Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/144

 Round About Lincoln s Inn. The olden domes with musty tomes Of law and litigation suits, In this we'll look for a better Cook * Than he who wrote the Institutes.

In the library, which is 135 feet in length, are the accumulated volumes offive centuries; and yet the collection, in comparison with American libraries, is meager. The shelves contain the earliest editions of the Year Books in the original binding; and in the quaint covers are affixed iron hooks, origin ally intended for the insertion of chains whereby to fasten the precious volumes to their repository, and with lengths of links sufficient to allow consultation and to guard against loss. The massive bay windows at each end of the library room instance the curious love for rank and dignitaries that pervades all Great Britain. For in stead of showing in the stained glass, heral dic figures of great jurists, there are ex hibited heraldic designs showing Charles II — he there of all monarchs! who, accord ing to Rochester's celebrated lines " never said a wise thing " — also Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their son the Prince of Wales. On the library floor stands a marble statue of Erskine from the chisel of the great Westmacott. The frescoes are indeed superb — one of them by George F. Watts, R. A., (once the husband of Ellen Terry) and hav ing as a subject "The Origin of Legislation." On the wall hangs Hogarth's celebrated picture of Paul before Festus, so popularly known through numerous steel engravings But the building and the library greatly lose to the eye of an American lawyer, by com parison with the new edifice of the Bar As sociation 'of New York City that was pic tured and described in the November ( 1896) Green Bag. Sir William Vernon Harcourt's old cham bers are to be seen at the west pile of build ings, in the direction of the Royal Courts; and in them hewrote his notablcdissertations for the "Times" signed Ilistoricus, which
 * Coke in England is pronounced Cook.

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first brought him into political notice. And as he indited them he must have grimly smiled when recalling that among the old records of the benchers there can be found an old by-law, that students and resident barristers are prohibited from writing for newspapers; a by-law passed at the same time with another, strangely prohibiting the admission of any Irishman as a student. The porticos of the sixty houses in the main quadrangle, devoted to chambers of three stories, bristle with tin signs bearing only barristerial names without professional indication. Large numbers of these belong to now practising bachelor barristers, who have become more or less authors or merely resi dents so as to enjoy the social prestige of hailing, on visiting cards, from Lincoln's Inn. The parchment roll of Lincoln's Inn shows a grand list of distinguished Q. Cs. and literati, and scores who have filled judicial positions. It is not generally known to American tourists that the Lincoln's Inn hotel, fronting the Holbom end of Oxford Street, but with its rear overlooking the Inn buildings and the grand verdure of trees, shrubbery and lawn to be therein viewed from February to December, offers the choicest place of stay (or to be Londonese of "stop") in the whole metropolis. Not only are the cuisine and the attendance and lodging comforts excellent, but the guest who has rooms that overlook all Lincoln's Inn and its Fields enjoys remarkable and unforgetable rus in urbe. The American lawyer loitering in London should on arrival order his cab and luggage to this hotel of rare jurispru dential vicinage. If ever the shade of the Earl of Lincoln is permitted to haunt the precincts herein de scribed he must surely find the greatest delight in beholding the outcome of his — five centuries old — forethought in bequest; and in his immortality come to understand that his idea was an inspiration.