There is yet a
drowsiness in its courts, and a dreamy dulness in its trees and gardens;
those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their
footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing
from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, 'Who enters here leaves
noise behind.' There is still the plash of falling water in fair
Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted
students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of
sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses, and seldom troubled
to reflect a passing stranger's form. There is yet, in the Temple,
something of a clerkly monkish atmosphere, which public offices of law
have not disturbed, and even legal firms have failed to scare away. In
summer time, its pumps suggest to thirsty idlers, springs cooler, and
more sparkling, and deeper than other wells; and as they trace the
spillings of full pitchers on the heated ground, they snuff the
freshness, and, sighing, cast sad looks towards the Thames, and think of
baths and boats, and saunter on, despondent.
It was in a room in Paper Buildings--a row of goodly tenements, shaded
in front by ancient trees, and looking, at the back, upon the Temple
Gardens--that this, our idler, lounged; now taking up again the paper
he had laid down a hundred times; now trifling with the fragments of
his meal; now pulling forth his golden toothpick, and glancing leisurely
about the room, or out at window into the trim garden walks, where a few
early loiterers were already pacing to and fro.
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