ily; the ladies attired in their newest fashions, and the children
running with musical riot over lawns and paths. Nor were the grounds
mere places of resort for lawyers and their families. Taking rank
amongst the pleasant places of the metropolis, they attracted, on 'open
days,' crowds from every quarter of the town--ladies and gallants from
Soho Square and St. James's Street, from Whitehall and Westminster;
sightseers from the country and gorgeous alderwomic dowagers from
Cheapside. From the days of Elizabeth till the middle, indeed till the
close, of the eighteenth century the ornamental grounds of the four
great Inns were places of fashionable promenade, where the rank and
talent and beauty of the town assembled for display and exercise, even
as in our own time they assemble (less universally) in Hyde Park and
Kensington Gardens.

When ladies and children had withdrawn, the quietude of the gardens
lured from their chambers scholars and poets, who under murmuring
branches pondered the results of past study, or planned new works. Ben
Jonson was accustomed to saunter beneath the elms of Lincoln's Inn; and
Steele--alike on 'open' and 'close' days--used to frequent the gardens
of the same society. "I went," he writes in May, 1809, "into Lincoln's
Inn Walks, and having taking a round or two, I sat down, according to
the allowed familiarity of these places, on a bench." In the following
November he alludes to the privilege that he enjoyed of walking there
as "a favor that is indulged me by several of the benchers, who are very
intimate friends, and grown in the neighborhood."

But though on certain days, and under fixed regulations, the outside
public were admitted to the college gardens, the assemblages were always
pervaded by the tone and humor of the law. The courtiers and grand
ladies from 'the west' felt themselves the guests of the lawyers; and
the humbler folk, who by special grant had acquired the privilege of
entry, or whose decent attire and aspect satisfied the janitors of their
respectability, moved about with watchfulness and gravity, surveying the
counsellors and their ladies with admiring eyes, and extolling the
benchers whose benevolence permitted simple tradespeople to take the air
side by side with 'the quality.' In 1736, James Ralph, in his 'New
Critical Review of the Publick Buildings,' wrote about the square and
gardens of Lincoln's Inn in a manner which testifies to the respectful
gratitude of the pu