After leaving Lincoln's Inn, we looked at Gray's Inn, which is a great,
quiet domain, quadrangle beyond quadrangle, close beside Holborn, and a
large space of greensward enclosed within it. It is very strange to find
so much of ancient quietude right in the monster city's very jaws, which
yet the monster shall not eat up,--right in its very belly, indeed, which
yet, in all these ages, it shall not digest and convert into the same
substance as the rest of its bustling streets. Nothing else in London is
so like the effect of a spell, as to pass under one of these archways,
and find yourself transported from the jumble, mob, tumult, uproar, as of
an age of week-days condensed into the present hour, into what seems an
eternal sabbath. Thence we went into Staple Inn, I think it was,--which
has a front upon Holborn of four or five ancient gables in a row, and a
low arch under the impending story, admitting you into a paved
quadrangle, beyond which you have the vista of another. I do not
understand that the residences and chambers in these Inns of Court are
now exclusively let to lawyers; though such inhabitants certainly seem to
preponderate there.
Since then J----- and I walked down into the Strand, and found ourselves
unexpectedly mixed up with a crowd that grew denser as we approached
Charing Cross, and became absolutely impermeable when we attempted to
make our way to Whitehall. The wicket in the gate of Northumberland
House, by the by, was open, and gave me a glimpse of the front of the
edifice within,--a very partial glimpse, however, and that obstructed by
the solid person of a footman, who, with some women, were passing out
from within.
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