all be recognized in the very commencement of this delicious essay:

I was born, and passed the first seven years of my life in
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its
fountain, its river, I had almost said--for in those young
years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that
watered our pleasant places?--these are my oldest
recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself
more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of
Spenser, where he speaks of this spot:

"There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide,
Till they decayd through pride."

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What
a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first
time--the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street,
by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares,
its classic green recesses! what a cheerful, liberal look
hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks
the greater garden, that goodly pile

"Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,"

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)