Temple Students and Temple Studies.
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It is perhaps fair to say at once that one corruption " is sometimes, and justly, a mat element, at least, of romance is lacking. The ter of expediency, and we shall be doing Temple is not like Oxford — home of lost Templars no great wrong if we say that what causes and impossible ideals — whose very Hooker, as master of the Temple, called the " eye of civilization " has sometimes impractical enthusiasms are a spur to affec tion. From this point of view it has gen had a squint in favor of the dominant party. erally been the Templars' misfortune to It is very much to its credit that it has been be successful. no such villainThere has been o u s obliquity no leading of as has marked forlorn hopes most other or desperate public institu resistances. tions at one They have nev time or anoth er had to stand er. the b r unt of The scattered organized per notes which fol secution; not low may serve for many cen to gather up turies has there some Temple been such a legends worth harrying of the recalling. Temple as fell For the most on the Com of the buildings mons under in London, east Cromwell, or ward of Temple the Church un Bar, the great der James. fire of 1666 is They have the beginning made even treaof history. son business That burning like, and have only singed the seen always outskirts of the where came in Temple, a n d, the possibility although at vaof successful re- : rious times sistance or the there have been SIR EDWARD COKE. wisdom of re smaller fires, form. "Their manners," says Bishop which have cleared away much that be Warburton, " have, in every age, been longed to Tudor times, there still remain such as were the first improved and the the Temple Church, the Middle Temple last corrupted." It is certain that the Hall, and some corners, here and there, Bishop intended to be complimentary — that boast an even longer life. History he was addressing lawyers at the time — but begins here with the Temple Church, the phrase is capable of two interpretations. raised in 1184 by the Knights Templars In such debateable matters as politics and in the likeness of the Church of the Holy religion the line between " improvement and Sepulchre. With the extinction of the
