INNS OF COURT 263 



special feature of its own — a sun-dial upheld by the kneel- 

 ing figure of a blackamoor. This is now preserved in the 

 Temple Garden, where it appeared soon after Clement's 

 Inn was disestablished in 1884. Clement's Inn, which 

 appertained to the Inner Temple, was so named from the 

 Church of St. Clement Danes and St. Clement's Well, 

 where " the City Youth on Festival Days used to enter- 

 tain themselves with a variety of Diversions." The sun- 

 dial is said to have been presented to the Inn by a Holies, 

 Lord Clare, and some writers state that it was brought 

 from Italy. It was, however, more probably made in 

 London by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who came 

 to England in William III.'s time, and established him- 

 self in Piccadilly. When he died in 171 1 the business 

 was continued by John Cheere, brother of Sir Henry 

 Cheere, who executed various monuments in Westminster 

 Abbey. Similar work is known to have issued from this 

 studio. At Clifford's Inn, which was also attached to the 

 Inner Temple, there is still a vestige of the garden, but it 

 looks a miserable doomed wreck, a few black trees rising 

 among heaps of earth and rubbish. It was described in 

 1756 as " an airy place, and neatly kept ; the garden being 

 inclosed with a pallisado Pale, and adorned with Rows 

 of Lime trees, set round the gravel Plats and gravel 

 walks." Its present forlorn appearance is certainly not 

 suggestive of its past glories. Barnard's Inn has been 

 converted into a school by the Mercers' Company ; it 

 also has its court and trees on a very small scale. Staples 

 Inn, so familiar from the timbered, gabled front it pre- 

 sents to Holborn, carefully preserved by the Pruden- 

 tial Assurance Company, its present owners, still has its 

 quiet little quadrangle of green at the back. It was of 

 that Dickens wrote such an inimitable description. " It 



