ntly a
drawing-room, and a trim, compact little kitchen. Sometimes they had two
'sets of rooms,' one above another; in which case the young wife could
have her bridesmaids to stay with her, or could offer a bed to a friend
from the country. Occasionally during the last fifty years of the last
century, they were so fortunate as to get possession of a small detached
house, originally built by a nervous bencher, who disliked the sound of
footsteps on the stairs outside his door. Time was when the Inns
comprised numerous detached houses, some of them snug dwellings, and
others imposing mansions, wherein great dignitaries lived with proper
ostentation. Most of them have bean pulled down, and their sites covered
with collegiate 'buildings;' but a few of them still remain, the grand
piles having long since been partitioned off into chambers, and the
little houses striking the eye as quaint, misplaced, insignificant
blocks of human habitation. Under the trees of Gray's Inn gardens may
be seen two modest tenements, each of them comprising some six or eight
rooms and a vestibule. At the present time they are occupied as offices
by legal practitioners, and many a day has passed since womanly taste
decorated their windows with flowers and muslin curtains; but a certain
venerable gentleman, to whom the writer of this page is indebted for
much information about the lawyers of the last century, can remember
when each of those cottages was inhabited by a barrister, his young
wife, and three or four lovely children. Into some such a house near
Lincoln's Inn, a young lawyer who was destined to hold the seals for
many years, and be also the father of a Lord Chancellor, married in the
year of our Lord, 1718. His name was Philip Yorke: and though he was of
humble birth, he had made such a figure in his profession that great
men's doors, were open to him. He was asked to dinner by learned judges,
and invited to balls by their ladies. In Chancery Lane, at the house of
Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, he met Mrs. Lygon, a beauteous
and wealthy widow, whose father was a country squire, and whose mother
was the sister of the great Lord Somers. In fact, she was a lady of such
birth, position, and jointure, that the young lawyer--rising man though
he was--seemed a poor match for her. The lady's family thought so; and
if Sir Joseph Jekyll had not cordially supported the suitor with a
letter of recommendation, her father would have rejected him