gods are slow to come, but here I mean to live and die.  Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins with you.  My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent cold—­with brandy, and not very insipid without.”  At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite.  He tabooed all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea.  But the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal economy:  he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his abstention from generous fluids was, we are forced to infer, exceedingly brief.

The poet Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and ridicule in his satirical poem “The Dispensary,” also humorously alludes to Hare Court’s pump: 

      And dare the college insolently aim
      To equal our fraternity in fame? 
      Then let crabs’ eyes with pearls for virtue try,
      Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie;
      So glowworms may compare with Titan’s beams,
      And Hare Court pump with Aganippe’s streams.

The one structure in the Temple area that overshadows all others in point of interest is the famous round church, consecrated to St. Mary by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185.  This prelate’s presence in England was on an errand to invoke the assistance of Henry II. against Saladin, who had recently inflicted several disastrous defeats on the Templars in the Holy Land.

The church was finished about 1240.  It is one of the four round churches still remaining in England.  Its plan is that of a central round tower, supported by six beautiful clustered columns, crossed by a nave and transepts.  Notwithstanding the lapse of ages, and although its beauties were for centuries hidden beneath a variety of hideous excrescences, it remains to-day one of the best specimens of early Gothic architecture extant.  In 1682, 1695, 1706, 1737, and 1811 extensive repairs were made.  In 1828 the exterior was thoroughly restored and recased with stone, and several unsightly structures that impeded the view of the church were removed.  All of these so-called restorations were, however, but partial in extent.  Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation, added at various epochs, were allowed to remain.

Finally, in 1845, steps were taken looking to a thorough renovation and restoration of the venerable pile.  The purity of the marble columns had been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the foliated capitals of the columns supporting the “Round” bore traces of gilding.  These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy pews of Charles II.’s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of the columns; the organ (built by the famous Father Smith in the reign of Charles II.) was removed to its present position in the choir, and the whole interior, by means of these and other extensive changes, was exhibited in its pristine purity.