When the lawyers came into the Temple, they found engraved upon the antient buildings the armorial bearings of the Knights Templars, which were, on a shield argent, a plain cross gules, and (_brochant sur le tout_) the holy lamb bearing the banner of the order, surmounted by a red cross. These arms remained the emblem of the Temple until the fifth year of the reign of queen Elizabeth, when unfortunately the society of the Inner Temple, yielding to the advice and persuasion of Master Gerard Leigh, a member of the College of Heralds, abandoned the antient and honourable device of the Knights Templars, and assumed in its place a galloping winged horse called a Pegasus, or, as it has been explained to us, "a horse striking the earth with its hoof, or _Pegasus luna on a field argent_!" Master Gerard Leigh, we are told, "emblazoned them with precious stones and planets, and by these strange arms he intended to signify that the knowledge acquired at the learned seminary of the Inner Temple would raise the professors of the law to the highest honours, adding, by way of motto, _volat ad æthera virtus_, and he intended to allude to what are esteemed the more liberal sciences, by giving them Pegasus forming the fountain of Hippocrene, by striking his hoof against the rock, as a proper emblem of lawyers becoming poets, as Chaucer and Gower, who were both of the Temple!" The society of the Middle Temple, with better taste, still preserves, in that part of the Temple over which its sway extends, the widely-renowned and time-honoured badge of the antient order of the Temple. The assumption of the prancing winged horse by the one society, and the retention of the lamb by the other, have given rise to the following witty lines-- "As thro' the Templars' courts you go, The lamb and horse displayed, The emblematic figures show The merits of their trade. That clients may infer from hence How just is their profession; The lamb denotes their INNOCENCE, The horse their EXPEDITION. Oh, happy Britain! happy isle! Let foreign nations say, Here you get justice without guile, And law without delay." ANSWER. "Unhappy man! those courts forego, Nor trust such cunning elves, The artful emblems only show Their _clients_, not _themselves_. These all are tricks, These all are shams, With which they mean to cheat ye, But have a care, for you're the LAMBS, And they the wolves that eat ye. Nor let the plea of no delay To these their courts misguide ye, For you're the PRANCING HORSE; and they The jockeys that would ride you!" CHAPTER XIV. THE TEMPLE.