of the columns as a decoration. The table in the centre has
also some low relief carving on the drawer front which forms its frieze,
but the straight and severe style of leg leads us to place its date at
some fifty years later than the Hall. The desk on the left, and the table
on the right, are probably later still. It may be mentioned here, too,
that the long table which stands at the opposite end of the Hall, on the
dais, said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth, is not of the design
with which the furniture of her reign is associated by experts; the heavy
cabriole legs, with bent knees, corresponding with the legs of the chairs
(also on the dais), are of unmistakable Dutch origin, and, so far as the
writer's observations and investigations have gone, were introduced into
England about the time of William III.

The same remarks apply to a table in Middle Temple Hall, also said to
have been there during Elizabeth's time. Mr. Douthwaite alludes to the
rumour of the Queen's gift in his book, and endeavoured to substantiate it
from records at his command, but in vain. The authorities at Middle Temple
are also, so far as we have been able to ascertain, without any
documentary evidence to prove the claim of their table to any greater age
than the end of the seventeenth century.

The carved oak screen of Middle Temple Hall is magnificent, and no one
should miss seeing it. Terminal figures, fluted columns, panels broken up
into smaller divisions, and carved enrichments of various devices, are all
combined in a harmonious design, rich without being overcrowded, and its
effect is enhanced by the rich color given to it by age, by the excellent
proportions of the Hall, by the plain panelling of the three other sides,
and above all by the grand oak roof, which is certainly one of the finest
of its kind in England. Some of the tables and forms are of much later
date, but an interest attaches even to this furniture from the fact of its
having been made from oak grown close to the Hall; and as one of the
tables has a slab composed of an oak plank nearly thirty inches wide, we
can imagine what fine old trees once grew and flourished close to the now
busy Fleet Street, and the bustling Strand. There are frames, too, in
Middle Temple made from the oaken timbers which once formed the piles in
the Thames, on which rested "the Temple Stairs."

In Mr. Herbert's "Antiquities of the Courts of Chancery," there are
several facts of inte