76 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER CHAP. 



and steady application to his congenial but engross- 

 ing work. His house, which, like many others in 

 Lincoln's Inn Fields, was large and old-fashioned, 

 after the good and spacious style of 200 years 

 ago, was next door to the fine building of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, of which the Museum is a 

 part. It had an old-fashioned and handsome stair- 

 case, carved doors and shutters, and a view looking 

 right over the beautiful gardens of the " Fields," 

 the largest square in London, and containing the 

 finest and oldest plane trees in the Metropolis. An 

 opening to the west showed all the beauty of 

 London sunsets. The lawns and timber of the 

 gardens made a charming playground for the 

 children, while their beauty was a constant source 

 of rest and refreshment merely to look upon. 

 Lady Flower says : 



" It was like living on an island ; the crowded noisy streets 

 of Holborn and the Strand lay at no great distance north and south 

 of us, yet the green oasis of the gardens, and the perfect quiet, 

 especially in the mornings and evenings, were never interfered with. 

 After the closing of the offices of the solicitors and other men of 

 business who frequented Lincoln's Inn Fields during working hours, 

 there were no sounds except the curfew bell of Lincoln's Inn 

 Chapel, which, though in the centre of the great city, reminded 

 one of Oxford or Cambridge. We had a most interesting link 

 with the past of the ' Fields ' in Mr. Balfour, then eighty years 

 of age, the veteran Secretary of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 He remembered the days when Lincoln's Inn Fields were still 

 one of the residential parts of London. Seven peers had houses 

 there, and lived in the old-fashioned state of the previous genera- 

 tion. One of his great admirations as a boy was the sight of the 

 ' coaches ' with four horses standing outside the gates. Later, the 



