recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it which,
from three sides, overlooks the greater garden, that goodly pile

Of buildings strong, albeit of paper hight,[A]

confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically
shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place
of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream which washes
the garden foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters and seems but
just weaned from Twickenham Na?es! A man would give something to have been
born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall where the fountain plays which I have made to rise and fall how many
times, to the astonishment of the young urchins my contemporaries, who,
not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were tempted to hail
the wondrous work as magic." Though its courts may have been "magnificent"
and "ample" to the contemplation of the kindly Lamb, they would scarce be
so accounted now.

[Footnote A: Paper Buildings.]

The "great Cham of Literature," Dr. Samuel Johnson, resided for some time
at No. 1, Inner Temple Lane. Indeed, it was while the doctor was living in
the Temple that the world-famous "Literary Club" was founded. The faithful
and receptive Boswell, too, as might be expected, lived within easy
distance of the object of his veneration, at the foot of Inner Temple
Lane. It was in 1763 that Boswell first made the acquaintance of the
"Great Bear" and called on him in his Temple chambers.

Cowper the poet, as the reader doubtless remembers, at first embraced the
law as his profession. He was duly articled to a solicitor of some