Ten months after Goldsmith was dead, Lamb was born in Crown Office row, " right op posite the stately stream which washes the garden foot with her yet scarcely tradepolluted waters, and seems but just weaned from Twickenham naiades. A man would give something to have been born in such places." That is the true spirit, and Elia may claim to have had his degree, and to have writ ten a Thesis in the essay on the Old Benchers of the In ner Temple. It be comes necessary to remember the warning of Rufus Choate about di lating with the wrong emotion, but few people will grudge E 1 i a a place in these notes on his birth place and real home. It only remains to say something of the present as pects of the Tem BRICK ple. Of late years its resident population has been decreas ing steadily, and modern changes all make for the increase of " business premises" and modern copies of " My Lord Coke's shop." Now the Templar joins in the general exodus of city folk each evening, and "the studious lawyers " whom Spenser hailed, "have their bowers" in country suburbs, such as the Temple was in olden time. Barrister and clerk, bencher and student, homeward plod, north, south, and west, leaving the little world of law and
letters to watchmen and a few scattered residents. Even the laundresses desert it, and must needs be brought from some mys terious abode in the basement or the eaves of adjacent streets. Some few tenants there are who may say with Mr. Jorrocks, "Where I dines I sleeps," — the last garrison left on the mer chant's frontier by the retreating army of the west. Why this remnant still remains is, and always will be, an insoluble mystery to most of its acquaintance. We suppose that no resident ever yet induced his female relatives to believe that there is any pleasure in the life there. One must have made trial of it to at all understand the de lights of so much Bohemianism and aesthetic discom fort. Perhaps the tenant himself has no very satisfac tory explanation of COURT his choice. He has all Teufelsdrock's liking for attics without that philosopher's clear, succinct reasons for his preference. Certainly the two popular theories — "their nearness to the courts" and "their cheapness" are equally plausible and equally delusive. The conveniences of modern travel have ex ploded the one; for the second, it is doubt ful if anywhere one may find a more excel lent opportunity of obtaining poor accom modation at a high rent than the Inns of Court afford.
