This sketch does not aim at being a guide-book, and it would only be tedious to enumerate the many churchyards, without as well as within the City, which of late years have been made worthy “gardens of sleep.” St. Luke’s, Old Street; St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch; St. Anne’s, Soho; St. Sepulchre, Holborn, and many others in every part of the town, from being dreary and untidy, have become orderly and well kept; and instead of being unwholesome and unsightly, have become attractive harbours of refuge in the sea of streets and houses. CHAPTER XI INNS OF COURT _Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song. At length they all to mery London came,_ * * * * * _There when they came, whereas those brickly towers The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers, There whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde, Till they decayed through pride:_ * * * * * _Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song._ --SPENSER: “Prothalamion, or a Spousall Verse.” There are no more peaceful gardens in all London than those among the venerable buildings devoted to the study of the law. There is a sense of dignity and repose, the moment one has entered from the noisy thoroughfares which surround these quiet courts. They may be dark, dull, and dingy, as seen by a Dickens, and sombre and serious, to those whose business lies there; but to the ordinary Londoner, who loves the old world of the City, and the links that bind the present with the past, there are no more reposeful places than these gardens. The courts and buildings seem peopled with those who have worked and lived there. If stones could speak, what tales some of these could tell!