like Briareus, he had an hundred hands, they would not be too many to hunt a point through the Reports. If quiet, as Lord Byron insists, be a hell, then is he in heaven. Therefore I hold with my Lord Coke, that benè placitare ante omnia placet, now that the red-cross is sunk in night.

It is pleasant, too, to live in chambers; there is an independence about it, which pleases one. Surely Smollett must just. have taken a set before he wrote his celebrated Ode to that When that large, thick, black outer door is shut, one feels as if one could hold a siege against the whole world. The oak is strong, and the bolts are heavy, and the hinges are stout. But their chief virtue is not in excluding thieves, who seldom venture amongst the lawyers, for whom they seem to have a natural sort of antipathy: it consists in their forming an insuperable barrier against those, who would rob us of our time or our patience. If this ponderous door be closed, the chambers are presumed to be empty, and thus the lie, which is usually put in the mouth of servants, is transferred to the back of the door, which, it is presumed, cannot incur thereby any moral guilt. He must, indeed, be a Sampson of a visitor, who would offer to penetrate in spite of this refusal. There are some persons, however, so insufferably patient and obstinate, that they will wait at your door for your return; and they are more apt to do this, in proportion as their mission is disagreeable. I have frequently remarked, that these persons are generally in the habit of calling a little after Christmas, and sometimes towards the middle of the year. In this case, I have found it useful to affix a small piece of paper to the back of your door, stating that you will return in two hours: this notice, as it bears no date, in the mind of him who is reading it, always denotes two hours from that time--a vigil rather too long even for him. By this means one's meditations are not disturbed, and one gets rid of any displeasing requests, which at that season of the year might possibly be made to one.

Shakspeare has immortalized the Temple. He has made the gardens the scene of the fatal quarrel between the houses of York and Lancaster, and one can never take a walk in them without fancying one sees Richard Plantagenet and " good William de la Pole," with "Vernon and another lawyer," engaged in angry dispute. It seems, the altercation had begun in the Temple-hall, for Suffolk says,

Within the Temple-hall we were too loud,

The garden here is more convenient.

In fact, the hall at that period must have been a very common resort, or trysting-place. Thus Prince Henry says to Falstaff,

"Jack,

Meet me to-morrow in the Temple-hall

At two o'clock i'the afternoon;

There shalt thou know thy charge."--Henry IV.

and I believe it is even yet usual, in the condition of bonds, to make them payable in the dining-hall of the Inner Temple. Shakspeare also makes Warwick say,

This brawl to-day,

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

The garden must not pass without a word or two in its praise. I prefer it to Gray's-Inn garden, because it is not so confined; and to Lincoln's-Inn, because it has more variety. You have nothing but a straight walk in Lincoln's-Inn, in the Temple there are many graceful bends; and besides, the grass is more delicately mowed and rolled in the Temple. Gray's-Inn garden, to be sure, may boast the honours of an avenue of trees planted by Lord Bacon, and the ground also is agreeably diversified by hill and dale; but, on the whole, I prefer the garden of the red and white roses.

Many great men have made the Temple the place of their habitation. The first I shall mention is Richard Plantagenet, the head of the York faction; for which fact I have the same excellent authority, which has just been quoted-Shakspeare. Mortimer says to one of his jailors,

Tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?
Keep. Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come.
We sent unto the Temple to his chamber,
And answer was return'd that he will come.

It is reasonable, therefore, to presume that the great Plantagenet was at this time studying the noble science of special pleading-a strong proof of the great estimation, in which it has always been held.

Chaucer has generally been reputed a Templar. He was certainly a Londoner; for, in his Testament of Love, he calls himself Londenois, and the Magazines of the day very probably called him a cockney poet. Mr. Buckley says, he saw a record in the Inner Temple, in which Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet-street;" but I doubt whether St. Francis had any disciples in England at that time. Leland says, that after his travels in France, Collegia leguleiorum frequentavit, that is to say, he kept good company. The poet, too, must in all probability have been well acquainted with the excellence of the feasting in the Inner Temple, by the

account which he gives of the manciple or purveyor of that

society.

A manciple there was of the Temple,

Of which all catours mighte taken ensample
For to been wise in buying of witaile* ;
For whether he payd or tooke by taile,
Algate he wayted so in his achate,

That he was aye before in good estate.
Now is not that of God a full faire grace,
That such a leude man's will shall pace
The wisdom of an heap of learned men?
Of masters had he more than thrice ten,
That were of law expert and curious,

Of which there was a dozen in that house.

A Nuncio from the Pope, Innocent, in 1245 resided in the Temple, where he commanded six thousand marks to be brought to him, a measure which King Henry very wisely prohibited. That excellent monarch, King John, is also said to have honoured the Temple with a visit.

Amongst the many learned lawyers, whose names grace the annals of this society, no one should be mentioned more kindly and respectfully than the Lord-keeper Guildford. Of the characters of our other elder lawyers, but little more is known than what may be gleaned from their works, or has descended to us in the general history of their times; but of North, the very portraiture and spirit have been transmitted to us. We see him holding his grandfather's customary courts, and entrapping the simple rustics into the payment of their fines. We see him-we see him sitting in his "moiety of a petit chamber," and after taking his fulness of the reports on a morning, we follow him to the cloisters, where, in learned perambulation, he exercises both body and mind. We see him diffidently slinking into commons in the hall. We see him in old Serjeant Earle's carriage, hungry and patient, riding the circuit. We e see him rising successfully through every rank of his profession, till he grasped sorrow, and anxiety, and the seals-a combination which broke his heart. His life is, indeed, a matchless piece of biography.

But we may reckon up some illustrious Templars in later days, amongst whom stands preeminent "that renowned, irresistible Sampson," Samuel Johnson. He had chambers in Inner Temple-lane, ill-furnished and uncomfortable enough, even for an author by profession. Murphy relates, that Mr. Fitzherbert, a man distinguished through life for his benevolence and other amiable qualities, used to say, that he paid a morning visit to

* Witaile!! a clear proof of cockneyism!

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Johnson, intending from his chambers to send a letter into the city, but, to his great surprise, he found this giant of literature without pen, ink, or paper. Here, he used to write his Idler, himself no bad illustration of the title of his work; for he would frequently lie in bed until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then saturate himself with tea for two or three hours, from that tea-kettle of his "which had no time to cool." 'With tea he solaced the midnight hour, and with tea welcomed the morning." Hither also he used to convey those mysterious pieces of dried orange-rind, which so intensely excited the curiosity and wonder of Boswell, and the use of which remains to this day a marvel and a secret--be it so." Here also he used to muse over his lost Tetty, and pray for her, "as far as it might be lawful for him ;" and here his fits of morbid melancholy used to attack him, which rendered life wretched, and death terrible. In these chambers, Murphy communicated to him the first news of his pension, and argued with him that he did not come within his own definition of a pensioner. But the lexicographer shook his head, and made a long pause: a dinner however, at the Mitre the next day, overcame all his scruples, and he was pensioned accordingly. The Mitre was one of Johnson's favourite resorts, and many anecdotes of his visits there have been recorded by the tenacious memory of his toad-eater Boswell. Here, also, the enraged author levelled a folio at the head of Osborne the bookseller, for giving him the lie; and here, without doubt, he has been compelled to pass many a day impransus.

There is another person, whose shade I sometimes fancy I see flitting through the cloisters and along Pump-court to his ancient residence-poor, innocent, vain, clever Goldy! Goldsmith, when he first came to reside in the Temple, took chambers on the library staircase: he afterwards removed to King's Bench Walk :

Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks,

And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks.

And soon after he removed to No. 2, Brick-court; from whence his next removal was to a colder lodging-the Temple burialground. I almost fancied the other day, as I was passing through Brick-court, that I saw Oliver gazing out of the window of the first-floor chamber; but alas! it was some retainer of the law, who had probably never heard his name. He was ugly enough, however, to be mistaken for the doctor. In these chambers, probably, he meditated that dire revenge against the editor of the Ledger; and here perhaps he examined his horsewhip, to try whether it was tough and good. Here, he lived in disappointment, and died of Dr. James's powder. There is another man of genius also, who had chambers in the Temple for a short

time-the young and accomplished Richard West, Gray's Favonius; but the dry dusty study of the law suited not with a spirit fondly attached to the elegance of classical pursuits. It could not be said of West, that

"the smell

Of ancient parchment pleased him well."

It did not please him, and he accordingly removed as far as he could from its influence. In one of his letters to Gray, he says, "I lived in the Temple till I was sick of it. It is certain at least that I can study the law here (Bond-street), as well as I could there. My being in chambers did not signify to me a pinch of snuff." Very improper all this.

If, indeed, there be any pleasure in high associations, in dwelling where the great have dwelt, and thus tracing back the steps of time to honourable antiquity-if there be any virtue in the memory of brave deeds, or any influence in the recollection of departed wisdom, then is the edifice, which contained the bravest and most learned of our ancestors, a pleasant dwellingplace; and when I leave it-hopeless to find another spot consecrated by so much valour and so much wisdom-it should be for some angulus terræ, some wood-girt corner, which the foot of soldier or of lawyer has never yet been known to press.

E. R.

READING AND WRITING.

Accurs'd the man, whom fate ordains, in spite,
And cruel parents teach, to read and write.

CHURCHILL'S Author.

SOLOMON, whom, like Burns, I resemble in every thing-his wisdom excepted, has hinted that in much reading is much weariness: if so, this would seem, judging from the activity of the press, the most wearisome age, that ever existed since the foundation of the world. Churchill then, as quoted above, appears to be right only half way; and that, as it respects our being taught to read-unless he was so simple as to believe it necessary that an author should read, as well as write. How it might have been in his time, I cannot pretend to say, nous avons changé tout ça." Writing is clearly free from any objection, and is doubtless the most lively, agreeable, indolent, pleasant thing imaginable. Witness, for instance, the numbers, who, according to the epigram,

"Write with ease, to shew their breeding :"

but it is true that the next line intimates that

mais