a " put-case" at the moots, and for arguing with any who would condescend to notice him; never without his books, and his bassviol, sedulous, pushing and " indifferent hon est " — a pettifogger who was to reach the woolsack. Jeffreys used to tell an absurd story of him, that in his briefless days he had been seen riding a show rhinoceros through the London streets — a baseless calumny which the Chancellor never quite lived down. As a set-off to North's early demureness comes the story of Pemberton, afterwards Chief Justice. "In his- youth," says Burnet, " he mixed with such lewd company that he quickly spent all he had, and ran so deep in debt that he was cast in to jail, where he lay many years; but he followed his studies so close in the jail that he became one of the ablest men in his pro fession." The obvious moral had better be suppressed. In a modified form it is the advice of Lord Kenyon to the young stu dent: "Let him spend all his money, marry a rich wife, spend all her's, and when he has not a shilling in the world let him attack the law." Even of the brutal Jeffreys, or Jefferies (for one may not be dogmatic where he himself was so unprejudiced — and he spelled it four different ways), there is something pleasant to be told. It is said that to him was entrusted the choice of a new organ for the Temple church, as a tribute to his taste in music. It is perhaps the only pleasant thing to be told of one who, according to Lord Campbell, " even in his youth, at marbles and leap-frog, was known to take undue advantages," and who continued through life the course of profli gacy so soon begun. To this time belongs the story of the fire which devastated half the Temple. It hap pened in January, 1678, through the ac cidental spilling of a lamp, and raged for a day and a half. On the night when it began an iron frost was on the ground, the Thames was frozen, and the Templars were hard put
to it for water. In their extremity they brought barrels of ale from the buttery and fed the engine with the malt liquor. Roger Cook has a full account of the burning in his Autobiography, a book which presents the most entertaining picture of student life after Manningham. The next- great fire in the Temple was in the young days of the late Baron Maule. That gentleman, it is said, coming home late from a supper-party, put his lighted candle under the bed — a circumstance on which we do not presume to offer any reflections. To the traveller along Fleet Street, seeing the frowning gateways that open into stonepaved alleys as dingy as themselves, the sight of that pleasant oasis, the Temple Gar dens, will come as a surprise. They cover three acres, and are glorious stretches of green even yet, with trim-kept walks and trees which not all London's dust and grime will ever spoil. Their history yields to no part of the pre cincts in age and charm. It is here that Shakespere places the quarrel of Plantaganet and Somerset and the plucking of the red and white roses of the Civil War. Some years since the garden was still famous for red and white roses — the Old Provence Cabbage and the Maiden Blush. But its chief glory now is the chrysanthemums which, exhibited at first as a kind of lusus naturae in such a place, have for some years won a sound horticultural reputation on their merits. Shakespere was the first of many dramatists to choose the garden as a scene — always, of course, by the simple expedient of an early allusion to their sur roundings by one of the characters. "When Burbage played the stage was bare Of fount and Temple, tower and stair." And so it was in Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia, whose hero is a Templar, and where Mrs. Bracegirdle played the ingenue. Shadwell was a member of the Middle Temple, and gives an excellent portrait of the law student of the time, with many wise reflections on
