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a solitary exile on board a vessel bound to New Zealand.

Occasionally, however, more pleasing incidents enliven my court. But a moment ago, I raised my eyes from this paper, and I beheld, crossing Flag Court, a gentle widow lady, supported on each side by two blooming daughters; the whole party being proudly escorted by her son, a young Hopeful, who evidently had taken, only a few months ago, by entering the Temple, the first step on the road which his fond mother doubtless feels sure will lead him to the woolsack. Candour, however, compels me to state that incidents of so agreeable a character as that which I have just described are rare in Flag Court. Policemen, gatekeepers, laundresses, attorneys' clerks, printers' devils, and porters, are, it must be confessed, its normal patrollers. By craning my body very far out of my bedroom window, I am sometimes glad to remember that I can just discern the windows of the chambers in which gentle Oliver Goldsmith lived; whilst immediately below his rooms are those which were occupied by Sir William Blackstone, whose temper, be sure, was sadly tried whilst he was engaged in the composition of his famous 'Commentaries,' by the sounds of 'revelry by night' in Mr. Goldsmith's rooms overhead!

Has my reader ever been present at a dinner in the ancient hall of the Upper Temple? If not, let me describe the scene for him. Let him imagine a well-proportioned hall of the Elizabethan style of architecture, with a lofty roof of dark oak, unsupported by pillars; down the length of the hall there run long narrow oaken tables, destined for the accommodation of barristers and students; whilst across the high end of the hall, upon a raised daïs, there is placed the benchers' table. Does the reader ask who a bencher is? My answer is, that he is a Q.C. who, having originally been called to the bar at the Upper Temple, is created, upon his attaining the rank of a Q.C., a bencher of his own Inn, and so becomes one of its governing body. In the hall are to be seen men of all ages, who are engaged in keeping terms for the bar, by eating that prescribed number of dinners which, from time immemorial, has formed so essential a part in the preparation for the English bar. The majority of faces in the hall are those of young men fresh from the universities; but here and there you see a swarthy countenance, showing that its owner is a native of the far East, and designs, when he is called, to practise before the High Court of Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay. Here and there, however, are old men who wish, from some

mysterious reason, to be elevated to the horse-hair before their approaching departure from life.

The men in the hall of the Upper Temple are very conveniently dined together in messes of four; and for each mess a complete dinner of soup, fish, joint, pastry, bread, cheese, ale, and a bottle of wine is provided. Each mess has a 'captain,' whose duty it is to see that the wine is properly decanted, &c.; and to bully the waiters, should they be remiss in their attentions. Barristers and students alike dine in gowns, but without hoods. If you want a subject for reflection during dinner, you can find it in the thought that the hall in which you are now dining is the only building still standing in London in which a play of Shakspeare's was acted during the lifetime of its author. For the knowledge of this interesting fact, we are indebted to a chance entry in the Diary of John Manningham, a member of the Temple, who records the event thus: 'Feb. 2, 1601, at our feast we had a play called "Twelve Night, or What you Will." It is probable that Shakspeare himself looked down upon the performance that night from yonder music-gallery-the exquisite wood-carving of which I should advise you to observe before you finally quit the hall.

Whenever any country friends of mine call upon

me in town, and behold the open grassy space known as the Temple Gardens, they invariably exclaim: 'What a capital place for you to walk in! One would never have imagined that, in the heart of London, there would have been such a fine open space!' 'My dear friend,' I as invariably reply, 'it is a fine open space; but I must tell you that no one who lives in the Temple ever walks in the gardens! This may surprise you, but it is

quite true.'

When, however, it is my lot to pass outside the iron railings of the Temple Gardens, I never fail to observe several nursery-maids, with troops of young children under their charge, walking in them. It has always been to me a subject of wonder to reflect upon the possible district of London from which these nursery-maids and their charges come. If I lie sleepless at night, I ruminate upon the matter. What district of London is there-I ask myself-so well to do as to employ nursery-maids to look after its children, and yet sufficiently near to the Temple Gardens as to render it reasonably probable that it would send its nursery-maids and its children to walk therein ? Although I have reflected upon this question times innumerable, I have never yet been able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Can any of my

readers help me? Yet these same Temple Gardens, though now frequented chiefly by nursery-maids and children, are not without their romantic memories. Does not Shakspeare, in the fourth scene of the second act of 'Henry VI.,' make the red and white roses-the badges of the two Houses of Lancaster and York in the famous wars of that name to be plucked in these gardens? Did not Mr. Spectator frequently walk here, looking at the ladies in their mighty hoops, and pondering, doubtless, whether he could not write a paper about them? Have not Johnson and Boswell, Garrick and Goldsmith, all sat and talked under yonder tree-whose aged limbs are so carefully supported by iron bars, or crutches,' as the poet Longfellow, when he visited the Temple a few years ago, so happily termed them? Does not Charles Lamb devote one whole charming Essay by Elia' to a description of the old benchers who solemnly paced along the river-terrace in these gardens ? Was not Mr. Arthur Pendennis seated in yonder arbour when Miss Fanny Bolton so entirely unexpectedly met him? Above all, did not Mr. George Warrington walk here with Miss Laura Bell during those happy summer evenings of Arthur Pendennis's convalescence-the history of which has been so sweetly told to us by Mr. Thackeray?

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