hew Hale and seventeen other wise and patient judges sat, after the
Great Fire of 1666, to adjudicate upon the claims of the landlords and
tenants of burned houses, and prevent future lawsuits. The difficulty of
discovering the old boundaries, under the mountains of ashes, must have
been great; and forty thick folio volumes of decisions, now preserved in
the British Museum, tell of many a legal headache in Clifford's Inn.

A very singular custom, and probably of great antiquity, prevails after
the dinners at Clifford's Inn. The society is divided into two
sections--the Principal and Aules, and the Junior or "Kentish Men." When
the meal is over, the chairman of the Kentish Men, standing up at the
Junior table, bows gravely to the Principal, takes from the hand of a
servitor standing by four small rolls of bread, silently dashes them
three times on the table, and then pushes them down to the further end
of the board, from whence they are removed. Perfect silence is preserved
during this mystic ceremony, which some antiquary who sees deeper into
millstones than his brethren thinks typifies offerings to Ceres, who
first taught mankind the use of laws and originated those peculiar
ornaments of civilisation, their expounders, the lawyers.

In the hall is preserved an old oak folding case, containing the
forty-seven rules of the institution, now almost defaced, and probably
of the reign of Henry VIII. The hall casement contains armorial glass
with the bearings of Baptist Hicks, Viscount Camden, &c.

Robert Pultock, the almost unknown author of that graceful story, "Peter
Wilkins," from whose flying women Southey drew his poetical notion of
the Glendoveer, or flying spirit, in his wild poem of "The Curse of
Kehama," lived in this Inn, paced on its terrace, and mused in its
garden. "'Peter Wilkins' is to my mind," says Coleridge (in his "Table
Talk"), "a work of uncommon beauty, and yet Stothard's illustrations
have _added_ beauties to it. If it were not for a certain tendency to
affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for Stothard's
designs. They give me great pleasure. I believe that 'Robinson Crusoe'
and 'Peter Wilkins' could only have been written by islanders. No
continentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis's story is an
imitation of 'Peter Wilkins,' but there are many beautiful things in it,
especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside, she having,
in his absence, plucked out all her feat