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- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
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- text
- 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!
No. The genuine Templar is long since departed. Go view the wondrous
tombs in the Temple Church; see there the rigidly-haughty forms
stretched out, with crossed arms upon their stilly hearts, in
everlasting and undreaming rest. Like the years before the flood, the
bold Knights-Templars are no more. Nevertheless, the name remains, and
the nominal society, and the ancient grounds, and some of the ancient
edifices. But the iron heel is changed to a boot of patent leather; the
long two-handed sword to a one-handed quill; the monk-giver of
gratuitous ghostly counsel now counsels for a fee; the defender of the
sarcophagus (if in good practice with his weapon) now has more than one
case to defend; the vowed opener and clearer of all highways leading to
the Holy Sepulchre, now has it in particular charge to check, to clog,
to hinder, and embarrass all the courts and avenues of Law; the
knight-combatant of the Saracen, breasting spear-points at Acre, now
fights law-points in Westminster Hall. The helmet is a wig. Struck by
Time’s enchanter’s wand, the Templar is to-day a Lawyer.
But, like many others tumbled from proud glory’s height--like the apple,
hard on the bough but mellow on the ground--the Templar’s fall has but
made him all the finer fellow.
I dare say those old warrior-priests were but gruff and grouty at the
best; cased in Birmingham hardware, how could their crimped arms give
yours or mine a hearty shake? Their proud, ambitious, monkish souls
clasped shut, like horn-book missals; their very faces clapped in
bombshells; what sort of genial men were these? But best of comrades,
most affable of hosts, capital diner is the modern Templar. His wit and
wine are both of sparkling brands.
The church and cloisters, courts and vaults, lanes and passages,
banquet-halls, refectories, libraries, terraces, gardens, broad walks,
domicils, and dessert-rooms, covering a very large space of ground, and
all grouped in central neighbourhood, and quite sequestered from the old
city’s surrounding din; and everything about the place being kept in
most bachelor-like particularity, no part of London offers to a quiet
wight so agreeable a refuge.
The Temple is indeed a city by itself. A city with all the best
appurtenances, as the above enumeration shows. A city with a park to it,
and flower-beds, and a river-side--the Thames flowing by as openly, in
one part, as by Eden’s primal garden flowed the mild Euphrates. In what
is now the Temple Garden the old Crusaders used to exercise their steeds
and lances; the modern Templars now lounge on the benches beneath the
trees, and, switching their patent-leather boots, in gay discourse
exercise at repartee.
Long lines of stately portraits in the banquet-halls, show what great
men of mark--famous nobles, judges, and Lord Chancellors--have in their
time been Templars. But all Templars are not known to universal fame;
though, if the having warm hearts and warmer welcomes, full minds and
fuller cellars, and giving good advice and glorious dinners, spiced with
rare divertisements of fun and fancy, merit immortal mention, set down,
ye muses, the names of R. F. C. and his imperial brother.
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