courts and alleys were removed, the New Law Courts are rising, with a front four hundred and eighty-three feet in length towards the Strand and Fleet Street. They are built in the Decorated style from designs of G. E. Street. R.A., with the view of uniting all the principal Law Courts (hitherto divided between Lincoln's Inn and Westminster) upon one site, and they promise to form one of the handsomest piles of building in London.

A little farther down Fleet Street is the entrance of Chancery Lane, a long winding street where the great Lord Strafford was born (1593) and where Izaak Walton, "the father of angling," lived as a London linen-draper (1627-1644). Pope says

"Long Chancery Lane retentive rolls the sound."

The Lane and its surrounding streets have a peculiar legal traffic of their own, and abound in wig makers, strongbox makers, and law stationers and booksellers. In former times when the Inns of Court were more like colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and when the students which belonged to them lived together within their walls, dined together, and shared the same exercises and amusements, the Inns of Court always had Inns of Chancery annexed to them. These were houses where the younger students underwent a course of preparation for the greater freedom of the colleges of the Inns of Court, to which, says Jeaffreson, in his "Book about Lawyers," they bore much the same position as Eton bears towards King's · College at Cambridge, or Winchester to New College at Oxford. Now the Inns of Chancery are comparative

solitudes readers of Dickens will recollect the vivid de

:

scriptions of Symond's Inn in "Bleak House."

On the right of Chancery Lane, behind St. Dunstan's Church, are the dark brick courts of Serjeants' Inn, originally intended only for judges and the serjeants-at-law who derive their name from the Fratres Servientes of the Knights Templars. The serjeants still address each other as brothers. The degree of Serjeant is the highest attainable in the faculty of law, and indispensable for a seat on the judicial bench. The buildings were sold in 1877, and the little Hall (38 ft. by 21) and Chapel (31 ft. by 20)-both with richly stained windows-will probably ere long be pulled down.

The courts of Serjeants' Inn join those of the earliest foundation of those Inns of Chancery which we have been describing, Cliffora's Inn (entered from Fetter Lane), which is so called because the land on which it stands was devised in the reign of Edward II. (1310) to our beloved and faithful Robert de Clifford." It was in the hall of

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Clifford's Inn that Sir Matthew Hale and seventeen other judges sate after the Great Fire to adjudicate upon the perplexed claims of landlords and tenants in the destroyed houses-a task which they accomplished so much to the satisfaction of every one concerned that their portraits are all preserved in Guildhall in honour of patient justice.

Farther down Chancery Lane, on the same side, is an old dingy courtyard containing the Rolls Court and Chapel. The latter was originally built in the time of Henry III., but rebuilt by Inigo Jones in 1617, when Dr. Donne preached the consecration sermon. Bishop Atterbury and Bishop Butler were Preachers at the Rolls, and also Bishop Burnet, who was dismissed on account of the offence given

to King and Court, by his preaching a sermon here on the text, "Save me from the lion's mouth; thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns."

It is little known that within the walls of this ugly chapel is one of the noblest pieces of sculpture which England possesses, a tomb which may be compared for beauty with the famous monuments of Francesco Albergati at Bologna,

The

and of Bernardo Guigni in the Badia at Florence. visitor will at once be struck by the contrast of the tomb of Dr. John Young, Master of the Rolls in the time of Henry VIII., with the usual types of English monuments. The aged Master reposes in the most sublime serenity of death upon a sarcophagus, shaped like a Florentine "bridechest," within a circular arch, on the back of which the

half figure of the Saviour rises in low relief between two cherubim. In the panel of the pedestal beneath is the inscription and the date MDXVI. The whole is the work of the immortal Torregiano, who was the sculptor of Henry VII.'s tomb, and words would fail to give an idea of the infinite repose which he has here given to the venerable features of the dead. Another stately monument on the same side of the chapel commemorates Lord Bruce of Kinloss (1610), who was sent to open a secret correspondence with Cecil, under the pretence of congratulating Elizabeth on the failure of the revolt under Lord Essex, and who was afterwards rewarded by James I. with the Mastership of the Rolls. In front kneel his four children. The eldest son,

in armour, was the Lord Bruce of Kinloss who was killed in a duel with Sir Edward Sackville. On the opposite side of the altar is the tomb of Sir Richard Allington, of Horseheath (1561): he kneels with his wife at an altar on which their three daughters are represented. Amongst other Masters buried here are Sir John Strange, of whom Pennant gives the punning epitaph

"Here lies an honest lawyer, that is-Strange,"

and Sir John Trevor, Speaker of the House of Commons, who was compelled to pronounce his own conviction and dismissal for bribery. On the windows are the arms of Sir Harbottle Grimston (1594—1683), Master of the Rolls.

"He was a just judge: very slow, and ready to hear any thing that was offered, without passion or partiality. He was a very pious and devout man, and spent at least an hour in the morning and as much at night in prayer and meditation. And even in winter, when he was obliged to be very early on the bench, he took care to rise so soon that he had always the command of that time, which he gave to those exercises."-Burnet.

Chichester Rents, the name of a wretched court on the left of Chancery Lane, still commemorates the town-house of the Bishops of Chichester, built in 1228 by Bishop Ralph Nevill, Chancellor in the time of Henry III.

On the left of the lane is the noble brick Gateway of Lincoln's Inn, bearing the date 1518, and adorned with the arms of Sir Thomas Lovell, by whom it was built in the

reign of Henry VIII. It is ornamented by inlaid brickwork of different colours, in the style of Hampton Court, and is the only example remaining in London, except the gate of St. James's. Stretching along the front of the Inn, on the interior, are a number of curious towers and gables with pointed doorways and Tudor windows, forming, with the chapel opposite upon its raised arches, one of the most picturesque architectural groups in London. It is upon this