I look at Fleet Street

Abstract

I MAY have been a little prejudiced against the roaring Street of Ink. You see I was living in the Temple, by the plane trees in King's Bench Walk. It was a quiet place, given over to precept and precedent and the leisurely but inevitable processes of the Law. Grave gentlemen in wigs and gowns walked slowly through the cloisters, discoursing of torts and common pleas; their clerks trod softly and talked in whispers; even the boy who brought the milk in the morning refrained from whistling in case he might be committed for contempt of court. The Temple was grave, disciplined, serene. Sometimes, when the young moon hung over the Thames, it might be a little whimsical in a mild sort of way, because Crown Office Row was round the corner and something was due to the memory of Charles Lamb. But the whimsicality was kept in decent bounds; it was no more than a trick of light on the solemn face of the Law. The Temple stood as witness to eternal, and oh how solemn, verities.