For below us lies the most unique and one of the loveliest views in London, a city of beautiful vistas. A flight of steps, framed by ancient iron standards bearing the sign of the Lamb, leads down to a Fountain in the centre of a broad paved terrace. And through the trees that shade it we catch glimpses of green lawns and flower-beds hedged about by Hall and Library and Chambers. Here still, beneath the shady trees--though Goldsmith’s rooks no longer caw in them--sparkles the water of the Temple Fountain, though the Fountain itself is not that which provoked Lamb’s wit, nor that which Dickens loved. It was through the smoky shrubs of Fountain Court that the delicate figure of Ruth Pinch flitted, in fulfilment of her little plot of assignation with Tom, who was always to come out of the Temple past the Fountain and look for her ‘down the steps leading into Garden Court,’ to be greeted ‘with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the Fountain, and beat it all to nothing. The Temple Fountain might have leaped twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the Law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks, as so fresh a little creature passed; the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness, to shed their benedictions on her graceful head; old love letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account among the heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and of which, in their degeneracy, they formed a part, might have stirred and fluttered with a moment’s recollection of their ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by.’[40] From the Fountain Terrace we look down upon a terraced garden framed by various blocks of buildings, which, if they do not group and harmonize so as to form a perfect whole, yet produce an effect which is quite singular and has a charm of its own. Beneath the Terrace, on the left the west end of the Hall abuts upon a green lawn; on the right a flight of steps leads down to a path which skirts the not unpleasing gabled façade, in red brick and stone, of the Garden Court (1883). Facing us now, are the steps which lead up to the embattled Lobby of the Library, beneath which an archway leads to the Library Chambers facing Milford Lane. Hence a private gate leads out into the Lane, where are the steps to Essex Street, remains of the old Water Gate of Essex House. The left-hand side of the green parallelogram of garden is formed by those ugly Plowden Buildings, for which the only hope is that they may soon be buried in the decent obscurity of Virginia Creeper, which can cover a multitude of architectural sins, and the still uglier Temple Gardens, and the Gateway, for which there is no hope at all.