Naturally, the solicitor (who was formerly styled an attorney, except when practicing in an equity court) was sensitive about his own position, for the passage of a now-forgotten Act of Parliament was once procured, decreeing that attorneys should thereafter be denominated as "gentlemen."
But times have changed in the law, as in other fields of activity, and sons of good families, as well as those of less degree, now enter both branches of the profession. Hence, representatives of the best names in England are to be found on the barristers' benches side by side with self-made men, some of whom have become ornaments of the Bar, and with men of divers races, such as swarthy East Indians, and Dutch South Africans. One or two barristers may even be found, who, although members of the Bar and necessarily of one of the Inns, nevertheless, remain, as born, American citizens. The Bar, in short, although a jealously close and exclusive organization, has become a less aristocratic body and is now a real republic where brains and character count.
The same diversity of origin exists amongst the solicitors, for, as has been stated, they are now, in part, recruited from those who formerly would have condescended to nothing less than the Bar. A constant improvement in training, too, in the promulgation of rules of professional conduct, in the enforcement of a firm discipline and in the nursing of traditions, all tend to raise and maintain a higher standard and a better tone than formerly existed in the ranks of the solicitors. Thus, the modern tendency is that there should be less difference in the personnel of those entering either branch of the profession.
Candidates for the Bar are mostly University men, more mature in years, perhaps, than our graduates—for boys commence and end their college courses late in England—and they are, as a rule, more broadly cultivated than those who intend to become solicitors. Some, indeed, take a full course of theoretical law at Oxford or Cambridge before beginning practical training as a student in one of the Inns of Court, which are peculiarly British institutions, having no counterpart elsewhere.
Physically, an Inn of Court is not a single edifice, nor even an enclosure. It is rather an ill-defined district in which graceful but dingy buildings of diverse pattern and of various degrees of antiquity, are closely grouped together and through which wind crooked lanes, mostly closed to traffic, but available for pedestrians. Unexpected open squares, refreshed by fountains, delight the eye, the whole affording the most peaceful quietude, despite the nearness of the roar of surrounding London. The four Inns of Court (as distinguished from the Inns of Chancery and Serjeants' Inn, all of which have ceased to exist) are, the Middle Temple, the Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn, but the last is of minor importance in these modern days, having fallen out of fashion.
The Middle Temple and the Inner Temple acquired, by lease in the XIV Century, and by actual purchase in 1609, the lands of the Knights Templar, consisting of many broad acres situated on the south side of the Strand and Fleet Street, opposite the present Law Courts Building, and the whole space is now occupied by an intricate mass of structures—the great Halls, the Libraries, the quaint barristers' chambers—and by the beautiful Temple Gardens, sloping to the Thames, adorned with bright flowers and shaded by fine trees. There is no line of demarcation between the two Temples—one simply melts into the other. They own in common the Temple Church, part of which dates from 1185, with its recumbent black marble figures of Knights in full armor and, in the churchyard, its tomb of Oliver Goldsmith.
The wonderful Hall of the Middle Temple, where the benchers, barristers and students still eat their stated dinners, was built about 1572, and is celebrated for its interior, especially for the open-work ceiling of ancient oak. Shakespeare's comedy, Twelfth Night, was performed in the Hall in 1601, and it is believed that one of the actors was the author himself. The Library is a great one, but an American lawyer may be surprised at the incompleteness of the collection of American authorities. The Hall of the Inner Temple, on the other hand, is quite modern, although most imposing and in the best of taste.
Lincoln's Inn became possessed about 1312 of what was once the country-seat of the Earl of Lincoln, which, running along Chancery Lane, adjoins the modern Law Courts Building on the north and consists of two large, open squares surrounded by rows of ancient dwellings, long since converted into barristers' chambers, and shady walks leading to a fine Hall of no great antiquity, however. An old gateway, with the arms of the Lincolns and a date, A. D. 1518, is considered a good example of red brick-work of a Gothic type—probably the only one left in London. The Library, which has been growing for over four hundred years, contains the most complete collection of books upon law and kindred subjects in England, numbering upward of 40,000 volumes.
These three Inns of Court are the active institutions; the fourth, Gray's Inn, which probably took its name from the Greys of Wilton who formerly owned its site, has long since ceased to be of much importance, although the old Hall and the classic architecture of some of the Chambers, still attracts the eye. It happens, however, that a Philadelphia student, who attended this ancient Inn nearly two hundred years ago, was responsible for the phrase still proverbial on both sides of the Atlantic, "that's a case for a Philadelphia lawyer." The unpopular Royal judges of the Province of New York had, in 1734, indicted a newspaper publisher for libel in criticising the court and they threatened to disbar any lawyer of the Province who might venture to defend him. But, from the then distant little town on the Delaware, the former student of Gray's Inn, although an old man at the time, journeyed to Albany and, by his skill and vehemence, actually procured a verdict of acquittal from the jury under the very noses of the obnoxious court; the fame of which achievement spread throughout not only the Colonies but the mother-country itself.
Names great in the law, in literature, in statecraft and in war are linked with each of these venerable establishments, to record which would mean to review much of the history of England as well as of America; for, besides the early Colonial students, a large number were entered in the different Inns during the period immediately preceding the Revolution. Of these, South Carolina sent forty-seven, Virginia twenty-one, Maryland sixteen, Pennsylvania eleven, New York five and New England two. The names of many of them are later to be found amongst the leaders of the Bar of the new country, on the bench as Chief Justices and even as signers of the Declaration of Independence.