manor house, and to this day may be seen in the basement the large stone slabs of the dairy. The chapel is comparatively modern. Verulam Buildings, too, came late, and readers of Charles Lamb will recall his vigorous condemnation of them for spoiling the symmetry of the gardens—

"I am ill at dates, but I think it is now five and twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn-they were then finer than they are now— the accursed Verulam Buildings had not encroached upon all the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one of two of the stately alcoves of the terrace-the survivor stands gaping and relationless, as if it remembered its brother-they are still the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten-have the gravest character, their aspect being altogether reverend and law breathing-Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their gravel walks. . . .”

The greatest memories of Gray's Inn are Elizabethan. Every Grand Night in hall the toast is still honoured, "To the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of good Queen Bess ;" and there is doubtless substantial basis for the tradition that the Queen gave her special favour to the Inn. The oak tables and forms in the hall are said to be her gifts. Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper, and his greater son Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and Burghley, the statesmen, were members of Gray's. Sir Walter Raleigh planted the catalpa tree in the gardens, which is still able in summer to push forward a few leaves. Nor is an association with England's history older than any of these forgotten. Each night the curfew is rung at nine o'clock on the chapel bell. Gray's Inn, I may add, treasures the possession of the last surviving colony of rooks in the heart of London.

W. B.

IN

CLIFFORD'S INN

N the whole length of Fleet Street, there is one oasis in that desert of bricks and mortar that should never fail to delight the wayfarer who happens on it for the first time, nor to charm the habitué who deflects his course when near it through the quiet of Old Clifford's Inn to enjoy, perhaps on some spring morning, the delicate green of the trees in contrast to the weather-beaten brick of the old buildings. The Temple is so eminently respectable and wealthy, so proud in its security, so well cared-for, that one can spare one's affection for this last remaining backwater of Fleet Street's busy stream. The pity of it is, this delightful old Inn is doomed, unless . . . A national effort, nevertheless, should be made to preserve this old Inn, which, with the exception of Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square, is the most interesting relic of ancient Fleet Street. The old Inns of Court till comparatively recently abounded in this neighbourhood. New Inn, Danes' Inn, and Serjeants' Inn, are now things of the past, and Holborn, too, has lost Furnival's Inn and Barnard's Inn.

The oldest Inn of Chancery, founded in the reign of Edward III, Clifford's Inn has been disposed of by the Trustees, and given over to the speculative builder. Situated behind St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, by the side of which there is a passage which leads to it, the Inn extends to the ground of the Public Record Office on the north, and opens into Chancery Lane on the West and Fetter Lane on the east. It was named,

says Cunningham, "after Robert de Clifford to whom the messuage was granted by Edward II in 1310, and by whom his widow in 1344 the messuage was let to students of law, for £10 annually." Clifford's Inn can boast of some distinguished lawyers. The learned Coke resided here for a month upon leaving the University, and he afterwards entered at the Inner Temple. John Selden pursued a similar course. After the Great Fire of London, Sir Matthew Hale and the principal judges sat in the Hall of Clifford's Inn to settle any disputes that had arisen in regard to property and boundaries.

The Inn also had at one time rather an unpleasant notoriety, from the fact that all the six attorneys of the Marshalsea Court had their chambers here. From this fact it has been said by Mr. Thornbury that more misery emanated from this small spot than from any one of the most populous counties in England. The Chambers of Clifford's Inn have supplied generations of journalists and literary men with comfortable and quiet apartments in the heart of London. Among those whose names will always be associated with Clifford's Inn is George Dyer, Lamb's old friend, who lived for many years at No. 13 "like a dove in an asp's nest "-over a firm of Marshalsea attorneys. Dyer was the "Amicus Redivivus" of Elia, who, it will be remembered, when on his way to visit the Lambs at Colebrook Row, Islington, walked into the New River, but was rescued by his kind hosts, who restored him with brandy and water. Lamb and Leigh Hunt both tell some delicious stories of Dyer's absentmindedness, his simplicity of heart, and his extraordinary habit of detaching himself from the rest of the world.

Like his old friends, Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt, Dyer was educated at Christ's Hospital, which he left as a Grecian for Cambridge. He afterwards visited every University