Alas! poor youth, he little dreamt what an angel is composed of—the beatific form was evanescent; he caught the radiance, but it was unearthly—fleshless—boneless—a shadow, “an unreal mockery;” like Ixion, he had embraced—that which shall appear hereafter.
The next incomprehensible circumstance which I shall relate, occurred to myself. When I first became a resident in the Temple, “eating” my way into the technicalities of English jurisprudence, I rented chambers, consisting of a suite of three rooms and a spacious entrance hall, in one of those ancient brick tenements, which have what I believe architects call a well-staircase, built of solid timber from bottom to top, intended to last, as they have lasted, for ages. Each suite has two doors, a strong outer one, with a very substantial lock, and an inner, which can also be locked, should occasion require, or when the occupant is absent on circuit.
They are snug, cosy places—for bachelors—these Inns of Court, whether it be in the Temple, the most ancient of all, or Lincoln’s, Grey’s, Clement’s, Clifford’s, Furnival’s, Serjeant’s, or Staple’s Inn.
Most of them have extensive squares, besides gardens of great extent, with fountains and jets of water playing under old ancestral trees. All are extra parochial, and the whole have peculiar privileges—let the limbs of the law alone for that! There are gates at the various entrances, strong enough to defy the force of a battering-ram, which are carefully barred, bolted, and locked, every night at ten o’clock, and none, save inmates having chambers, are admitted after that hour.
The benchers, barristers, and students, resident within the precincts of the Temple, number from one thousand two hundred to fifteen hundred persons, which will give some idea of the extent of the societies of the Inner and Middle Temple. Respectable elderly females, called laundresses, who mostly reside in the neighborhood, come every morning to clean the rooms, light the fires, prepare breakfast, &c., &c.
That glorious spirit, Charles Lamb, was a Templer, at the time I speak of, and rented chambers not far from my own. Perchance I may hereafter give some reminiscences of dear Elia.
The first night I slept in the Temple was the most melancholy and uncomfortable which, in the whole course of my life, I remember ever to have passed.
It was toward the end of the long vacation, during autumn, when most of the profession were in the country. I felt a solemn awe steal over me as I locked the outer-door upon myself in a suite of large, lofty, gloomy rooms, some centuries old, which were wainscoted and paneled from floor to ceiling, with fifty, perhaps five hundred coats of paint, that had once been white.
Melancholy and heavy did the hours pass, until I lit my reading lamp, and took up that detested collection of Commentaries, the text book of lawyers; but I soon laid it aside in disgust. A Black-snake could not have been more loathsome to me than was Blackstone, that dismal, solitary, sad, and heavy evening.
Finding it impossible to read, or write, or do any one thing in the way of study, I passed through the hall into the very dark bed-room, and my uncomfortable fears, or fancies, induced me to take down a long antique rapier, which I had hung up at the head of my bed, and I was silly enough to plunge it underneath, in case any assassin or robber might be lying perdu under it. So “stern was the dint,” that I had some difficulty in withdrawing the point from the wainscot, into which it had penetrated on the further side of the bed. Ridiculous as it now seems, I continued this practice of pinking the panels for some nights afterward. There were five or six floors in the house, on all which were suites of chambers. Mine were on the floor which, in this country, would be called the second; in England it is known as the first. On entering from the courtyard, you ascended three stone steps into a long passage, in which were a set of chambers, directly underneath mine. At the end of the passage you ascended a short flight of nine steps to a landing, and then went up nine more, making in all eighteen steps from the entrance hall. These eighteen steps landed you close to the door of my apartments. I am thus particular for very good reasons, to be stated presently.