One of Dickens’s happiest scenes describes Thavies Inn, a curious little recess at the Circus end of Holborn, “a narrow street of high houses, like an oblong cistern to hold the fog.” Of Barnard’s Dickens seems to have had a poor and disparaging opinion, for it is described (by Pip) as “the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for Tom Cats.” Staple Inn is really an interesting, pretty retirement; there is a strange charm in its trees and quaint old hall, which have evoked an abundance of sentiment, and prompted some graceful sketches. Many a stranger and hurried American enters by the effective archway, leaving the din of Holborn behind, and changing of a sudden to unexpected peace as of the country, anxious to trace the abode of the characters in Edwin Drood. Mr. Grewgius’s chambers can be identified as Number 10 in the inner quadrangle, for it is described as “presenting in black and white over its ugly portal the mysterious inscription of P. J. T., 1747. Perhaps John Thomas, or perhaps Joe Tyler, for a certainty P. J. T. was Pretty Jolly Too.” Landless’s rooms are given with a graphic touch which recalls the whole place: “The top set in the corner, where a few smoky sparrows twitter in the smoky trees as though they had called to each other, ‘let us play at country.’” These old dining halls of the old inns have a certain character, with their lantern, clock and weather-cock; an honest dial generally, with bold gold figures that all the inn may read as it runs. Within, a business-like, snug chamber, with a great deal of panelling and a permanent “dinner” flavour. They really give a character or note to the little squares in which they stand. These places are gradually dwindling, and in a few years will be extinct. Close by Bream’s Buildings, out of Chancery Lane, there used to stand another inn, “Symonds’,” which it is hard to call up again, yet it disappeared only a score of years ago and figures a good deal in the legal scenery of Bleak House. “A little pale, wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symonds were a sparing man in his day, and constructed his inn of building materials which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symonds’ memory with congenial sadness.” I take from the _St. James’s Gazette_ the letter of a reminiscent who refers very pleasantly to the poetry and people which Dickens has associated with the “old inns.” I may add that in the account referred to the connection of Dickens with the old inns was purposely omitted, as the article was purely descriptive, and special books have been devoted to “Dickens in London.” [Illustration: BARNARD’S INN.]