The immortal pump, so often alluded to in the Temple annals, stands in the centre of Hare Court,--not in Pump Court, as might not unreasonably be expected. It yields a copious supply of the coolest spring-water, and the office-lads of the surrounding chambers make many pilgrimages hither, stone pitcher in hand, during the sultry summertime. Charles Lamb, in an epistle to Coleridge, in his happiest vein, says, "I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare Court's trees come in at the window,--so that it's like living in a garden." Again, writing from the Temple in 1810 to his friend Manning, who is in China, Lamb says, "The household gods are slow to come, but here I mean to live and die. Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins with you. My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent cold--with brandy, and not very insipid without." At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea. But the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal economy: he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his abstention from generous fluids was, we are forced to infer, exceedingly brief. The poet Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and ridicule in his satirical poem "The Dispensary," also humorously alludes to Hare Court's pump: And dare the college insolently aim To equal our fraternity in fame? Then let crabs' eyes with pearls for virtue try, Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie; So glowworms may compare with Titan's beams, And Hare Court pump with Aganippe's streams. The one structure in the Temple area that overshadows all others in point of interest is the famous round church, consecrated to St. Mary by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. This prelate's presence in England was on an errand to invoke the assistance of Henry II. against Saladin, who had recently inflicted several disastrous defeats on the Templars in the Holy Land.