purlieus of
the Inns of Court, Shepherd's Inn is always to be found in the close
neighbourhood of Lincoln's-Inn Fields, and the Temple. Some where behind
the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street, Holywell
Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the outer world;
and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous smoky alleys,
on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers, brandy-ball and
hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for youth, dealers in
dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything but sleep, line
the narrow walls and dark casements with their wares. The doors are
many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless groups about the
steps: or around the shell-fish dealers' trays in these courts; whereof
the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are drabbled with a
never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here, in deadly
guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig administration, against
the bishops and dignified clergy, against the German relatives of an
august royal family: Punch sets up his theatre, sure of an audience, and
occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming occupants of the houses:
women scream after their children for loitering in the gutter, or, worse
still, against the husband who comes reeling from the gin-shop;--there
is a ceaseless din and life in these courts out of which you pass into
the tranquil, old-fashioned quadrangle of Shepherd's Inn. In a mangy
little grass-plat in the centre rises up the statue of Shepherd,
defended by iron railings from the assaults of boys. The hall of the
Inn, on which the founder's arms are painted, occupies one side of the
square, the tall and ancient chambers are carried round other two sides,
and over the central archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and so
into the great London thoroughfare.

The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long
since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of
the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of
the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
Genius and Capital Company, another;--the only gentleman whose
name figures here, and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears
mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and
whose West End offices are in Curzon Street, Ma