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The POLICE COURTS connected with the Metropolitan Police are eleven in number, under the control of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, each presided over by a Barrister of at least seven years standing at the bar, and who sits daily, Sundays excepted. The Metropolitan Courts are— Bow-street, Clerkenwell, Great Marlborough-street, Greenwich and Woolwich, Hammersmith and Wandsworth, Lambeth, Marylebone, Southwark, Thames, Westminster, Worshipstreet; and the amount of Fees, Penalties, and Forfeitures, levied and received by the Metropolitan Police in one year is about 10,000l. The expense of the Force is defrayed by an assessment limited to 8d. in the pound on the parish rates, the deficiency being made up by the Treasury,

The Metropolitan Police Force, on the 1st of January, 1851, consisted of 5525 men, viz.:-1 Inspecting Superintendent, 18 superintendents, 124 Inspectors, 585 Serjeants, and 4797 Constables. The men are paid at various rates, averaging 188, a-week, with clothing and 40 lbs. of coal weekly to each married man all the year; 40 lbs. weekly to each single man during six months, and 20 lbs. weekly during the remainder of the year,

Before 1829, when the present excellent Police Force (for which London is wholly indebted to Sir Robert Peel) was first introduced (pursuant to 10 George IV., c. 44), the watchmen, familiarly called "Charlies," who guarded the streets of London, were often incompetent and feeble old men, totally unfitted for their duties. The Police is now composed of young and active men, and the Force that has proved perfectly effective for the metropolis (having saved it more than once from Chartist and other rioters, and from calamities such as befel Bristol in 1831) has since been introduced with equal success nearly throughout the kingdom. The number of persons taken into custody by the two Forces, between 1844 and 1848 inclusive, amounted to 374,710, The gross total number of robberies, during the same period, amounted to 70,889, the value of the property stolen to 270,945l., and the value of the property recovered to 55,167l., or about a fifth of the property stolen.

Each Policeman is dressed in blue, and has marked on his coat-collar the number and letter of his division. The City Police marking is in yellow; the Metropolitan in white. Each man is furnished with a bâton, a rattle, a lantern, an oil-skin cape, and a great-coat. It is estimated that each constable walks from 20 to 25 miles a day. During 2 months out of 3, each constable is on night duty, from 9 at night till 6 in the morning.

INNS OF COURT AND INNS OF CHANCERY.

INNS OF COURT, "the noblest nurseries of Humanity and Liberty in the kingdom," are four in number-Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn. They are called Inns of Court, from being anciently held in the "Aula Regia," or Court of the King's Palace. Their government is vested in "Benchers," consisting of the most successful and distinguished members of the English Bar-a numerous body, "composed of above 3080 Barristers, exclusive of the 28 Serjeants-at-Law." No person can be called to the bar at any of the Inns of Court before he is 21 years of age, and a standing of 5 years is understood to be required of every member before being called. The members of the several Universities, &c., may be called after 3 years' standing. Every student may, if he choose, dine in the Hall every day during term. A bottle of wine is allowed to each mess of four.

The TEMPLE is a liberty or district, divided into the Inner Temple and Middle Temple. It lies between Fleetstreet and the Thames, and was so called from the Knights Templar, who made their first London habitation in Holborn, in 1118, and removed to Fleet-street, or the New Temple, in 1184. Spenser alludes to this London locality in his beautiful Prothalamion :

"those bricky towers

The which on Thames' broad aged back doe ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride."

At the downfall of the Templars, in 1313, the New Temple in Fleet-street was given by Edward II. to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whose tomb, in Westminster Abbey, has called forth the eulogistic criticism of the classic Flaxman. At the Earl of Pembroke's death the property passed to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, by whom the Inner and Middle Temples were leased to the students of the Common Law, and the Outer Temple to Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, and Lord Treasurer, beheaded by the citizens of London in 1326. No change took place when the Temple property passed to the Crown, at the dissolution of religious houses, and the students of the Inns of Court remained tenants of the Crown till 1608, when James I. conferred the Temple (now so called) on the Benchers of the two societies and their successors for ever. There are two edifices in the Temple well worthy of a visit: the Temple

Church (serving for both Temples. See p. 117), and the Middle Temple Hall.

Middle Temple Hall, 100 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 47 feet high, was built in 1572, while Plowden, the well-known jurist, was Treasurer of the Inn. The roof is the best piece of Elizabethan architecture in London, and will well repay inspection. The screen, in the Renaissance style, is said to have been formed in exact imitation of the Strand front of old Somerset House, but this is a vulgar error, like the tradition which relates that it was made of the spoils of the Spanish Armada, the records of the Society proving that it was set up thirteen years before the Armada put to sea. Here are marble busts of Lords Eldon and Stowell, by Behnes. The portraits are chiefly copies, and not good. The exterior was cased with stone, in wretched taste, in 1757. We first hear of Shakspeare's Twelfth Night in connexion with its performance in this fine old Hall.

The principal entrance to the Middle Temple is by a heavy red-brick front in Fleet-street with stone dressings, built, in 1684, by Sir C. Wren, in place of the old portal which Sir Amias Paulet, while Wolsey's prisoner in the gate-house of the Temple, "had re-edified very sumptuously, garnishing the same," says Cavendish, "on the outside thereof, with cardinal's hats and arms, and divers other devices, in so glorious a sort, that he thought thereby to have appeased his old unkind displeasure." The New Paper Buildings, to the river, built from the designs of Sydney Smirke, A.R.A., are in excellent taste, recalling the "bricky towers" of Spenser's Prothalamion. Inner Temple Hall was refaced and repaired by Sir Robert Smirke while Jekyll, the wit, was Treasurer of the Inn, and certainly Sir Robert has made a dull joke of the restoration.

Shakespeare has made the Temple Gardens a fine open space, fronting the Thames-the place in which the distinctive badges (the white rose and red rose) of the houses of York and Lancaster were first assumed by their respective partisans.

"Suffolk. Within the Temple Hall we were too loud; The garden here is more convenient.

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46 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 brier 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.

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"Plantagenet. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
"Somerset. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?

This brawl to-day,

"Warwick.
Grown to this faction in the Temple Gardens,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."

Shakspeare, First Part of Henry VI., Act ii., sc. 4. It would now be impossible to revive the scene in the supposed place of its origin, for such is the smoke and foul air of London, that the commonest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth a bud in the Temple Gardens. The Temple is walled in on every side, and protected with gates. There is no poor-law within its precinct; and it is said that the Temple Church, though it possesses a font, is the only church in which a christening never took place. This, however, is only a vulgar error. The Cloisters, adjoining the Temple Church, were rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren for students to walk in, and put cases in law for the consideration of one another. In No. 1, Inner-Temple-lane (on the first floor), on your right as you descend the lane, Dr. Johnson had chambers, and here Boswell paid his first visit after his memorable introduction to him at Tom Davis's. In No. 2, Brick-court, Middle-Temple-lane, up two pair of stairs, for so Mr. Filby, his tailor, describes him, lived and died Oliver Goldsmith: his rooms were on the right hand as you ascend the staircase. The Earl of Mansfield, when Mr. Murray, had chambers in No. 5, King's-Bench-walk.

"To number 5 direct your doves,

There spread round Murray all your blooming loves."
Pope," To Venus," from Horace.
A second compliment by Pope to this great man occasioned
a famous parody:-

"Graced as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords."

Pope (of Lord Mansfield).
"Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks,
And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks."

Parody by Cibber,

LINCOLN'S INN is an Inn of. Court, with two Inns of Chancery attached, Furnival's Inn and Thavies' Inn, and so called after Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln (d. 1312), whose town-house, or inn, occupied a considerable portion of the present Inn of Court, which bears both his name and arms, and whose monument in old St. Paul's was one of the stateliest in the church. The Gatehouse of brick in Chancery-lane (the oldest part of the existing building) was built by Sir Thomas Lovell, and bears the date upon it of 1518. The

chambers adjoining are of a somewhat later period, and it is to this part perhaps that Fuller alludes when he says that-" He [Ben Jonson] helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in one hand, he had a book in his pocket." In No. 24, in the south angle of the great court leading out of Chancery-lane, formerly called the Gatehouse-court, but now Old-buildings, and in the apartments on the left hand of the ground floor, Oliver Cromwell's secretary, Thurloe, had chambers from 1645 to 1659. Cromwell must often have been here; and here, by the merest accident, long after Thurloe's death, the Thurloe Papers were accidentally discovered, concealed in a false ceiling.

Lincoln's Inn Chapel, in the Perpendicular style of Gothic architecture, but much defaced, was built by Inigo Jones, and consecrated on Ascension Day, 1623, Dr. Donne preaching the consecration sermon. The Roman Doric pilasters, creeping up the sides of the bastard Gothic of the crypt, deserve attention. The stained glass windows (very good for the period) were executed "by Mr. Hall, a glass-painter, in Fetter-lane, and in point of colour are as rich as the richest Decorated glass of the best period." Some of the figures will repay attention. The windows on the S. side are filled with the Twelve Apostles; on the N. by Moses and the Prophets, St. John the Baptist and St. Paul. The St. John the Baptist was executed, as an inscription in the window records, at the expense of William Noy (d. 1634), the famous Attorney-General of Charles I. The crypt beneath the chapel on open arches, like the cloisters in the Temple, was built as a place for the students and lawyers "to walk in and talk and confer their learnings." The Round part of the Temple Church was long employed for a similar purpose. Butler and Pepys allude to this custom. Here were buried Alexander Brome, the Cavalier song-writer; Secretary Thurloe; and William Prynne, the Puritan, who wrote against the "unloveliness of love locks." The inscription on Prynne's grave was obliterated when Wood drew up his Athenæ Oxonienses.

Lincoln's Inn Hall and Library, on the E. side of Lincoln's-Inn-fields (Philip Hardwick, R.A., architect), is a noble structure in the Tudor style, built, 1843-45, of red brick with stone dressings. The Hall is 120 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 62 feet high, with a roof of carved oak. The Library is 80 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 44 feet high. The amount of the contract was 55,000l., but the total cost has not yet transpired. Observe. In the Hall, Hogarth's picture of Paul before Felix, painted for the Benchers on the

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