rtinence and scandal, gentlewomen can without discomfort pass and
repass the walls of our legal colleges; but in most cases a lady enters
them under conditions that announce even to casual passers the object of
her visit. In her carriage, during the later hours of the day, a
barrister's wife may drive down the Middle Temple Lane, or through the
gate of Lincoln's Inn, and wait in King's Bench Walk or New Square,
until her husband, putting aside clients and papers, joins her for the
homeward drive. But even thus placed, sitting in her carriage and
guarded by servants, she usually prefers to fence off inquisitive eyes
by a bonnet-veil, or the blinds of her carriage-windows. On Sunday, the
wives and daughters of gentle families brighten the dingy passages of
the Temple, and the sombre courts of Lincoln's Inn: for the musical
services of the grand church and little chapel, are amongst the
religious entertainments of the town. To those choral celebrations
ladies go, just as they are accustomed to enter any metropolitan church;
and after service they can take a turn in the gardens of either Society,
without drawing upon themselves unpleasant attention. So also,
unattended by men, ladies are permitted to inspect the floral
exhibitions with which Mr. Broome, the Temple gardener, annually
entertains London sightseers.

But, save on these and a few similar occasions and conditions,
gentlewomen avoid an Inn of Court as they would a barrack-yard, unless
they have secured the special attendance of at least one member of the
society. The escort of a barrister or student, alters the case. What
barrister, young or old, cannot recall mirthful eyes that, with quick
shyness, have turned away from his momentary notice, as in answer to the
rustling of silk, or stirred by sympathetic consciousness of women's
noiseless presence, he has raised his face from a volume of reports, and
seen two or three timorous girls peering through the golden haze of a
London morning, into the library of his Inn? What man, thus drawn away
for thirty seconds from prosaic toil, has not in that half minute
remembered the faces of happy rural homes,--has not recalled old days
when his young pulses beat cordial welcome to similar intruders upon the
stillness of the Bodleian, or the tranquil seclusion of Trinity library?
What occupant of dreary chambers in the Temple, reading this page,
cannot look back to a bright day, when young, beautiful, and pure as
sanctity, Lili