Sauntering down the southerly side of Fleet Street, toward the historic spot where once stood Temple Bar, crested with its ghastly array of pike-pierced traitors' heads, the curious itinerant comes to an arched gate-way of Elizabethan architecture. The narrow lane which it guards is known as Inner Temple Street, and cleaves the Temple enclosure into unequal parts, ending at the river. Standing in the shady archway, with the roar and rattle, the glare and glitter, of Fleet Street at our backs, we instinctively feel that we are about to enter a new and strange locality, the quiet atmosphere and the cloister-like walks of which seem redolent of books and the pursuits of bookish men. We are on the threshold of the Temple,--a spot than which none in all this historic metropolis is more replete with memories of the storied past. Nor does its interest consist solely in its associations with the men and manners of a by-gone epoch. Despite its antique architecture and its quaint observances, the Temple still maintains its reputation for scholarship and legal acumen. Its virility is fitly symbolized in the venerable and vigorous trees whose branching boughs wave above its walls: sound to the core, it sends forth new scions with perennial freshness. The gray gate-way under which we have halted is one of the two chief entrances to the Temple. It was built in the reign of James I., being consequently nearly three centuries old. White-aproned porters, with numbered pewter badge on lapel, stand on either side, ready--for a consideration--to direct our transatlantic ignorance into veritable "paths of pleasantness and peace." Access to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street is had by way of another gate-house, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684, soon after the Great Fire. It is in the style of Inigo Jones, of reddish brick, with stone pointing. There are several other entrances,--many of them known only to the initiated,--through intricate courts and passages debouching on Fleet Street and the surrounding thoroughfares, and one from the river at Temple Pier; but, chiefly because of their proximity to the New Courts of Law, these two gate-ways are most frequented. The boundaries of this famous abode of British wit and intellect may be roughly sketched as follows: on the north, Fleet Street; on the south, the Thames and the Victoria Embankment; on the east, Serjeants' Inn and the Whitefriars region; on the west, Essex Street, Strand. These boundaries remain substantially as they were six or seven centuries ago. The Middle Temple lies nearest the river; the Inner Temple is nearer to Fleet Street, and "inside"--that is, on the "city" side--of Temple Bar. Essex House and its purlieus, once the abode of the powerful earls of that name, were formerly a part of the Temple. It was called the Outer Temple, because "outside" of Temple Bar.