years he remained in France, hoping that his wound might be cured, and at last, in despair of such a result, set sail for England, still brooding over revenge against the author of his cruel and, as it now appeared, irreparable misfortune. The King of Denmark, James's toss-pot father-in-law, was on a visit here at the time, and the court was very gay. The first news that Lord Sanquhar heard was, that the accursed Turner was down at Greenwich Palace, fencing there in public matches before the two kings. To these entertainments the young Scotchman went, and there, from some corner of a gallery, the man with a patch over his eye no doubt scowled and bit his lip at the fencing-master, as he strutted beneath, proud of his skill and flushed with triumph. The moment the prizes were given, Sanquhar hurried below, and sought Turner up and down, through court and corridor, resolved to stab him on the spot, though even drawing a