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- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z
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- text
- I. THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS
It lies not far from Temple Bar.
Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into
some cool, deep glen, shady among harbouring hills.
Sick with the din and soiled with the mud of Fleet Street--where the
Benedick tradesmen are hurrying by, with ledger-lines ruled along their
brows, thinking upon rise of bread and fall of babies--you adroitly turn
a mystic corner--not a street--glide down a dim, monastic way, flanked
by dark, sedate, and solemn piles, and still wending on, give the whole
careworn world the slip, and, disentangled, stand beneath the quiet
cloisters of the Paradise of Bachelors.
Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the isle-groves of August
prairies; delectable pure faith amidst a thousand perfidies: but
sweeter, still more charming, most delectable, the dreamy Paradise of
Bachelors, found in the stony heart of stunning London.
In mild meditation pace the cloisters; take your pleasure, sip your
leisure, in the garden waterward; go linger in the ancient library; go
worship in the sculptured chapel: but little have you seen, just nothing
do you know, not the sweet kernel have you tasted, till you dine among
the banded Bachelors, and see their convivial eyes and glasses sparkle.
Not dine in bustling commons, during term-time, in the hall; but
tranquilly, by private hint, at a private table; some fine Templar’s
hospitably invited guest.
Templar? That’s a romantic name. Let me see. Brian de Bois Gilbert was a
Templar, I believe. Do we understand you to insinuate that those famous
Templars still survive in modern London? May the ring of their armed
heels be heard, and the rattle of their shields, as in mailed prayer the
monk-knights kneel before the consecrated Host? Surely a monk-knight
were a curious sight picking his way along the Strand, his gleaming
corselet and snowy surcoat spattered by an omnibus. Long-bearded, too,
according to his order’s rule; his face fuzzy as a pard’s; how would the
grim ghost look among the crop-haired, close-shaven citizens? We know
indeed--sad history recounts it--that a moral blight tainted at last
this sacred Brotherhood. Though no sworded foe might out-skill them in
the fence, yet the worm of luxury crawled beneath their guard, gnawing
the core of knightly troth, nibbling the monastic vow, till at last the
monk’s austerity relaxed to wassailing, and the sworn knights-bachelors
grew to be but hypocrites and rakes.
But for all this, quite unprepared were we to learn that
Knights-Templars (if at all in being) were so entirely secularised as to
be reduced from carving out immortal fame in glorious battling for the
Holy Land, to the carving of roast mutton at a dinner-board. Like
Anacreon, do these degenerate Templars now think it sweeter far to fall
in banquet than in war? Or, indeed, how can there be any survival of
that famous order? Templars in modern London! Templars in their
red-cross mantles smoking cigars at the Divan! Templars crowded in a
railway train, till, stacked with steel helmet, spear, and shield, the
whole train looks like one elongated locomotive!
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