considered the finest specimen of its class in London. The walls and windows are adorned with armorial bearings of the Templars and of members who have become peers. This Hall has a unique interest from a fact recorded by a barrister named Manning, who under date of February 2nd, 1602, records that, 'At our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night, or What you Will, much like The Comedy of Errors or Menechnie in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni.' Hence it follows that this old hall is the only building now standing in London which witnessed, during the poet's lifetime, a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays, at which Queen Elizabeth, according to tradition, was present. The fine old oak screen is said to date from 1575, and therefore cannot have been made, as popularly reported, of wood from the Spanish Armada, but it is nevertheless a handsome piece of work. Nathaniel Hawthorne found some congenial haunts in this part of London, and has described in his own fascinating manner this great hall: 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 members of the inn who have become judges; 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 illuminations of the 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.'

The New Library is a modern erection, containing about 30,000 volumes. The Hall of the Inner Temple is also a modern building, and was opened in 1870. The Temple Gardens are well kept, and annually the benchers hold a fine show of chrysanthemums. The roses have ceased to flourish here as they did in the days when Shakespeare laid in these gardens the scene of that plucking of the white and the red roses that led to so much bloodshed in the fifteenth century, between the great houses of York and Lancaster.

The references to the Temple in English literature from Chaucer downwards, and its associations with great names in English literature, as we shall see later on, are very numerous. Perhaps few of these references are so interesting, and none more musical, than that which Edmund Spenser introduces into the last complete poem he ever penned, his Prothalamium,

or Spousall Verse,' in honour of the double marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Katherine Somerset. It was written in 1596, and Spenser, very intimate with the whole neighbourhood from the fact that he had often stayed with his friend the Earl of Essex in his great mansion, of which the two lofty pillars at the end of Essex Street are a memento, represents the two brides under the image of two peerlessly white swans swimming slowly along the Thames.

At length they all to mery London came,

To mery London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this Life's first native sourse,
Though from another place I take my name,

An house of anncient fame;

There when they came, whereas those bricky towres
The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde
Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers
There whilom wont the Templer Knights to byde
Till they decayd through pride:

Next whereunto there stands a stately place,
Where oft I gayned gifts and goodly grace

Of that great Lord, which therein wont to ease

Whose want too well now feeles my freendles ease;
But ah! here fits not well

Olde woes, but joyes, to tell

Against the bridale daye, which is not long:

Sweete Themmes ! runne softly, till I end my Song.'

Nearly opposite the Fleet Street entrance to Middle Temple Lane is another famous street, renowned for its legal associations-Chancery, or as it used to be called, Chancellor's Lane. Here abound those who deal in wigs, in strong boxes, and in law books; here abound those huge piles of buildings which have sprung up during the last twenty years, full of offices for solicitors and others connected with the busy legal life of London, and here are still to be found some venerable and noted buildings. Immediately behind St. Dunstan's Church is situated what used to be known as Serjeants' Inn, the members deriving their name from the old Knights Templars' title of Freres Serjens or Fratres Servientes, as the serving brethren were called in the preceptories of that Order. Formerly the membership was confined to judges and serjeants-at-law, it having been the rule prior to the Judicature Act of 1873, that a man must have become a serjeant before he could be made a judge. But in 1877, as a result of the great legal changes made by the 1873 Act, the members sold their Inn and appropriated the sum received therefor. Very near this old Inn stood Clifford's Inn, approached from Fetter Lane. It was in the Hall of this Inn that Sir Matthew Hale and seventeen other judges adjudicated upon the numerous and delicate and complicated property claims arising out of the Great Fire, and so well did they accomplish their work that their

portraits were painted for posterity, and are still to be seen in the Guildhall. A short distance up Chancery Lane, on the eastern side, an archway admits to the dingy old court-yard in which are situated the Rolls Court and Chapel. The office of Master of the Rolls dates from Edward the Third's reign, and until recent years these functionaries lived here. The ancient house in which the Masters used to reside still stands, and is partly occupied by offices. Like so many other bits of old London, it is living a threatened life, there being some talk of utilizing the site for an extension of the Record Office. The tiny Chapel dates from 1617, and was built by Inigo Jones. It is still used for service on Sundays, and is disfigured by some of the ugliest pews that London can now show. It contains one or two good monuments of the Stuart period, but its chief glory is a magnificent specimen of Torregiano's work-the Italian artist to whom we owe the tomb of Henry VII.-in the tomb of Dr. John Yonge, Master in the reign of Henry VIII. This tomb deserves a better fate than the dingy obscurity in which it now resides. The Earl of Strafford was born in Chancery Lane in 1593, and from 1627 to 1644 Izaak Walton lived in an old house at the western corner of Fleet Street.

On the western side of Chancery Lane, about midway between Holborn and Fleet Street, is the ancient gateway, bearing the date 1518, leading into Lincoln's Inn, so called because it stands upon ground once occupied by the Earl of Lincoln's mansion. As Cromwell's secretary, John Thurloe, had rooms on the ground floor of No. 24, Old Buildings, the great Protector doubtless often passed in under this old gateway, and Sir Thomas More, Shaftesbury, Sir Matthew Hale, Thurlow, Mansfield, and Erskine, were all members of this Inn. Concealed behind a false ceiling of Thurloe's room were accidentally discovered the letters and correspondence of Thurloe with Cromwell and the Parliamentary leaders, and which now constitute the valuable documents known as the Thurloe Papers.' The chapel dates from the reign of James I., and stands upon arches which form a crypt where lawyers and clients used to meet. The stained glass windows are very rich in colouring, and there is some fine oak carving. The very large and exceedingly handsome hall and library were built by Hardwicke in 1843-45, and opened by the Queen. The library is the oldest in London, dating from 1497, and contains about forty thousand volumes, including the best law library extant. It is very rich in legal MSS. Like the Temple, Lincoln's Inn has a fine garden.

Beyond the Inn to the west is Lincoln's Inn Fields, one of the largest and pleasantest squares in London. At No. 13 is the Soane Museum, which contains a valuable and varied collection of works of art, including Hogarth's series of pictures-the Election and the Rake's Progress-twelve in all. It was in this great square that Babington and other conspirators concerned in the plots on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots were executed

in 1586, and here in 1683 was perpetrated one of the worst judicial murders that have ever occurred in English history-the execution of William, Lord Russell.

The fourth great legal centre-Gray's Inn-is situated in Holborn, on the north side, just opposite Chancery Lane. It was originally the residence

of the family of Gray of Wilton.

The hall dates from 1560. It is a very fine example of ancient work, vastly superior to the old hall of Lincoln's Inn, and little, if any, inferior to that of the Middle Temple. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth hangs in this hall, and her memory is always celebrated in a special manner on grand occasions. The gateway opening in Holborn