The best-known, perhaps, of the gardens are those belonging to the Inner and Middle Temple, as their green lawns are visible from the Embankment. They add greatly to the charm of one of London's most beautiful roadways, now, alas! desecrated by the rush of electric trams, and its fine young trees sacrificed to make yet more rapid the stream of beings hourly passing between South London and the City. The modern whirl of business life can leave nothing untouched in this age of bustle, money-making, ceaseless toil, and care. Even pleasures have to be provided by united effort, and partake of noise and hurry. Thought and contemplation are hardly counted among the pleasures of life; yet to those who value them, even to look through the iron railings on the smooth turf brings a sense of relief. Even to those who scarcely seem to feel it, the very existence of these haunts of comparative peace, which flash on their vision as they hurry by, leaves something, a subtle influence, a faint impression on the brain. It must make a difference to a child who knows nothing beyond the noisy streets and alleys in which its lot is cast, to hear the rooks caw and the birds sing in the quiet gardens of Gray's Inn. It must come as a welcome relief, even though unperceived and unappreciated, from the din and clatter in which most of its days are passed. One cannot be too grateful that it has not been thought necessary to change and modernise "our English juridical university."
