"I went astray" (he says) "in Holborn, through an arched entrance, over which was 'Staple Inn' ... but in a court opening inwards from this was a surrounding seclusion of quiet dwelling houses, with beautiful green shrubbery and grass-plots in the court, and a great many sunflowers in full bloom.... There was ... not a quieter spot in England than this. In all the hundreds of years since London was built, it has not been able to sweep its roaring tide over that little island of quiet." And Dickens thus writes of it: "Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking out on the public way ... is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to one another, 'Let us play at country.'" Dickens made this the abode of his kindly lawyer of _Edwin Drood_ (Mr. Grewgious). The chambers where that gentleman is supposed to have dwelt are marked on a stone above the doorway, with initials, and a date--1747. Beyond the first square, through another archway, a garden-plot is reached, the garden of the Hall. Very picturesque is this old Hall, long and low, with gabled lanthorns,--one large, one small,--and high timber roofs. The garden plot is bright even in winter, with variegated laurels and a privet hedge; these, with the darkened red-brick of the old Hall, make a charming picture. Opposite the garden-court extends the new and very attractive modern building of 1843, on a raised terrace: designed in early Jacobean style, and of a simple dignity that does not quarrel with its surroundings. This line of buildings is continued towards Chancery Lane by the new "Government Patent Office," an admirable structure as yet untouched by the mellowing London smoke. The buildings of the "Birkbeck Bank" opposite, which, in their turn, tower over the little Staple Inn Hall and garden, show,--in painful contrast both to their unobjectionable Holborn front, and to the fine simplicity of the Patent Office,--a very ornate medley of terra-cotta and Doulton-ware; a chaos of bluish-green pillars and aggressive plaques and tiles, for which, indeed, some covering of London soot is greatly to be wished. One might almost think that one had got into Messrs. Spiers and Pond's refreshment-rooms or a "Central-Railway-station" by mistake. Disillusions, however, are frequent in this semi-chaotic region of new and old buildings, and it must be confessed that the back of the Patent Office (in "Quality Court") is somewhat disappointing after its front view; it resembles, with its old, blackened pillars, a disused