s
novels, we leave on our left Bell Yard, where lodged the ruined suitor
in Chancery, poor Gridley, "the man from Shropshire" in _Bleak House_,
but the yard has, through part of it being required for the New Law
Courts and other modern improvements, almost lost its identity.

On our right is Old Serjeant's Inn, which leads into Clifford's Inn,
where the conference took place between John Rokesmith and Mr. Boffin,
when the former, to the latter's amazement, said:--"If you would try me
as your Secretary." The place is thus referred to in the eighth chapter
of _Our Mutual Friend_:--

"Not very well knowing how to get rid of this
applicant, and feeling the more embarrassed
because his manner and appearance claimed a
delicacy in which the worthy Mr. Boffin feared he
himself might be deficient, that gentleman glanced
into the mouldy little plantation or cat preserve,
of Clifford's Inn, as it was that day, in search
of a suggestion. Sparrows were there, dry-rot and
wet-rot were there, but it was not otherwise a
suggestive spot."

Symond's Inn, described as "a little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn,
like a large dust-bin of two compartments and a sifter,"--where Mr.
Vholes had his chambers, and where Ada Clare came to live after her
marriage, there tending lovingly the blighted life of the suitor in
Jarndyce and Jarndyce, poor Richard Carstone,--exists no more. It
formerly stood on the site of Nos. 25, 26, and 27, now handsome suites
of offices.

Lincoln's Inn, a little higher up on the opposite side of the way,
claims our attention, in the Hall of which was formerly the Lord High
Chancellor's Court, wherein the wire-drawn Chancery suit of Jarndyce and
Jarndyce in _Bleak House_ dragged its course wearily along. The offices
of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of Old Square, Solicitors in the famous
suit, were visited by Esther Summerson, who says:--"We passed into
sudden quietude, under an old gallery, and drove on through a silent
square, until we came to an old nook in a corner, where there was an
entrance up a steep broad flight of stairs like an entrance to a
church." Mr. Serjeant Snubbin, Mr. Pickwick's counsel in the notorious
cause of Bardell _v._ Pickwick, also had his chambers in this square. We
then enter Lincoln's Inn Fields, and pay a visit to No. 58, on the
furthest or west side near Portsmouth Street. This ancient man