ions. In this
generation a successful Chancery barrister, or Equity draftsman, looks
upon Lincoln's Inn merely as a place of business, where at a prodigious
rent he holds a set of rooms in which he labors over cases, and
satisfies the demands of clients and pupils. A century or two centuries
since the case was often widely different. The rising barrister brought
his bride in triumph to his 'chambers,' and in them she received the
friends who hurried to congratulate her on her new honors. In those
rooms she dispensed graceful hospitality, and watched her husband's
toils. The elder of her children first saw the light in those narrow
quarters; and frequently the lawyer, over his papers, was disturbed by
the uproar of his heir in an adjoining room.

Young wives, the mistresses of roomy houses in the western quarters of
town, shudder as they imagine the discomforts which these young wives of
other days must have endured. "What! live in chambers?" they exclaim
with astonishment and horror, recalling the smallness and cheerless
aspect of their husbands' business chambers. But past usages must not be
hastily condemned,--allowance must be made for the fact that our
ancestors set no very high price on the luxuries of elbow-room and
breathing-room. Families in opulent circumstances were wont to dwell
happily, and receive whole regiments of jovial visitors in little houses
nigh the Strand and Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and Cheapside;--houses
hidden in narrow passages and sombre courts--houses, compared with
which the lowliest residences in a "genteel suburb" of our own time
would appear capacious mansions. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that
the married barrister, living a century since with his wife in
chambers--either within or hard-by an Inn or Court--was, at a
comparatively low rent, the occupant of far more ample quarters than
those for which a working barrister now-a-days pays a preposterous sum.
Such a man was tenant of a 'set of rooms' (several rooms, although
called 'a chamber') which, under the present system, accommodates a
small colony of industrious 'juniors' with one office and a clerk's room
attached. Married ladies, who have lived in Paris or Vienna, in the 'old
town' of Edinburgh, or Victoria Street, Westminster, need no assurance
that life 'on a flat' is not an altogether deplorable state of
existence. The young couple in chambers had six rooms at their
disposal,--a chamber for business, a parlor, not unfreque