the Admission
Book of the Inn, thereby making themselves students of the society. Her
Majesty has not been called to the bar; but Prince Albert in due course
became a barrister and bencher. Repeating the action of Charles II.'s
courtiers, the great Duke of Wellington and the bevy of great nobles
present at the celebration became fellow-students with the queen; and on
leaving the table the prince walked down the hall, wearing a student's
stuff gown (by no means the most picturesque of academic robes), over
his field-marshal's uniform. Her Majesty forbore to disarrange her
toilet--which consisted of a blue bonnet with blue feathers, a dress of
Limerick lace, and a scarlet shawl, with a deep gold edging--by putting
her arms through the sleeveless arm-holes of a bombazine frock.

Grateful to the lawyers for the cordiality with which they welcomed him
to the country, William III. accepted an invitation to the Middle
Temple, and was entertained by that society with a banquet and a masque,
of which notice has been taken in another chapter of this work; and in
1697-8 Peter the Great was a guest at the Christmas revels of the
Templars. On that occasion the Czar enjoyed a favorable opportunity for
gratifying his love of strong drink, and for witnessing the ease with
which our ancestors drank wine by the magnum and punch by the gallon,
when they were bent on enjoyment.

In the greater refinement and increasing delicacy of the eighteenth
century, the Inns of Court revels, which had for so many generations
been conspicuous amongst the gaieties of the town, became less and less
magnificent; and they altogether died out under the second of those
Georges who are thought by some persons to have corrupted public morals
and lowered the tastes of society. In 1733-4, when Lord Chancellor
Talbot's elevation to the woolsack was celebrated by a revel in the
Inner Temple Hall, the dulness and disorder of the celebration convinced
the lawyers that they had not acted wisely in attempting to revive
usages that had fallen into desuetude because they were inconvenient to
new arrangements or repugnant to modern taste. No attempt was made to
prolong the festivity over a succession of days. It was a revel of one
day; and no one wished to add another to the period of riot. At two
o'clock on Feb. 2, 1733-4, the new Chancellor, the master of the revels,
the benchers of the inns, and the guests (who were for the most part
lawyers), sat down to dinner in