Before 1602 there were no buildings on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn, and, so late as the reign of Henry VIII., so rural were the surroundings that rabbits abounded there, and had, indeed, to be preserved from the sporting proclivities of the students. In Great Turnstile and Little Turnstile we have the names of narrow lanes which still recall the days when Lincoln’s Inn Fields were fields indeed, and the Turnstiles gave access to a path which ran under the boundary wall of the Inn, and formed a short cut to the Strand.[56] The enclosing of the Fields with buildings caused much heart-burning among the Benchers and Students of Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1641 the Society presented a petition to Parliament, complaining of the great increase of buildings in their neighbourhood, and ‘the loss of fresh air which the petitioners formerly enjoyed.’ But Parliament turned a deaf ear to the stifling Lawyers, and the building went on unchecked. A century later Gay, in his ‘Trivia,’ recounted the dangers of the neighbourhood: ‘Where Lincoln’s Inn’s wide space is railed around, Cross not with venturous step; there oft is found The lurking thief; who while the daylight shone, Made the wall echo with his begging tone: That crutch which late compassion moved, shall wound Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground.’ No. 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields is one of the most fascinating, as it is one of the richest, of the smaller museums that I know. It is the house of an architectural and artistic genius, filled with the treasures he collected, amidst which he loved to live and work. It is preserved for us as he left it. For this is the home which Sir John Soane built for himself, and in which he died, at the age of eighty-three, in 1837, bequeathing his house and treasures to be preserved as a trust for the Public, and more especially for Amateurs and Students in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.