's Bench Walk. A numerous crowd of footmen and
link-bearers surrounded the coach; and when the barrister entered his
chambers he encountered the mistress of that army of lackeys. "Young
man," exclaimed the grand lady, eying the future Lord Mansfield with a
look of warm displeasure, "if you mean to rise in the world, you must
not sup out." On a subsequent night Sarah of Marlborough called without
appointment at the same chambers, and waited till past midnight in the
hope that she would see the lawyer ere she went to bed. But Murray being
at an unusually late supper-party, did not return till her grace had
departed in an over-powering rage. "I could not make out, sir, who she
was," said Murray's clerk, describing her grace's appearance and manner,
"for she would not tell me her name; _but she swore so dreadfully that I
am sure she must be a lady of quality_."

Perhaps the Inns of Court may still shelter a few married ladies, who
either from love of old-world ways, or from stern necessity, consent to
dwell in their husbands' chambers. If such ladies can at the present
time be found, the writer of this page would look for them in Gray's
Inn--that straggling caravansary for the reception of money-lenders,
Bohemians, and eccentric gentlemen--rather than in the other three Inns
of Court, which have undoubtedly quite lost their old population of
lady-residents. But from those three hospices the last of the ladies
must have retreated at a comparatively recent date. Fifteen years since,
when the writer of this book was a beardless undergraduate, he had the
honor of knowing some married ladies, of good family and unblemished
repute, who lived with their husbands in the Middle Temple. One of those
ladies--the daughter of a country magistrate, the sister of a
distinguished classic scholar--was the wife of a common law barrister
who now holds a judicial appointment in one of our colonies. The women
of her old home circle occasionally called on this young wife: but as
they could not reach her quarters in Sycamore Court without attracting
much unpleasant observation, their visits were not frequent. Living in a
barrack of unwed men, that charming girl was surrounded by honest
fellows who would have resented as an insult to themselves an
impertinence offered to her. Still her life was abnormal, unnatural,
deleterious; it was felt by all who cared for her that she ought not to
be where she was; and when an appointment with a good income in