Bits of old London, unchanged for centuries, crop up continually in the Temple precincts, and recall the time when this was a city of timbered houses of tortuous, overhanging, insanitary alleys and lanes, easily burned, almost impossible indeed to save when once threatened by fire. Small wonder, indeed, that the great fire of 1666 destroyed so much of the Temple! Middle-Temple-Lane, narrow, crooked, dark, is one of these relics of the past. Here are some picturesque old houses of lath and plaster, with overhanging upper floors, and shops beneath stuffed with law stationery and requirements; the houses somewhat crumbling and dilapidated, and "with an air," like Krook's shop in _Bleak House_, "of being in a legal neighbourhood, and of being, as it were a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law." Every now and then, about the Temple, in odd and unexpected nooks and corners, you come upon the arms of the Knights Templars; in the Middle Temple it is the Lamb bearing the banner of Innocence, and the red cross, the original badge of the order; in the Inner Temple,--the winged Pegasus,--with the motto, "Volat ad astra virtus." This winged horse has a curious history; for, when the horse was originally chosen as an emblem, he had no wings, but was ridden by two men at once to indicate the self-chosen poverty of the brotherhood; in lapse of years the figures of the men became worn and abraded, and when restored were mistaken for wings! Middle-Temple-Lane is entered from Fleet-Street, just beyond the Temple-Bar Griffin and the imposing mass of the New Gothic Law-Courts, by a dull red-brick gateway, erected by Wren in 1684; and the Inner Temple by an archway under a hairdresser's shop, which shop is inscribed somewhat romantically as "the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." (As a matter of fact it was built in James I.'s time, and belonged to Henry, Prince of Wales; it subsequently became "Nando's Coffee-House.") These picturesque, unassuming archways bear the special arms of each Inn, and here, by the winged horse, a wit once wrote the following "pasquinade:" "As by the Templar's hold you go, The horse and lamb displayed In emblematic figures show The merits of their trade. "The clients may infer from thence How just is their profession: The lamb sets forth their innocence, The horse their expedition."