The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-31 00:00:00

2HE .PRINCE OF WALES AND 771. E '
TEMPLE.

To-day is the Templars' jubilee. At the end of
their long vacation, just before putting off all
childish pastimes and sitting down to serious work,
they are preparing for a great gala day. The Prince
of Wales comes down to the Temple to enrol himself
in their ranks. That he has long been a student of
dlaiznienrsa betterin
nany I
sense
of sethca,onurtis k
that imnopwlinedabnyd eating
appre-
ciated by the people of this country. He is pro-
bably more intimately acquainted with the history
of our legal system, and has a better appreciation
of the strange medley produced by feudalism, civil
law, and modern jurisprudence, than the majority
of the students who will emerge from pleaders' and
comeseo nveytaon ctearks 'e chambers a tol a
wc hyeeerr, ha
ni md .
t o He
ea
y ethew
compliment of formal fellowship to a profession
which has always been to Kings of England a
powerful aid, and occasionally in critical times
a wholesome admonition. 'there is no Royal
road to the acquisition of knowledge, and the
heir apparent to the Crown has had to work
up his military and his legal education as sedu-
lously as any youth at a Military College or an
Inn of Court ; but the ascents which are so rugged
to the ordinary aspirant naturally and properly
become plain to the foot of a Royal Prince. The
knowledge of the sword and the law is proper
and appropriate in a young man who will, in
the course of nature and of all ordinary proba-
bilities, have to direct the exercise of the one for
the protection and the administration of the other ;
but no one wishes that he should work his way
from the ranks to his military command, or that he
should test his powers of digestion by an arduous
course of practice upon the Temple commons. The
Prince is already a Colonel; to•day he becomes a
Counsel learned in the law, and a Royal and learned
Master of the Bench of the Middle Temple.
The Templars have made extraordinary efforts to
receive their Prince, and to induce the old Temple
to look as unlike itself as possible. One might
think, looking upon the tents and pavilions that are
set up, that the successors of the Knights Templars
had all been converted to Judaism, and were going
forth to live in their own gardens during the Feast
of Tabernacle. Had it been possible, we had rather
the Prince saw this quaint old lawyers' haunt in its
every-day dinginess. There is a great deal of cha-
racter about the place, which might not be without
its suggestions to a mind open to y outhfui impres-
sions. It is easy to see that this Temple is not that
which was built by Solomon, and a fertile thought
might pass into Royal memory that a princely
student learns the law that he may aid to improve
it, and becomes one of a profession of lawyers in
order that he may know how far they are to be
trusted with such improvement. When the Prince
is asked to open a library of many thousand volumes,
and is told that in books it is the least complete of
all the Inns of Court Libraries, it must naturally
occur to him that a science must be in a very un-
satisfactory state when it is scattered through such
a mass of mouldering tomes. The walls themselves
in the Temple will sometimes remind him of the im-
pudent defences of old absurdities not unfrequently
met with in those admirable Comwentaries written
within a few feet of the spot on which he will stand.
Upon the most dreary and decrepit brick wall in
the neighbourhood he may read the lively boast,
" Instar phcenicis revivisco," and he may think
of some now dead and buried anomaly belauding
itself in the pages of Blackstone. If he looks up
in the Fountain-court, he will see two sundials
carefully painted and preserved as traps to catch
any stray sunbeam that may venture into the Tem-
ple, and to serve it with process ad testcandum ;
and he will also remark that the Benchers have
sensibly added a very hardworking and trustworthy
clock, in case the efforts of these solar tipstaffs should
fail. The Prince will not fail to recognise in this
elaborate machinery for determining the time of
day a fond illustration of the maxim which lies at
the bottom of all a lawyer's profits, of all a counsel-
lor's prolixity, of all a conveyancer's wordiness, and
of all the voluminous incomprehensibility of the
statute-book. It is an illustration in dialling and in
clockwork of the time-honoured maxim—Supetylua
non nocent. Moreover, if the Prince could have
quietly contemplated this collection of little lanes
and small quadrangles in its natural semi-monastic
state, the echoes which have slept during the long
vacation just sluggishly awakening to the steps of
the first hurried attorney's clerk, he might have
had a better idea of the place whereof
he is to become a Governor, and of the
sort of life which leads an ordinary man up to
the position of a Master of the Bench. We would
not ask him to people the place with the tenants of
other days ; to see the Templars in gaudy suits
and burnished swords jostling forth through the
gates to fill the neighbouring coffee-houses and try
a tilt with the lion of the day, be he the great
Ben Johnson, or glorious John Dryden, or other
hero of his generation. Nor would we ask him to
see Goldsmith and Johnson and Boswell forgather-
ing under the cloisters and walking off towards the
Mitre. These were in days before the London gas-
works. But we could wish that the Prince could have
seen in their normalttate some of those hard-read-
ing denizens of the fourth floors, who are much too
excited just now by his presence and the Benchers'
cheer to appear in their natural state. We do not
mean the noisy gentlemen who are but what the
student class all over the world is, but the pale young
men whose cheeks have taken precociously the
parchment tint. These are they who are bartering
their youth for the chance of a distinguished old
age. They are the Maynards, and Holts, and Yorkes,
and Jocelyns, and Murrays, and Camdens, and
Thurlows, and Eldons of the future. Tremendous

will be their labour before they become Masters of
the Bench. But, when this and other successes

have been achieved, it is possible that the Prince
may have to deal with some of them, when he and
they are gray, as Chief Justices or Lord Chancellors,
and they shall become the progenitors of future
nobles. This is a large wheel in the social machine
of England. Here in the Temple is the breeding-
ground for future noble families; here are the nests

of all who shall crawl and of all who shall soar to the
high places of the law. It should be interesting to a
Prince to look upon the starters in this race. Let
none, however, grudge those who succeed, for it is
a toilsome life, and often thrown away.
But if the Prince, wandering in thought from
the artificial spectacle before him, might find in this
lawyers' hive some things which are decrepit with-
out being interesting, and weak without being
venerable, like the law itself, whereof the Temple
is the school, yet there are other things which,
again like that law, have strong roots in the past
and a worthy hold upon the present. He will say
his prayers in a church where Crusaders took the
vow and the badge. He will feast in a hall where
Queen Elizabeth held solemn revel, and which is

adorned with the spoils of the Spanish Armada. In
the long lines of emblazonries of the officer-bearers
of the Society he will read a proof of the quiet
security with which, for century after century, the
custom of succession is observed in this conservative
country, and especially in these conservative haunts ;
and he may reflect how easy it must be to retain
the affection of such a people. There is history all
round him in this place, and history is not a mere
shadow, it is a living power. History not only tells
us that things we see have been before our time,
but makes us love them because they impersonate
old memories, and preserve them because we love
them.

The education of the Prince is said to

have been so judicious that we may believe him
to have already acquired sufficient constitutional
learning and legal knowledge to make good use of
the impressions created by what must be to him
a novel and interesting sight. It is not much he
can discover of the real nature and the habits of the
lawyers by seeing them in their holiday mood, but
we hope he will recognise the good influences of
modern improvements when he contrasts the wea-
pons of the old Templars which now decorate the
hall with the efficiency of the soldierlike volunteers
whom the Temple has been able to muster from its
own members as his guard of honour. If illustra-
tion were wanted on the other hand, and if it were
wished to point the meral that things may be new
withoutouiouaperhapsbeing
ne eessarily more handsome or
thishar-
thgeoo
Princed officeis
amightbout beto doneope
.bar
the building which
Times.--

THE FRENCH AT ROME.—The following letter
has been received from Rome, dated the 22d of October :
" The departure of General de Goyon has given rise to the
mast extraordinary and contradictory reports. The ad-
vanced party assert that the General is recalled. Others
say that the Emperor of the French has changed his poli-
tical views, and that he will soon withdraw the army of
occupation from Rome. The fact is that General de Goyon
was called to Paris by the telegraph. Before he left he
went to see the Pope, who said he blessed him with all his
heart, and that he was convinced the General would defend
the cause of the Holy See in presence of the Emperor and
of his Ministers. lam certain that General de Goyon
will
not be absent from Rome more than three weeks. In his
absence the army is commanded by General de Gerandon..
The Roman National Committee have opened asubscpp-
don to raise a monument to Lucatelli. The Cardinal, Vicar
has given orders that the prayer "pro tempora ball, which
was recited at the Mass since 1859 by command of the
Pope, shall be discontinued. It is a fact that Rome is per-
fectly tranquil. Everybody is thinking of amusing himself,
or making pleasure parties to Frascati, Albano, or Civita
Vecchia. The Transteveri have come in great numbers,
and have shown themselves in the streets in their original
costume. It is asserted that the Roman Government has
sufficient funds to pay all expenses for ten months to
The Holy Father visited yesterday the Military Hospital
ary le
of thQ 1191 y ghost t aid Lunatic Asylum."