In no part of London is there felt such a mixture of sensations as when we enter Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There is a tone of old-fashioned repose mixed with quaintness, and a “large air of neglect” too. There are ancient houses enough and decayed chambers. The Square itself has a certain pleasant old fashion, and is not trimmed up as are the modern ones. It is rather an old garden run to seed. There is a tradition that it is the exact area of the base of one of the Pyramids; but this has been found by measurement not to be exact. I never pass the side of the Fields that faces the Inn without examining with a deep interest the range of mansions that line it, once inhabited by personages of state and quality, now by clerks. These are of an architectural and stately pattern, and though altered, cut up, subdivided, and otherwise disfigured, can, by a little exercise of the imagination, be readily restored to their former state. The large bare and gaunt structure in Sardinia Street is the old Embassy Chapel, which dates from the seventeenth century, and the sanctuary portion of which is held to be the work of Inigo Jones. Its large vaulted ceiling is certainly in his manner, and suggests the arcades at Covent Garden. The faded old gilding and foreign decorations of the interior, the painted pillars and capitals, and the curious tiers of galleries, like the stern of a Spanish argosy, are interesting; and we call up the turbulent nights of the Gordon Riots, when it was sacked and set on fire. In one of the houses opposite Franklin lodged, with a pious Catholic widow, when he was pursuing his trade as a humble printer. The side of the Fields adjoining the chapel has a particular interest from the stately houses before alluded to. We may note the large, well-carved roses and fleur-de-lys which ornament them, and Inigo’s favourite type of stone pilasters and capitals on a brick ground. The finest and most picturesque old house to be seen in London, close by, in Great Queen Street, is also his work, and almost as he left it. The roof and the enriched capitals and bold cornices are very striking; but the lower portion has long been a shop, which makes the whole look insecure. At the corner of this street, and looking into the Fields, is the great mansion of the notorious and intriguing old Duke of Newcastle, with its courtyard in front and sweeping flight of steps--a very striking pile, with its fine stairs and stately and spacious apartments, now devoted to offices. A few doors lower down we are arrested by a large open paved courtyard, with two enormous piers capped by gigantic vases of the most massive and florid kind. Here there now appear to be two houses; but a second glance shows us that this is another imposing mansion, with a handsomely designed front, which the moderns have cut up into two: it was, in fact, the residence of the Lindseys, Earls and Dukes of Ancaster. Another mansion of theirs, even larger, is still to be seen on