The Inner and Middle Temple. By Hugh H. L. Bellot,
M.A. (Methuen and Co. 6s. net.)—Mr. Bellot gives us in his first chapter a short history of the Order of the Knights Templars. This is not insufficient for its purpose. But his account of the relations between the common law and the civil law, and of the means by which the former was 'raved from destruction by the latter, leaves much to be desired,—at least from the point of view of the lay reader. In chap. 2 he passes to the subject of "Buildings in the Inner Temple," and we soon find ourselves carried on, so to speak, by a stream of anecdote. Of all places in the world there is none that lends itself so readily to this kind of writing as a " Court " or "Row" or "Building" in one of the Inns of Court. Half-a-dozen future Chancellors, Judges, or Law Officers of the Crown may be living on a single staircase. Mr. Bellot has some- thing to tell us about many worthies—or unworthies—for it was a perilous thing to be a Judge durante bene p/acite in times when the cause of freedom had yet to be won—and might doubtless have told us more if time and space had permitted. It is enough to quote a few names from one column of the index to see how vast is the subject :—Alexander Wedderburn (Lord Lough- borough), Duke of Wellington, Thomas Wentworth (Earl of Strafford), Philip Lord Wharton, Bulstrode Whitelocke, Thomas Wilde (Lord Truro), John Wilkes, James Shaw Willes, William III. That these chapters have not a few good stories in them need hardly be said. Then we read about the Inns of Chancery, about the Temple Church—Mr. Bellot seems doubtful about the "Masonic" character of its architecture—about the Gardens, and of not a few other things. Altogether, this is a most readable book.
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