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 1711 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 
