and crying "Mercy, gracious Lord, mercy," while Wolsey stood by, and the King, beneath his cloth of state, heard their defence and pronounced their pardon-the prisoners shouting with delight and casting up their halters to the Hall roof, 66 so that the King," as the chroniclers observe, "might perceive they were none of the descreetest sort.' Here the notorious Earl and Countess of Somerset were tried in the reign of James I. for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Here the great Earl of Strafford was condemned; the King being present, and the Commons sitting bareheaded all the time. Here the High Court of Justice sat which condemned King Charles I., the upper part of the Hall hung with scarlet cloth, and the King sitting covered, with the Naseby banners above his head; here Lilly, the astrologer, who was present, saw the silver top fall from the King's staff, and others heard Lady Fairfax exclaim, when her husband's name was called over, "He has more wit than to be here." Here, in the reign of James II., the seven bishops were acquitted. Here Dr. Sacheverel was tried and pronounced guilty by a majority of 17. Here the rebel Lords of 1745, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, were heard and condemned. Here Warren Hastings was tried, and Burke and Sheridan grew eloquent and impassioned, while senators by birth and election, and the beauty and rank of Great Britain, sat earnest spectators and listeners of the extraordinary scene. The last public trial in the Hall was Lord Melville's in 1806; and the last coronation dinner in the Hall was that of George IV., when, according to the custom maintained for ages, and for the last time probably, the King's champion (Dymocke) rode into the Hall in full armour, and threw down the gauntlet, challenging the world in a King's behalf. Silver plates were laid, on the same occasion, for 334 guests.' This noble Hall is 290 feet long, by 68 feet wide, and 110 feet high. It is the largest apartment not supported by pillars in the world (See also Houses of Parliament).

THE OLD BAILEY SESSIONS HOUSE, or CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, in the Old Bailey, adjoining Newgate, for the trial and conviction of prisoners for offences committed within 10 miles of St. Paul's, is regulated by Act of Parliament, 4 & 5 Will. IV., c. 36. In the "Old Court" sit one or more of the judges in Westminster Hall. In the New Court the presiding judges are the Recorder and Common Serjeant of the Corporation of London. Upwards of 2000 persons, annually, are placed at the bar of the Old Bailey for trial; about one third are acquitted, one third are first offences, and

the remaining portion have been convicted before. The stranger is admitted on payment of at least 1s. to the officer whose perquisite it is, but this perquisite is regulated by the officer himself, according to the importance of the trials that are on. Over the Court-room is a Dining-room, where the judges dine when the Court is over-a practice commemorated by a well-known line

"And wretches hang that jurymen may dine."

Adjoining the Sessions House is the prison called "Newgate." [See Index.]

The METROPOLITAN COUNTY COURTS, holding a summary jurisdiction over debts and demands not exceeding 50l., are eleven in number. The judges are barristers appointed by the Lord Chancellor. The Bankruptcy Court is in Basinghallstreet, in the City; the Insolvent Debtors Court in Portugalstreet, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.

CLERKENWELL SESSIONS HOUSE, the next in importance to the Old Bailey, was originally Hicks's Hall. The Law Court was removed hither in 1782. A fine James I. chimney-piece from the old Hall is one of the interior decorations of the House.

The CITY POLICE COURTS are at the Mansion House and Guildhall, where the Lord Mayor, or the sitting Alderman, are the magistrates who decide cases or send them for trial.

The POLICE COURTS connected with the Metropolitan Police are eleven in number, under the control of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, presided over by 23 Barristers of at least seven years' standing at the bar. They sit daily, Sundays excepted. The Metropolitan Courts areBow-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 consists of 6779 men, paid at various rates, averaging 20s. 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. The total cost for one year is 533,6227.

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 Policemen are dressed in blue, and have marked on their coat-collar the number and letter of their division. The City Police marking is in yellow; the Metropolitan in white. Every man is furnished with a bâton, a rattle, a lantern, an oil-skin cape, and a great-coat, and carries on his right wrist a white band while on duty. 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.

XVII.-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 Churches), 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.

Shakspeare 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.

66 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.

*

*

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

"Warwick.

*

This brawl to-day,

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. In the autumn, however, a fine display of Chrysanthemums, reared with great care, may be seen in them. The Temple is walled in on every side, and protected with gates. There is no poor-law within its precinct. 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, Dr. Johnson had chambers, and here Boswell paid his first visit after his memorable introduction to him at Tom Davies's. The house was pulled down in 1858. 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.