, not being able to guess at its
recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as
magic...."

"So may the winged horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still
flourish! So may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and
chambers! So may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers,
imprisoned hop about your walks! So may the fresh-coloured and cleanly
nursery-maid, who by leave airs her playful charge in your stately
gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye pass, reductive of
juvenescent emotion! So may the younkers of this generation eye you,
pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration with
which the child Elia gazed on the old worthies that solemnised the
parade before ye!"

Charles Lamb, in his "Essay" on the old benchers, speaks of many changes
he had witnessed in the Temple--_i.e._, the Gothicising the entrance to
the Inner Temple Hall and the Library front, to assimilate them to the
hall, which they did not resemble; to the removal of the winged horse
over the Temple Hall, and the frescoes of the Virtues which once
Italianised it. He praises, too, the antique air of the "now almost
effaced sun-dials," with their moral inscriptions, seeming almost coeval
with the time which they measured, and taking their revelations
immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of
light. Of these dials there still remain--one in Temple Lane, with the
motto, "Pereunt et imputantur;" one in Essex Court, "Vestigia nulla
retrorsum;" and one in Brick Court on which Goldsmith must often have
gazed--the motto, "Time and tide tarry for no man." In Pump Court and
Garden Court are two dials without mottoes; and in each Temple garden is
a pillar dial--"the natural garden god of Christian gardens." On an old
brick house at the east end of Inner Temple Terrace, removed in 1828,
was a dial with the odd inscription, "Begone about your business," words
with which an old bencher is said to have once dismissed a troublesome
lad who had come from the dial-maker's for a motto, and who mistook his
meaning. The one we have engraved at page 180 is in Pump Court. The date
and the initials are renewed every time it is fresh painted.

There are many old Temple anecdotes relating to that learned disciple of
Bacchus, Porson. Many a time (says Mr. Timbs), at early morn, did Porson
stagger from his old haunt, the "Cider Cellars" in Maiden Lane, where he
scarcely