Then Mr. Camperdown rose, and slowly walked across the New Square,
Lincoln's Inn, under the low archway, by the entrance to the old court in
which Lord Eldon used to sit, to the Old Square, in which the Turtle Dove
had built his legal nest on a first floor, close to the old gateway.
Mr. Dove was a gentleman who spent a very great portion of his life in
this somewhat gloomy abode of learning. It was not now term time, and most
of his brethren were absent from London, recruiting their strength among
the Alps, or drinking in vigour for fresh campaigns with the salt sea
breezes off Kent and Sussex, or perhaps shooting deer in Scotland, or
catching fish in Connemara. But Mr. Dove was a man of iron, who wanted no
such recreation. To be absent from his law-books and the black, littered,
ink-stained old table on which he was wont to write his opinions, was, to
him, to be wretched. The only exercise necessary to him was that of
putting on his wig and going into one of the courts that were close to his
chambers; but even that was almost distasteful to him. He preferred
sitting in his old arm-chair, turning over his old books in search of old
cases, and producing opinions which he would be prepared to back against
all the world of Lincoln's Inn.
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