passage about four feet wide through the ground floor of a tenement. House
doors open into it. A lamp hangs over the entrance. A rusty iron gate
closes it at the farther end. Here is the "pestiferous and obscene
churchyard," completely hemmed in by the habitations of the living. Few of
the graves are marked, and most of the tombstones remaining are set up on
end against the walls of the houses. Perhaps a church stood there once,
but there is none now. The burials are no longer permitted in this hideous
spot, the people of the block, when they shut their doors at night, shut
the dead in with them. The dishonoring of the old graves goes on briskly.
Inside the gate lay various rubbish--a woman's boot, a broken coal
scuttle, the foot of a tin candlestick, fragments of paper, sticks, bones,
straw--unmentionable abominations; and over the dismal scene a reeking,
smoke-laden fog spread darkness and moisture.



THE TEMPLE CHURCH [Footnote: From "Walks in London."]

BY AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE


By Inner Temple Lane we reach the only existing relic of the residence of
the Knights Templars in these courts, their magnificent Temple Church (St
Mary's), which fortunately just escaped the Great Fire in which most of
the Inner Temple perished. The church was restored in 1839-42 at an
expense of £70,000, but it has been ill-done, and with great disregard of
the historic memorials it contained.

It is entered by a grand Norman arch under the western porch, which will
remind those who have traveled in France of the glorious door of Loches.