Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/137

Rh felt a greater interest in that institution than in the others, and I took my people to see its ancient halls and gardens. We crossed the Strand near the Temple Bar, removed since I was student here and replaced by a monument to mark this ancient limit of the City. We went through the narrow lane

and we came to the stately ancient hall where we had our dinners along with venerable Benchers and rising Barristers and Students like ourselves,—imbibing with our substantial dinners those legal associations with which the atmosphere was supposed to be full! And in those good old days, these dinners (besides attendance at certain lectures) were considered a sufficient qualification for a young man to be called to the Bar! Coats of Arms of valiant knights decorated the walls, painted windows threw a dim light on the floor, royalty looked down benignantly from the ancient oil paintings, and the great old oaken wall, supposed to have been a trophy from one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, threw an air of solemnity over the ancient and venerable hall.

I took my wife thence to the library and we looked down from the window of that hall on the busy Thames crowded with traffic. The gardens and the different courts of the Middle Temple are pleasant and green. In the Fountain Court I called on a friend whom I had known eighteen years ago. He was a young barrister then, full of academical and legal honors, but struggling hard for a footing in the great arena of London where so