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 Gray's Inn.

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of his own chambers he may unbend and trusted the task of laying out the gardens emulate the genial " Traddles " himself. which are still in existence,— an oasis of trees Like " Traddles" he may vary the monotony and flowers in a desert of dismal brick. of reading law by playing " Puss in the Here Bacon talked with Raleigh just before Corner" with such ladies of his acquaintance that hopeless, visionary voyage in search of as he can induce to join him. But among El Dorado. Here he spent many an hour in his kind, and at the functions of his Inn, the heyday of his fame, and here he r.ehe is far better-behaved and by that, per turned, in the winter of his life, a lonely, haps, less interesting than his Elizabethan disappointed man. In the days of predecessor. Charles II. all fashion It is on Grand Days, able London flocked especially, that one sees traces of the old to Gray's Inn Gar customs lingering in dens to see and be the lap of the present seen. Gossipy Pepys, era. Now, as then, that prince of smallthe grace-cup before beer chroniclers, came on Sundays with his the meal, and the lov wife " to observe the ing-cup at its conclu fashions of the ladies, sion, are passed from because of my wife's hand to hand, from making some clothes." the senior Bencher Here, too, the old to the junior student. reprobate came " all Still do they drink the single toast to " the alone, and with great pleasure seeing the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of fine ladies walk." It good Queen Bess;" was to Gray's Inn and still, we suppose, walks that Sir Roger when the tables are de Coverley repaired "to clear his pipes cleared and the in good air," and to Benchers discreetly withdrawn, do the deliver his opinions FIELD COURT — GRAY'S INN GARDEN. on Church and State members, in some and Prince Eugene. sort, atone for the melancholy lack of excitement and romance There is a certain literary halo hanging in a student's life to-day. round the dingy staircases and gloomy Gibbon tells us that he sought inspiration chambers. Dr. Johnson had rooms in the for his awe-inspiring history under a broken Inn, — probably in South Square. Thence, column of the Capitol. Surely, if old associa doubtless, he emerged to do battle with the tions count for anything at all, Macaulay's luckless Osborne, who had his bookseller's New Zealander (if he be of a literary bent) shop under Gray's Inn gateway. Goldsmith would do well to write his " Decline and Fall " stayed in the Inn for a time, while away from within the ruins of the old Inn. Gascoigne the care of Mrs. Fleming, that best of land and Thomas Cromwell, Burleigh and Bacon, ladies. At No. 8 South Square, Macaulay are among its old alumni. The last, espe stayed for fifteen years while in the zenith cially, had an affection for the place which of his fame. only ended at his death. To him was enPoets the Inn has had galore. Chapman,