ROUND ABOUT LINCOLN'S INN. THE American lawyer while at home reads and hears the most about the Inner and Middle Temple Inns of Court in London; and whenever visiting that me tropolis he saunters the oftenest through their closes, while more or less neglecting Lincoln's Inn that boasts the former member ship of Sir Thomas More, Mansfield, the younger Pitt, as also Treasurer Erskine, Canning, Brougham, Lyndhurst, Cottenham, Campbell, Sugden (a quintette of Lord Chancellors) and also William Penn. While the Temples confront one side of the Royal Courts, Lincoln's Inn abuts upon the other side of them, and has less modern or open views than the Temples but is farther removed from din and traffic. Lincoln's Inn buildings possess indeed a cloistered appearance. Well they may; for its early site in the 1 3th century was occupied by the indigent community of the Black Friars. From these monks the grounds and spacious gardens that reach from a front on Chancery (in early times Chancellor's) Lane over to Little Queen Street — and contain ing the well-known Lincoln's Inn Fields, around the four sides of which cluster the work-a-day offices of three hundred barris ters, —their chambers relieved by the pres ence of Sir John Soane's museum and the College of Royal Surgeons, and the rear of the spacious hostlery known as Lincoln's Inn hotel. From those monks a mediaeval Earl of Lincoln bought their great acreage; and on it built a spacious mansion, which in those days was always called an inn, quite as in Paris a spacious mansion is named hotel. When this Earl died in the reign of weak and vacillating Edward II, he bequeathed Lincoln's Inn and all its mes suages to " the most worshipful society of lawyers " of his day; who assumed pos session for purposes of promoting legal
schooling and enjoying comradeship. He died in 1 3 11, and as a legalico property Lincoln's Inn has since remained. In due time more area was added, by purchases of adjacent land from the bishops who held glebe lands in the vicinity. The ancient walls, and the ancient mediaeval gate of massive oak studded with iron bolts, that fairly menaces the business of Chancery Lane, and also rows of 14th century brick houses still re main intact, surrounded by modern and im posing structures. From time to time new erections were made on the old grounds; the primitive wooden fence around the " Fields" (for in the 15th century the Inn was still suburban to the city below) was changed in to decorated iron railings, and the library — also bequeathed in its beginnings by the Earl — was from time to time increased under supervision of the benchers; (so called because in term time they were seated on raised benches in the refectory hall, while their students sat eating dinners which, on stated number, solely admitted them to the bar.) The present library and hall edifice of proud architecture was built in the center of the Inn grounds proper in 1843; and at the laying of its corner-stone by the Queen and the Prince Consort, there assisted both Disraeli, who had been an uncalled student of the Inn in 1824, and Gladstone, who be came a student three years later. On the presentation stone may be seen sculptured : "Stet lapis arboribus nudo defixus in horto Fundamen pulchrte tempus in omne domus, Aula vetus lites et legum tenigmata servet Ipsa novo exterior nobilitandu coquo."
Which a waggish bencher at the time freely translated thus into English verse : The trees of yore are seen no more, Unshaken now the garden lies; May the red bricks that here we fix Be lasting as our equities :
