The gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields were laid out by the great architect Inigo Jones. Up to the first quarter of the 18th century Lincoln's Inn Fields was a favorite duelling ground. Here also Babington and others who conspired for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots were executed in 1586. Lord William Russell was also executed here in 1683 because he was supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House Plot. Altogether the gardens may be said to have many gory associations of which their present appearance gives no hint. Inigo Jones the celebrated English architect has left the mark of his genius on many London structures. He was born in London in 1576 and during the reign of James I., when the main amusement of the Court was the putting on of the masques of Ben Jonson he designed the scenery for them. During this reign, too, he held the post of surveyor-general of royal buildings. Long before his death in 1653 he was known to be the first architect of England. Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre stood where is now the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons on the south side of the gardens. In this playhouse Congreve's "Love for Love," with Mrs. Bracegirdle as _Angelica_, was first produced in 1695. "The Beggar's Opera" was also first seen here, when Lavinia Fenton afterwards Duchess of Bolton was the _Polly Peacham_. This is the theatre which Pepys visited so often that, as he himself said, he made his wife "as mad as the devil." Facing Lincoln's Inn Fields on the west side is still to be seen a stone built house numbered 58, with Doric columns, quite grimy in appearance, where once lived John Forster the biographer of Dickens. In this house, Forster began the library which had grown to 18,000 volumes when he bequeathed it to the nation. Here, too, he often entertained Dickens and here heard him read in manuscript "The Chimes." Dickens made this the home of Tulkinghorn the lawyer of "Bleak House," and killed him here. There is no sign of the fore-shortened allegory on the first floor ceiling now though from appearance it might well have been there once. "Boz," writing of this first floor room declared that you might once have heard "a sound at night, as of men laughing, together with a clinking of knives and forks and wineglasses." The house was built by Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles I. In Great Queen Street at No. 56 not far from Lincoln's Inn Fields, Boswell lived and wrote the greater part of the "Life of Johnson." [Illustration: Staple Inn, looking toward Holborn Gateway] Where Gray's Inn Road touches Holborn is the old quaint gabled Staple Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery harking back to the days of James I. An arched gateway gives entrance to the interior court where flourish plane trees that look to be as old as the inn itself. It was here that Mr. Grewgious of Dickens' "Bleak House," had his chambers, and over a doorway of the court is a stone with the lettering: P J T 1747