The present Hall of the Inner Temple, which was built on the site of a more ancient structure, supposed by Dugdale, from the form of the windows, to be about the age of Edward III., is a fine room, but comparatively small. It is ornamented with emblematical paintings by Sir James Thornhill, and contains full-length portraits, in oil, of Littleton and his commentator, honest, imperious, malignant, incorruptible Coke.

In the Hall, dinner is prepared for the members of the Inn, every day during Term time; the Masters of the Bench dining on the state, or dais, and the Barristers and Students at long tables extending down the hall to the carved screen at the western end. Students keep twelve terms at the Inns of Court, before they are entitled to be called to the Bar, and they are required to dine in hall at least four times in each term. Graduates of either University are called upon keeping a smaller number of terms.

On the "grand days" the hall is graced not only by the attendance of a large number of the members of the Inner Temple, but occasionally by the presence of the Judges, who dine in succession with each of the four Inns of Court; and on these " grand days" extra commons are served out to the students who are keeping their terms at the Inn. When the room is well illuminated, the scene has an imposing effect. At the state sit the Judges of England, surrounded by many of the leading men in the profession, Masters in Chancery, Commissioners in Bankruptcy, equity and common-law lawyers, and occasionally the Attorney or Solicitor-General for the time being; and at the tables in the body of the hall sit the men who are to take their places, when they shall have "shuffled off this mortal coil," and shall be "no more than Tully or than Hyde." How many law dignitaries, in prospectu, sit unconscious of their future greatness at these long tables!-and how many more, who find that here the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong that the highest talent is not all-powerful-that literature is regarded by the wise as an impediment to fortune and that even the plodder can accomplish little unless he has " connection!"

a

Crossing the lane which divides the Inner from the Middle Temple, the celebrated hall of the latter Inn presents itself to the view. Abutting on the garden towards the west, at the upper end of which the fountain throws up its small torrent the whole day, stands this famous hall, in which the lawyers had the honour of representing 'Twelfth Night,' probably for the first time; in which Eldon and Hardwicke have feasted, and Curran has "set the table in a roar." The Middle Temple Hall was commenced in the year 1562, and completed in 1572, in the treasurership of Edmund Plowden, the eminent jurist. The Society, by a subscription of all the members, erected the present beautiful building. Entering the hall by one of the doors beneath the music gallery, the coup d'oeil which presents itself is truly magnificent. The emblazoned arms, the elaborate carvings, Vandyke's paintings, all contribute to render this hall worthy of a Society reckoning among its members the names of Somers, Hardwicke, Cowper, Thurlow, Dunning, Eldon, Blackstone, Stowell, Tenterden, Curran, and many other legal worthies.

Standing on the raised dais, or "state," let us view the hall from its western end. The carved screen and music-gallery at the eastern end, the armour and weapons of the Elizabethan era, which are almost hidden from the view on entering the hall, form from this position as beautiful an appearance as the pictures, stained glass, elevated dais, and massive furniture give to the room when seen from the screen: the strong oaken tables extend from end to end of the hall, the same tables at which the members dined in the sixteenth century, when the noble spirits, whose arms are now em

blazoned on the walls and windows, with many more, their companions, gathered round them, some to speak of decisions by Coke, or Popham, or Bacon, some to laugh at some newly-reported anecdote of Will Shakspere or Burbage, such as we find in the Templar's Diary,' preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. This diary appears to have been kept by a member of the Society of the Middle Temple, and extends from Christmas, 1601-2, to April 14, 1603-4. The diary contains the following entry :—

"Feb. 1601.-At our fest we had a play called 'Twelfth Night; or, What you will,' much like the comedy of errors, or 'Menechmis' in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called 'Inganni.' A good practise in it to make the steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from a lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c.; and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad."

The editor of the Pictorial Edition of Shakspere thus notices this entry in connection with the noble hall :-"There is something to our minds very precious in that memorial of Shakspere which is preserved in the little Table-book of the Student of the Middle Temple: 'Feb. 2, 1601 [2]. At our feast we had a play called 'Twelfth Night; or, What you will.' What a scene do these few plain words call up before us! The Christmas festivities have lingered on till Candlemas. The Lord of Misrule has resigned his sceptre; the Fox and the Cat have been hunted round the hall; the Masters of the Revels have sung their songs; the drums are silent which lent their noisy chorus to the Marshal's proclamations; and Sir Francis Flatterer and Sir Randle Rackabite have passed into the ranks of ordinary men. But there is still a feast; and after the dinner a play; and that play Shakspere's 'Twelfth Night.' And the actual roof under which the happy company of benchers, and barristers, and students first listened to that joyous and exhilarating play, full of the truest and most beautiful humanities, especially fitted for a season of cordial mirthfulness, is still standing; and we may walk into that stately hall and think,-Here Shakspere's 'Twelfth Night' was acted in the Christmas of 1601; and here its exquisite poetry fell first upon the ear of some secluded scholar, and was to him as a fragrant flower blooming amidst the arid sands of his Bracton and his Fleta; and here its gentle satire upon the vain and the foolish penetrated into the natural heart of some grave and formal dispenser of justice, and made him look with tolerance, if not with sympathy, upon the mistakes of less grave and formal fellow-men; and here its ever-gushing spirit of enjoyment, of fun without malice, of wit without grossness, of humor without extravagance, taught the swaggering, roaring, overgrown boy, miscalled student, that there were higher sources of mirth than affrays in Fleet Street or drunkenness in Whitefriars. Venerable Hall of the Middle Temple, thou art to our eyes more stately and more to be admired since we looked upon that entry in the Table-book of John Manningham The Globe has perished, and so has the Blackfriars. The works of the poet who made the names of these frail buildings immortal need no associations to recommend them; but it is yet pleasant to know that there is one locality remaining where a play of Shakspere was listened to by his contemporaries; and that play, 'Twelfth Night.'"

LINCOLN'S INN.

LINCOLN'S INN, the next in importance to the Inner and Middle Temple, is situate on the west side of Chancery Lane, the "New Street" of Stow, and subsequently

styled "Chancellor's Lane." A considerable part of the west side of this street is occupied by the buildings of Lincoln's Inn, so called from its having been the site of the palace of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and Constable of Chester, who died there in the year 1310, into whose hands the ground passed by virtue of a grant from King Edward I. " of the old friars' house juxta Oldbourne :" the friars here mentioned were a house of Black Friars, who subsequently established themselves in the quarter now denominated from them Blackfriars. The Earl of Lincoln assigned the ground formerly occupied by these friars, and his own mansion, Chichester House, to certain professors of the law, who, adding to the space thus obtained the greater part of that belonging to the see of Chichester, built there an Inn of Court for the study of the laws of England. Part of the Inn, namely, the part which belonged to the bishopric, was leased to the Society until the twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII., when the Bishop of Chichester granted the inheritance to Francis Sulyard and his brother Eustace, both students, the survivor of whom, in the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth, sold the fee to the Benchers for £520.

The fine old gateway, or gatehouse tower, so conspicuous a feature of Chancery Lane, was the work of the early part of the sixteenth century, having been completed in the ninth year of Henry VIII., and almost entirely at the charge of Sir Thomas Lovell, the founder of Holywell Nunnery, a member of the Society of Lincoln's Inn, and a knight of the Garter. The arms of this worthy adorn the gatehouse, on which are also placed the escutcheons of the Lacy family. The gatehouse and all the buildings facing Chancery Lane are now completely saturated with smoke, but some of the buildings in the interior of the Inn, especially the "Stone Buildings," are both handsome and commodious; the chambers are chiefly occupied by chancery barristers, conveyancers, and persons in attendance on the Court of Chancery, now held in the old hall of Lincoln's Inn and in the Vice Chancellor's courts, which now occupy nearly the whole of the small square, of which the gatehouse forms the eastern side. The gardens, in which Bickerstaff (Tatler,' No. 100) delighted to walk, being privileged so to do by the Benchers “who had grown old” with him, are extensive.

From the terrace walk of the garden a fine view is obtained of Lincoln's Inn Square, one of the largest in Europe, for the embellishment of which Inigo Jones, who built the chapel of the Inn, had formed some grand ideas, intending to have built all the houses in the same style and taste, and to have laid out the garden and formed the inlets to this beautiful square on a most magnificent scale; but unfortunately his designs were never carried out, "because the inhabitants had not taste enough to be of the same mind, or to unite their sentiments for the public ornament and reputation."

The Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn, which has been repeatedly altered and modernised, was commenced in 1506, and is an exceedingly fine room, though smaller and by no means so handsome as the halls of the Inner and Middle Temple. It is used for the sittings of the Lord Chancellor out of term time. The statue of Thomas Erskine is placed at the southern end of the Hall, opposite to the chair of the Lord Chancellor. Lincoln's Inn was never behind the Temple in its masques, revels, Christmasings; nor were the exercises of dancing and singing merely permitted at this Inn, but insisted on: for, by an order, made on the 6th of February, in the 7th of James I., it appears "that the under-barristers were by decimation put out of commons, for example's sake, because the whole Bar were offended by their not dancing on the Candlemas-day preceding, according to the ancient order of the Society, when the Judges were present," and a threat that if the like fault were repeated, they should be fined or disbarred.

The new Hall and Library of Lincoln's Inn were formally "inaugurated" on the 30th of October, 1846, to which ceremony her Majesty lent the honour of her presence, as she had done just a twelvemonth before to the similar one at the Royal Exchange. The exterior of the building is of red brick and stone, in the style of the early part of the sixteenth century. The woodcut will give a general notion of its character. Of the interior we shall speak in detail.

The vestibule, which is entered by the benchers' or east porch upon the terrace,

Lincoln's Inn Hall and Library

COURT.]

CYCLOPEDIA OF LONDON.

possesses considerable architectural character, the octagonal compartment in the centre of it being carried up over the pillars and arches so as to form an additional story or clerestory, on each of whose sides is a handsome window enriched with painted glass, while the ribs and bosses of its vaulted ceiling are relieved by gilding. In addition to that proceeding from this lantern, light is obtained here by the spandrels or triangular compartments of the ceiling cut off by the octagon being glazed, and the corresponding spaces on the floor are paved with thick slabs of glass, by which means light is obtained down into the sub-hall beneath the vestibule, which lower vestibule is on the ground-floor, or that level with the terrace. Besides the four spandrel skylights in the angles of the centre division of the plan, there are two others of ground glass, viz., one in the ceiling of each of the end divisons of this entrance-hall. Taken altogether, this vestibule is pleasingly striking in effect, without its effect being disproportioned to that of the other apartments. The Drawing-room and Council-room, which very nearly resemble each other, have little else remarkable in point of architecture than their chimney-pieces and bay-windows, except their wainscoted ceilings, which, though only of deal unpainted, have the appearance of being of a very superior kind of wood, great depth of hue and lustre being imparted to it by some novel process or preparation. When entered at its upper end from the vestibule, in which direction the great south window comes immediately into view, the Hall produces an imposing effect. It is incontestably the finest apartment of the kind in the metropolis after Westminster Hall, greatly superior to those of any of the other Inns of Court, or even to that of Christ's Hospital, although the latter is somewhat larger. Neither does it yield to any of the most celebrated Halls at the Universities, or if it does in one or two particulars, it is far more complete as a whole. The fine open timber roof (after the fashion of those of Westminster Hall and Christ Church College, Oxford) would of itself alone confer an air of unusual magnificence on this spacious and lofty apartment, which magnificence is increased to splendour by the ends of the pendants being illuminated with colours and gilding, and from each of them hangs a chandelier similarly embellished. But the most striking effect as to colour is that which arises from the display of it in the windows, whose upper halves above their transoms are entirely filled in with heraldic emblazonments and devices, in such manner as to produce not only brilliancy but soberness also. The front of the gallery over the screen at the lower or south end is divided into five open arches, the piers between which form canopied tabernacle niches, in which are placed six statues by Mr. Thomas, the chief carver at the Houses of Parliament, representing Sir Matthew Hale, Archbishop Tillotson, Lord Mansfield, Lord Hardwicke, Bishop Warburton, and Sir William Grant. Over the northern entrance, from the vestibule, is the picture of 'Paul preaching before Felix,' by Hogarth, removed from the old Hall. After such array of architecture as is exhibited in this Hall, it may be supposed that the Library must show itself to some disadvantage, and so perhaps it would do were the transition from the one to the other immediate; but as the Library is at the opposite end of the vestibule, this last has again to be passed through before the Library can be reached, and on being entered it is far more likely greatly to surpass than at all to fall short of any previous idea or expectation. If less imposing for magnitude, it is, perhaps, even still more captivating, at any rate more original in character, than the Hall itself. Though the timber roof may be called plain in comparison with that of the Hall, it is sufficiently ornamental, and the two semi-octagonal oriels at the east and west ends, which extend the entire length of the room in that direction, from 80 feet, as it would otherwise be, to 90 feet, are of far more beautiful design, and more finished up than are