The portion of the Temple in which the old-world family life of the Inns held out the longest, is a clump of commodious houses lying between the Middle Temple Garden and Essex Street, Strand. Having their entrance-doors in Essex Street, these houses are, in fact, as private as the residences of any London quarter. The noise of the Strand reaches them, but their occupants are as secure from the impertinent gaze or unwelcome familiarities of law-students and barristers' clerks, as they would be if they lived at St. John's Wood. In Essex Street, on the eastern side, the legal families maintained their ground almost till yesterday. Fifteen years since the writer of this page used to be invited to dinners and dances in that street--dinners and dances which were attended by prosperous gentlefolk from the West End of the town. At that time he often waltzed in a drawing-room, the windows of which looked upon the spray of the fountain--at which Ruth Pinch loved to gaze when its jet resembled a wagoner's whip. How all old and precious things pass away! The dear old 'wagoner's whip' has been replaced by a pert, perky squirt that will never stir the heart or brain of a future Ruth. [1] The scandalous state of Gray's Inn at this period is shown by the following passage in Dugdale's 'Origines:'--"In 23 Eliz. (30 Jan.) there was an order made that no laundress, nor women called victuallers, should thenceforth come into the gentlemen's chambers of this society, until they were full forty years of age, and not send their maid-servants, of what age soever, in the said gentlemen's chambers, upon penalty, for the first offence of him that should admit of any such, to be put out of Commons: and for the second, to be expelled the House." The stringency and severity of this order show a determination on the part of the authorities to cure the evil. Chapter III. YORK HOUSE AND POWIS HOUSE. Whilst the great body of lawyers dwelt in or hard by the Inns, the dignitaries of the judicial bench, and the more eminent members of the bar, had suitable palaces or mansions at greater or less distances from the legal hostelries. The ecclesiastical Chancellors usually enjoyed episcopal or archiepiscopal rank, and lived in the London palaces attached to their sees or provinces. During his tenure of the seals, Morton, Bishop of Ely, years before he succeeded to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and received the honors of the Cardinalate, grew strawberries in his garden on Holborn Hill, and lived in the palace surrounded by that garden. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Chancellor Warham maintained at Lambeth Palace the imposing state commemorated by Erasmus.