tres Servientes, who derived their name originally from
being the lower grade or servitors of the Knights Templars. Serjeants
still address each other as "brother," and indeed, as far as Cain and
Abel go, the brotherhood of lawyers cannot be disputed. The old formula
at Westminster, when a new serjeant approached the judges, was, "I think
I see a brother."

One of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims was a "serjeant of law." This inn
dates back as early as the reign of Henry IV., when it was held under a
lease from the Bishop of Ely. In 1442 a William Antrobus, citizen and
taylor of London, held it at the rent of ten marks a year. In the hall
windows are emblazoned the arms of Lord Keeper Guildford (1684). The
inn was rebuilt, all but the old dining-hall, by Sir Robert Smirke, in
the years 1837-38.

[Illustration: OLD SERJEANTS' INN (_see page 83_).]

The humours of Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, have been admirably
described by Hazlitt, and are well condensed by a contemporaneous
writer, of whose labours we gratefully avail ourselves.

"In 1820 a ray of light strikes the Buildings, for one of the least
popular, but by no means the least remarkable, of the Charles Lamb set
came to lodge at No. 9, half-way down on the right-hand side as you come
from Holborn. There for four years lived, taught, wrote, and suffered
that admirable essayist, fine-art and theatrical critic, thoughtful
metaphysician, and miserable man, William Hazlitt. He lodged at the
house of Mr. Walker, a tailor, who was blessed with two fair daughters,
with one of whom (Sarah) Hazlitt, then a married man, fell madly in
love. He declared she was like the Madonna (she seems really to have
been a cold, calculating flirt, rather afraid of her wild lover). To his
'Liber Amoris,' a most stultifying series of dialogues between himself
and the lodging-house keeper's daughter, the author appended a drawing
of an antique gem (Lucretia), which he declared to be the very image of
the obdurate tailor's daughter. This untoward but remarkably gifted man,
whom Lamb admired, if he did not love, and whom Leigh Hunt regarded as
a spirit highly endowed, usually spent his evenings at the
'Southampton;' as we take it, that coffee-house on the left hand, next
the Patent Office, as you enter the Buildings from Chancery Lane. It is
an unpretending public-house now, with the quiet, bald-looking
coffee-room altered, but still one likes to wander past the place and
think that Ha