THE TEMPLE.

MR. EDITOR, WALKING down Chancery-lane, a few days ago, I could not help thinking, as I approached Fleet-street, how easily an enthusiastic mind might convert the porters, who stand at the entrance of the Inner Temple, into a guard of the Redcross knights, keeping watch at the gates of their Preceptory. The white aprons, too, of the porters would assist the deception, for the Templars received from Pope Honorius a white mantle, without a cross, for their regular habit. It is true, that the stockings and shirts of twisted mail would be wanting; but the red cap of the Templars might, perhaps, re-appear in a scarlet night-cap. St. Bernard describes the Templars as very grave in countenance and deportment; and, I think, the same qualities may be observed in the present guardians of the Preceptory. Alas! that there should only be these men to remind us of the "the 'Opepio TO TEμT" "Milites Christi et Templi Solomonis. Small, indeed, and few are the relics of those valiant and ambitious spirits, "who freed the holy sepulchre from thrall," and after vanquishing the Pagan, found their destruction in the terror of Christian kings. Few, indeed, are their relics: a monument defaced, a mouldering breast-plate, and a name sacred to valorous enthusiasm and misfortune. Their spirit and their lofty hardihood dwell not in modern hearts. There is a glory round those ages when chivalry was an honour and a boast, and when the ardour of the young, and the wisdom of the old, were devoted to the holy cause with "passionate prodigality"-there is a glory round them, which one delights to remember, now that wars have ceased to be fields of chivalry, and individual prowess is worthless and unknown. One delights to recal the memory of those "impenetrable spirits," who conquered dangers,

"Ei monti, e i mari, e 'l verno, e le tempeste," and whose power, at last, "o'er-shot itself, and fell o' the other side."

Alas! what a change! The ringing of armour has ceasedthere is no buckling for the battle; no religious solemnities; no mustering to arms; no tilts; no tournaments; no lofty festivals, within the boundaries of the Temple.-" Cedant arma toga"Sword and lance have yielded to the gown. There are no combats, but with the pen; ink is spilt, not blood. All is peace and legal tranquillity-no hurrying step, save when in Term-time some harassed attorney casts an anxious glance on the clock of the Inner Temple Hall, as he glides along the terrace, running a race with time to the Seal-office. We hear no armed heel pacing the quiet courts; we see no lofty forms; the most dignified

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object, which meets the eye, is, perchance, some hungry student, who, folding his gown around him, attitudinizes before the hall, waiting, with anxious stomach, until his learned meal is served up. No squire is seen bearing his knight's helmet from the armourer's; but, in his place, a dapper barber issues from beneath the cloisters, bearing in his hand a battered wig-box. "This is a shame, and ignominy indeed!"

The Templars first established themselves in England in the reign of Stephen, and their first Preceptory was in Holborn, where the remains of their church were discovered a few years ago. In the succeeding reign, they removed to the site of the present Temple. They now began to flourish, and grew extremely rich. At their dissolution they are said to have possessed sixteen thousand manors: and so widely spread was their fame, that Alfonso, of Arragon, bequeathed his kingdom to them on his decease. Old Matthew Paris satirizes them severely for their pride and riches. Oh, that I had been a Templar in those days! At this time (being before the establishment of the Coutts's bank) the rich nobles used to deposit their treasures in the Temple, trusting them, for safety, to the honour and bravery of the knights. Henry III. being informed that Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, who was a prisoner in the Tower, had considerable wealth deposited in the Temple, and conceiving that he could make a better use of it than the Earl, sent for the Master of the Temple, and desired him to deliver it up. Like a true knight, the Master refused to commit this dishonourable action; and his Majesty was compelled to send his treasurer to the Earl for an order on his faithful banker, on receiving which, the knights delivered up to the king a vast treasure of gold and silver and precious stones. Edward I. played a trick of nearly the same kind; he requested to see his mother's jewels, which had been deposited in the Temple treasury, and, when admitted, he broke open the coffers of several persons, who had deposited money there, and carried away nearly a thousand pounds.

Much of the history of the Temple rests only on tradition; for Wat Tyler and his associates having no particular love and affection for the gentlemen of the long robe, they made an onslaught on the Temple, and destroyed all the records and the law-books of the students, no doubt to the great delight of the law-booksellers of that day. It is well they did not hang the lawyers into the bargain. "Away, away with him, he speaks Latin!" cried Jack Cade. The date, however, of the forfeiture of the possessions of the Red-cross knights is well known. Philip le Bel first set the example of persecution in France, and he followed up his design, as Dr. Prolix says, "with infinite promptitude." Nearly sixty of these valiant champions of the Christian faith were burned alive

in France by the order of Philip, and several of them at the stake, summoned the tyrant and his coadjutor, Clement V., to appear, at a certain time, before the divine tribunal. It is said, that both those potentates died nearly at the appointed time. In England, in the year 1310, a Provincial Council was held at their Metropolitan Preceptory, at which they were accused of heresy and other heinous crimes, and at which they were condemned to perpetual penance in various monasteries, and all their possessions were forfeited to the crown. The Temple then passed, by royal grant, into the hands of a subject; but, by the treason of the owner, it again reverted to the crown. It was afterwards granted to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who let it at the annual rent of ten pounds to certain students of the law, who are supposed to have removed from Thavies Inn, in Holborn. All the buildings in the Temple have been erected since the fire of London, except the church, and there are none of them worthy of observation, but that edifice and the hall.

It is impossible to enter this venerable building_without being struck with a sentiment of awe and reverence. The grace and dignified beauty of its Gothic architecture, the spaciousness of its tower, built in imitation of the church of the holy sepulchre; and, above all, the tombs of the eleven Templars, with the warriors sleeping in stone, excite our loftiest and proudest associations. With their dust beneath our feet, and their images before our eyes, we kneel at the very shrine, at which their vows were paid. We are surrounded with the magnificence of death, and the trophies of departed glory. "Man is a noble animal; splendid in ashes, and pompous in the dust, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature."* But time has here defrauded the warrior of his fame, The figure of Geoffrey de Magnaville alone has been recognized with certainty. Three of the other effigies are supposed, by Camden, to represent three Earls of Pembroke, the father and two sons; and one of the stone coffins is supposed to contain the ashes of William Plantagenet, son of Henry III. The figures are all clothed in mail; and the hand of one of them, warlike in death, is drawing forth his dagger from its sheath. It is a revulsion of feeling to turn from these relics of chivalry to the monuments of Plowden and Selden.

But, while we mourn over the departure of the days of heroic achievements, we have moreover to regret that the customs and pastimes of later days have also fallen into disuse. The Templars of former days were a gay-looking company. They wore cut

* Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-burial.

†These tombs are engraved in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, and an account of them may be found in Herbert's Antiquities of the Inns of Court,

doublets and long daggers, and were so splendid in their apparel, that the society was compelled to make an order that they should wear gowns of a sad colour; nay they danced galliards and corrantoes to the admiration of competent judges! Solemn revels, and post revels, and stage-plays and masques, are all discontinued. No longer, when the last measure is dancing, does the reader at the cup-board call to one of the gentlemen at the bar, as he is walking or dancing with the rest, to give the judges a song. No barrister now gives out the first line of a psalm, while the rest of the company follow, and sing with him. No longer does the reader lead a competent number of utter-barristers, and as many under the bar, into the buttery, delivering to them some dainty morsels for the judges. And no longer, in stately order, does the auncient, with his white staff, advance before the judges, and begin to lead the measures, followed by the barristers and the gentlemen under the bar, "according to their several antiquities." And no longer do the students of the house drop solemn curtesies to the judges and the serjeants*. Oh, that I could see or with minuet-like

grace, follow the steps of the master of the revels!

Those days are over. The science of saltation delighteth not the hearts of the now Templars. The customs of their ancestors find small favour in their eyes. The rule, which directed that two of the students should be supplied at dinner with meat to the value of three-pence, is now disregarded. Sometimes, indeed, in former days, a splendid feast used to adorn the tables of the Templars; as for instance, when Charles II. paid them a visit, an account of which may be found in that most simple, prejudiced, and entertaining work, Roger North's Life of Lord Keeper Guildford.

But the science of feating has not fallen into oblivion. The old hall still re-echoes, occasionally, with the sounds of mirth and merriment; and even yet the wines of Bourdeaux may now and then be seen to sparkle along the board. Peradventure a CALL rouses the latent spirit of the Templars, and "all loud alike, all learned, and all drunk," it is still

"Merry in the hall, when beards wag all.”

But the hall, alas! is of comparatively modern date. I look with veneration on the church, for it was consecrated in 1185 by Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem. The ancient hall was built as early as the reign of Edward III., but the present edifice is of a much more modern date.

It is well known that the seal of the old Templars was a representation of two men riding on one horse; a device, which, it is said, they owe to Hugh de Payens and Geoffrey de St. Aldemar, two of the earliest of this order of knights. This, in time, was * Origines Juridiciales.

There is a rude print of this seal in the Historia Minor of Matthew Paris.

changed for the device of a field argent, charged with a cross gules, and upon the nombrel thereof, a holy lamb, with its nimbus and banner. This was adopted as the seal of the Middle Temple; while the Inner Temple adhered to the former device, merely changing the two men into a pair of wings, and thus converting the steed into a Pegasus, as our readers may remark the next time they pass along Fleet-street. In the present overstocked state of the law-market, might it not be well to adopt the sigillum of the ancient Templars, as nothing could give a more accurate representation of the state of the unfortunate candidates for legal honours and emoluments, than a device of two men riding on one horse.

When the recollection of these ancient glories comes over me, I feel rejoiced and ashamed in the name of Templar. What is my paltry ambition? To draw a special plea so artificially, that like Chaucer's Sergeant of the Lawe,

"Ther can no wight pinche at my writing-" while the ambition of those (to use a legal phrase) whose estate I have, would have been beleaguering towns, and doing feats of chivalry. Oh, shame! the arm is wielding the pen, that should have brandished the sword; and the imagination is devising subtle schemes to entrap an unwary brother pleader, which should have been generating stratagems against the Saracen and the Crescent. The golden days of youth, which should have been passed on the arid plains of Syria, are wasted away in the dark monotony of a set of second floor-chambers. And what is the reward? It may be, after years of toil, lucubrationes viginti annorum-it may be, that my brows shall be shadowed with the pleasant curls of the judge's large wig-those brows, which should have been pressed with the weight of honourable steel. Nay, it may be, that one may approximate towards the ages of chivalry, and be endowed with the dignity of knighthood! But what a knight! How well suited to revive our notions of a Redcross champion-shovel hat, brown scratch wig, court-dress coat, long black gaiters, a handsome walking-stick, and the gout! What would "the best lance of the Temple," the valorous BoisGuilbert, have said, could he have lived to see this transformation? Six centuries have wrought a woful difference on the south of Fleet-street.

Still, however, there are delights left to console us, though "the age of chivalry is departed for ever." Though the combat of shaft and of sword is over, a wordy war is still left us. The Templars may still engage in the "keen encounter of their wits;" and, if they can not now sack towns, they may yet sack the cash of their clients. Many an unfortunate mortal becomes "the captive of their bow and spear;" and though they may not in