Raleigh, Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir Edward Bramston, Lord-Keeper Guildford,
Edmund Plowden,--perhaps the greatest lawyer of the Elizabethan epoch,
--"Ugly" Dunning, who afterward became Lord Ashburton, and Lord Eldon, are
among the ornaments of the British bench and bar who sprung from the
Middle Temple.

Now, however, the glories of the Middle Temple rest chiefly in the past.
It has decreased in wealth and in numbers. There is an old proverb which
says, "The Inner Temple for the rich, the Middle Temple for the poor;" and
a famous wit emphasized this saying by a happy _mot_. After one of its far
from _recherché_ dinners, he compared a gritty salad, of which he had been
unlucky enough to partake, to "eating a gravel walk and meeting an
occasional weed."

The hall of the Inner Temple is a modern building, and was opened by the
Princess Louise on May 4, 1870. More spacious than the one it replaced, it
contains a number of cosy offices and ante-rooms. There is also attached a
lunch-room for the use of members, much frequented in term-time, when at
the mid-day hour one may meet many of the great practitioners at the
English bar. Passable portraits of William and Mary, Queen Anne, Lord
Chief-Justice Coke, and Sir Thomas Littleton look upon the visitor, and
the arms of the successive treasurers of the Inn are blazoned on the walls.

The Inner Temple Library is the most attractive, quiet, and convenient of
any in the four Inns. Its plan comprises a series of book-lined apartments
leading one into another. Besides a valuable and voluminous collection of
authorities on legal topics, it possesses a unique array of works on
general subjects. It stands on the terrace, and commands a view of the
river. The noble hammer-beam roof is a fine specimen of its kind, spanning
a chamber forty-two feet wide and ninety-six feet long. One of the