Note (return) — NEW BUILDINGS, INNER TEMPLE.

"The Temple," as our readers may be aware, is an immense range of buildings, stretching from Fleet-street to the River Thames, north and south; and from Lombard-street, Whitefriars, to Essex-street, in the Strand, east and west. It takes its name from having been the principal establishment, in England, of the Knights Templars; and here, in the thirteenth century they entertained King Henry III., the Pope's Nuncio, foreign ambassadors, and other great personages. The king's treasure was accustomed to be kept in the part now called the Middle Temple; and from the chief officer, who, as master of the Temple, was summoned to Parliament in the 47th of Henry III., the chief minister of the Temple Church is still called Master of the Temple. After the suppression of this once celebrated order,1 the professors of the common law purchased the buildings, and they were then first converted into Inns of Court, called the Inner and Middle Temple, from their former relation to Essex House, which as a part of the buildings, and from its situation outside the division of the city from the suburbs formed by Temple Bar, was called the Outer Temple.