Turning into Holborn through the Archway of Staple Inn, and stopping for a minute to admire the fine effect of the recently restored fourteenth-century old-timbered houses of the Inn which face that thoroughfare, a few steps lower down take us to Barnard's Inn, where Pip in _Great Expectations_ lodged with his friend Herbert Pocket when he came to London. Dickens calls it, "the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for tom-cats." Simple-minded Joe Gargery, who visited Pip here, persisted for a time in calling it an "hotel," and after his visit thus recorded his impressions of the place:-- "The present may be a werry good inn, and I believe its character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in it myself--not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him." A few plane trees--the glory of all squares and open spaces in London, where they thrive so luxuriantly--give a rural appearance to this crowded place, while the sparrows tenanting them enjoy the sunbeams passing through the scanty branches. Our next halting-place, Furnival's Inn, is one of profound interest to all pious pilgrims in "Dickens-Land," for there the genius of the young author was first recognized, not only by the novel-reading world, but also by his contemporaries in literature. Thackeray generously spoke of him as "the young man who came and took his place calmly at the head of the whole tribe, and who has kept it." [Illustration: Dickens House by Furnival's Inn]