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- 3490
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- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
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- 3430
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- Anacreon, do these degenerate Templars now think it sweeter far to fall
in banquet hall 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 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-point 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
bomb-shells; 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 neighborhood 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 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 riverside--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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