The Benchers’ rooms, delightful sanctums that remind one of Oxford Common-rooms, contain some very fine portraits of distinguished members of the Inn: Chief Justice Rayner, by Soest; Pitt, by Gainsborough; Lord Erskine, by Sir Thomas Lawrence; and later portraits by Cope, Sargent, Watts and others, of Lord Davey, Lord Russell of Killowen, Sir Frank Lockwood, Lord Macnaghten, etc. The men famous in Law, in Letters, and in Politics, who have been members of Lincoln’s Inn, are too numerous to mention. Of lawyers, besides Lord Brougham, there are Murray, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Bathurst, and Lord Campbell. Canning, Perceval, Disraeli, Gladstone, Daniel O’Connell, William Penn, and William Prynne stand out among the makers of history who have been members of this Inn; whilst, among men of Letters, the George Colmans (father and son), Horace Walpole, Charles Kingsley, and George Wither, are amongst the most prominent, though the latter produced his best-known poem in the Marshalsea Prison. And another shade, one may fancy, haunts the green fields of Lincoln’s Inn and the busy, muddy thoroughfare of Chancery Lane: it is that of Sir Thomas More, who passed from Oxford and New Inn to enter at Lincoln’s Inn in 1496, and was presently appointed Reader at Furnival’s Inn. Here, in the intervals of his political career, he made a very large income at the Bar. The south end of the Hall faces the garden, which is enclosed by the old houses of New Square. The fig-tree and the vine, like some stray survivals from the monkish vineyard, flourish against the soot-blackened bricks at the corner of these old houses, which, in pleasing calm and quiet dignity, surround the well-kept lawn and flower-beds. An empty basin in the centre of this garden marks the spot which was once adorned by a sun-dial and fountain, said to have been designed by Inigo Jones. By Inigo Jones were certainly designed the noble houses on the western side of the great green expanse of Lincoln’s Inn Fields--houses with ‘Palladian walls, Venetian doors, grotesque roofs, and stucco floors.’ I believe some of these houses contain beautiful work in the ceilings, mantelpieces, etc. The whole Square, indeed, was ‘intended to have been built all in the same style and taste, but, unfortunately, not finished agreeable to the design of that great architect, because the inhabitants had not taste enough to be of the same mind, or to unite their sentiments for the public ornament and reputation’ (Herbert). Just as the Templars rented a field adjoining their buildings which they used for tilting, so, beyond the houses of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and the Bishop of Chichester, lay a meadow, and beyond it again the Common, still known as Lincoln’s Inn Fields.