The chambers are frequently massed around four sides of a stone-paved court, from which direct entrance is had to the main staircases. In some of these flagged spaces a fountain tinkles; in others, sturdy elm- or plane-trees tower far above the red chimney-stacks; in the centre of another is the famous Temple pump. The several courts have distinguishing names, such as Garden Court, Pump Court, and Brick Court, and they connect with each other sometimes by an arched passage under the houses, at two sides of the square, or again by narrow alleys. Nor is the same level always preserved. Small flights of time-worn steps continually surprise us in our pilgrimage. The aggregate—barren courts, narrow passages, and winding lanes—forms a perfect labyrinth, very trying to a stranger or to one possessing a poor memory for localities.
The nomenclature of certain of these Temple courts possesses a breezy, countrified sound, utterly unsuggestive of musty tomes and special pleadings. Thus, we have Elm-Tree Court, Vine Court, Fig-Tree Court, and Fountain Court. The reader will recall to mind the fact that it was in the last-named locality, with its sprightly, sparkling, upward-springing stream, that Ruth Pinch—"gentle, loving Ruth"—held tryst with her lover, manly John Westlock. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, too, has embalmed this "pet and plaything of the Temple" in some pleasant stanzas:
The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,
Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind,—
Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast
The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
Away in the distance is heard the vast sound
From the streets of the city that compass it round,
Like the echo of fountains, or the ocean's deep call;
Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.
Entering the houses, we find them mostly of a stereotyped pattern. A wainscoted, dark, and generally uncarpeted staircase gives access to landings on which abut the outer doors of the "sets," or chambers. These consist of two, three, or at most four rooms, in the style peculiar to the domestic architecture of the earlier years of the present century. High corniced ceilings, wainscoted walls, and shoulder-high chimney-pieces abound. Here and there, however, some opulent tenant has modernized his rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection,—a time when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and patches. The famous garden forms one of the chief charms of the Temple enclosure, and its beauty and atmosphere of quiet repose are justly celebrated. Here Shakespeare is believed to have sat and thought out some of his most masterly creations; here many of the great legal luminaries of the last few centuries walked and talked; and here the infantile footsteps of the subsequently famous "Elia" chased butterflies across the velvety sward. "The Temple Garden," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, "has probably been a garden from the time the white-robed Templars first came from Holborn and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and its gay flower-beds, umbrageous trees, and emerald turf make it a veritable oasis to the inhabitants, and especially to the children, of that corner of the great metropolis. A pillar sundial in the centre of the grass bears the date 1770, and the iron gate, surmounted by a winged horse, which guards the entrance from the terrace, was erected in 1730. East of the sundial is a hoary old sycamore, sole survivor of three sisters, carefully protected by railings, under whose grateful shade, says local tradition, Johnson and Goldsmith were wont to chat. In the Middle Temple Garden stands a venerable catalpa-tree, planted by Sir Matthew Hale, "one of the most eminent of lawyers and excellent of men." The scene in "King Henry the Sixth,"[A] where the partisans of the rival houses of Lancaster and York assume the distinctive badges of the white and red rose, is laid in the Temple Garden. "Toward evening," says Dr. Dibdin, "it was the fashion for the leading counsel to promenade during the summer months in the Temple Gardens. Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes, at that time constituted the usual evening dress." Anciently, the "moots" were held on the terrace of the Garden at five of the clock in the long summer evenings.
[Footnote A: Part I., act 2, scene 4.]
The great hall of the Middle Temple is one of the finest Elizabethan structures in the metropolis. It was commenced in 1562, when the old hall was converted into chambers, consumed a decade in building, and is of grand proportions. It is a hundred feet long, and the massive beauty of the glossy oaken roof, almost black with age, is alone worth an Atlantic voyage to see. The walls and windows are decorated with the arms of various members of the Inn, and the paintings are numerous and of great historical interest. Over the dais is a portrait of Charles I. on horse-back, by Vandyke, one of the three original paintings of the unhappy monarch by that great master. Another of the trio is at Windsor, while the third adorns Warwick Castle. There are also copies of portraits of Charles II., James II., William III., Queen Anne, and George II., and marble busts, by Behnes, of "Doubting" Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, the great Admiralty judge. The screen and the music-gallery are marvels of the wood-carver's art. Tradition says the screen was made of oak from the timbers of the wrecked Invincible Armada; but this cannot be, inasmuch as it was set up a dozen years before the doomed squadron sailed out of Lisbon harbor.
The Middle Temple Library, a handsome building of recent erection, situated on the river side of the Inn, at the southwest corner of the Temple Gardens, was opened by the Prince of Wales, October 31, 1861. While it is of nobler proportions than the library of the Inner Temple, it does not seem to be so well suited for the purposes of the student. Its location, however, is far more pleasant, on the margin of the flower-mantled garden, and within sight of the busy Victoria Embankment and of the panoramic river scenery. From the great oriel window a noble vista is unrolled. In the distance, the twin-towered Houses of Parliament are outlined against the sky, while the massive proportions of the "water front" of Somerset House, the motley groupings of the structures that crowd the intervening water-side, and the flashing river hound by many-arched bridges, fill the middle distance.
Aside from the lustre shed around its history by many eminent lawyers and jurists, the Middle Temple has numbered among its students several great poets and dramatists, notably John Ford, William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe, Thomas Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Moore. But, as their literary remains prove, few or none of them prosecuted their legal studies with that sedulous devotion which the law, proverbially a jealous mistress, demands. Sir William Blackstone, who immortalized his name by his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," was educated in the Middle Temple, where he was entered as a student, November 20, 1741, and by which he was called to the bar, April 26, 1750. In his Temple chambers, ere he finally consecrated his massive intellect to the legal profession, Blackstone wrote the famous "Farewell to the Muses:"
Lull'd by the lapse of gliding floods,
Cheer'd by the warbling of the woods,
How blest my days, my thoughts how free,
In sweet society with thee!
Then all was joyous, all was young,
And years, unheeded, roll'd along;
But now the pleasing dream is o'er,—
These scenes must charm me now no more.
Lost to the field and torn from you,
Farewell! a long, a last adieu.
Edmund Burke was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, and kept his terms in 1750. But the great tribune was never called to the bar. Had he been, what a powerful advocate, what a pitiless adversary, he would have made! Porson, the brilliant but bibulous classicist, has left behind him many sad stories of his pranks during his residence in Essex Court, where he had chambers immediately above those occupied by the future Baron Gurney, whom, in one of his debauches, he came near burning in his bed. Chaucer is believed to have entered as a student of the Middle Temple, where he is supposed to have formed a friendship with the "moral Gower." Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir Edward Bramston, Lord-Keeper Guildford, Edmund Plowden,—perhaps the greatest lawyer of the Elizabethan epoch, —"Ugly" Dunning, who afterward became Lord Ashburton, and Lord Eldon, are among the ornaments of the British bench and bar who sprung from the Middle Temple.