On paper the scheme of the old exercises and degrees looks very imposing, and those who delight in painting fancy pictures may infer from them that the scholastic order of the colleges was perfect. Before a young man could be called to the bar, he had under ordinary circumstances to spend seven or eight years in arguing cases at the Inns of Chancery, in proving his knowledge of law and Law-French at moots, in sharpening his wits at case-putting, in patient study of the Year-Books, and in watching the trials of Westminster Hall. After his call he was required to spend another period in study and academic exercise before he presumed to raise his voice at the bar; and in his progress to the highest rank of his profession he was expected to labor in educating the students of his house as assistant-reader, single-reader, double-reader. The gravest lawyers of every inn were bound to aid in the task of teaching the mysteries of the law to the rising generation. The old ordinances assumed that the law-student was thirsting for a knowledge of law, and that the veterans were no less eager to impart it. During term law was talked in hall at dinner and supper, and after these meals the collegians argued points. "The cases were put" after the earlier repast, and twice or thrice a week moots were "brought in" after the later meal. The students were also encouraged to assemble towards the close of each day and practise 'case-putting' in their gardens and in the cloisters of the Temple or Lincoln's Inn. The 'great fire' of 1678-9 having destroyed the Temple Cloisters, some of the benchers proposed to erect chambers on the ground, to and fro upon which law-students had for generations walked whilst they wrangled aloud; but the Earl of Nottingham, recalling the days when young Heneage Finch used to put cases with his contemporary students, strangled the proposal at its birth, and Sir Christopher Wren subsequently built the Cloisters which may be seen at the present day.