FRONT OF TRINITY COLLEGE,from Brooking’s Map of Dublin,1728.CHAPTER VIII.THE EARLY BUILDINGS.When Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, had induced Queen Elizabeth to grant a Charter of Incorporation to a University to be established in Dublin, he addressed himself to the Mayor and Corporation of the City with a view to obtaining a suitable site. And, happily for the success of the scheme which he and the more academic Luke Challoner so successfully carried out, and for the future welfare of the new Institution, a site the most suitable and the most admirable that could have been found in Ireland was at that moment at the disposal of the Corporation of Dublin—the old Augustinian Monastery of All Hallows, lying to the eastward, and just outside the City. As far as we can gather from the recitals in the lease of the monastic buildings and site made by the Mayor and Sheriffs in the year 1591 to John Spensfield, the precincts, besides a church, consisted of “a steeple, a building with a vault under it, the spytor, otherwisecalled the hall, with appurtenances all along to the north cheek of the Bawn Gate.” We find that there were also within the precincts of the Monastery the sub-prior’s orchard and the common orchard, and a field called the Ashe Park, wherein the prior and the monks had their haggard and cistern, with the western storehouse by the Great Bawn, together with a vestry cloister, a little garden within the precincts, and a tower over the gate adjoining Hoggen Green. The buildings, without the lands, appear to have been let to John Pepard, merchant, for sixty-one years, at ten shillings a-year, with a clause restraining him from taking stones, or slates, or timber out of the precincts; the materials thereon were to be used only for building on the site. Another lease was made to Edward Pepard, in 1584, of a small orchard in All Hallows for thirty-one years, at twenty-four shillings a-year; and in 1583 Edward Pepard had sub-let, for twenty-one years, to Peter van Hey and Thomas Seele, a garden with a vault at the north side of All Hallows, at a yearly rent of forty shillings, with a covenant that they should keep up the garden wall and the vaults. It would thus appear that at this time the Pepards had acquired the site of the buildings and a small orchard, possibly that formerly occupied by the sub-prior, as tenants on a terminable lease. During the fifty years which elapsed from the suppression of the Monastery, the buildings must have suffered very considerable dilapidation. Most likely they had not been originally erected in a very substantial and durable manner; and as little care seems to have been taken as to the maintenance of the church, the hall, and the monastic dwellings, they must have been for the most part in a ruinous condition. The total value of the site and precincts is stated in a letter from Queen Elizabeth to have been £20 a-year. At the close of the Queen’s reign the City of Dublin did not extend towards the east beyond St. George’s Lane, now called South Great George’s Street. An open space of ground stretched from thence to All Hallows, with paths diverging to different parts of a small stream, beyond which lay the site of the old Monastery. The whole of the precincts at that time covered about twenty-eight acres, of which twelve were in meadow, nine in pasture, and seven in orchard. On the north, towards the river, there was a boggy strip of ground covered by the water at high tide, and bounded on the south by the path leading to St. Patrick’s Well, near the present entrance to Kildare Street, and bounded on the east by lands formerly belonging to the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin, but then in the tenure of John Dougan, on the site of the modern Westland Row.[139]And such was the influence of the Archbishop, supported by his Archdeacon, Henry Ussher, and by Luke Chaloner, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and two Scotch schoolmasters, James Hamilton and James Fullerton, who were at the time in Dublin, that the Corporation convened the citizens to a general assembly at the Tholsel, where they, after due deliberation upon the proposal to grant the site of the monastery for the intended College, immediately proceeded to make the grant. A Charter of Incorporation had in the meantime been obtained from the Queen, on the petition of Henry Ussher. The letter of Elizabeth to Sir William Fitzwilliam, Lord Deputy, and to the Irish Council, announcing her consent to this arrangement, is dated December 21st, 1591; and, on the 3rd of the following March, Letters Patent passed the Great Seal.[140]The first stone of the new building was laid on March 13th, 1592. Subscriptions from the gentry in every part of Ireland were received for the building, and on January 9th, 1594, the new College was completed. No remains of this structure exist at the present day; indeed, no buildings prior to the reign of William III. are now to be found in Trinity College. The Elizabethan edifice consisted of a small square court, which was always familiarly called The Quadrangle, and which was removed early in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Some parts of the old monastery were no doubt utilised in the new building. As the visitor approached from Hoggen Green he crossed an outer enclosed court, which formed an entrance to the College; he then entered through the great gate, and found himself in a small square, probably on the site of the southern portion of the great main square of the College, then surrounded by buildings constructed of thin red Dutch brick, with probably a good deal of wooden framework inserted. On the north side lay the old steeple of the monastery, having the porter’s lodge on the ground floor, and a chamber over it; and on the second loft was hung the College bell. Towards the east of the steeple lay the Chapel; on the same side of the quadrangle was the Hall, paved with tiles, with a gallery, and a lantern in the roof. The hall was separated from the kitchen by a wooden partition, and in the same range with them was placed the Library. This room was over the scholars’ chambers, and had a gallery, and the lower part of it was fitted with ten pews for readers. The Regent House seems to have been between the Chapel and the Hall, and a gallery in the Regent House looked into the Chapel. This range of buildings extended to the east side of the court, beyond the site of the present Campanile. On the north of this rangelay the kitchen, buttery chamber, and the storehouse. The east and west sides of the quadrangle contained students’ chambers, and on the south side were placed houses for the Fellows. The three sides composed in all seven buildings for residence—three on the south side, and two on each of the east and west sides. The upper story was lightened by dormer windows, with leaden lattices, and in the centre of the quadrangle stood the celebrated College pump.[141]THE ELIZABETHAN COLLEGE.For this interesting section as to the Elizabethan College, the writer is indebted to the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, D.D., S.F.T.C.D.:—For a long period it was impossible to form an accurate idea of the size and arrangements of the buildings of the original College. The very foundations have long since been obliterated. Speed’s map gives a rough idea of its site and general shape; and Rocque’s map, which was constructed in 1751, before the structure was removed, shows its position with regard to the present Library and some of the portions of the College which remain. Dunton’sLife and Errorsgives a description of the buildings as they stood one hundred years after their erection, yet his details are in some respects misleading.In the present year, a paper in the handwriting of Sir William Temple, Provost in 1523, has been found, giving the distribution of the chambers in the College among the Fellows and students in that year, and which, with the aid of the preceding authorities and letters of the period, enables us to form a fairly accurate conception of the buildings as they existed in the time of James the First.FROM ROCQUE’S MAP OF DUBLIN, 1750.The College was a quadrangle, the eastern and western sides being longer than those on the north and south. The approach was through a tower which lay on the north side, and which was the “steeple” of the old Monastery, having the porter’s lodge on the ground floor, and a chamber over it. In the second story was placed the College bell. The remainder of the north side was occupied by the Chapel and the Hall; the Chapel lay towards the east, and the Hall towards the west, of the entrance. There appears to have been an attic over one of these buildings, which contained four “studies” for undergraduates. TheRegent House seems to have been located between the Chapel and the Hall, for candidates for degrees passed through the Hall into the Regent House, and a gallery in the Regent House looked into the Chapel. The Hall was paved with tiles, had a lantern in the roof, and had a gallery, probably communicating with the room over the porter’s lodge. On the south side of the quadrangle, which lay between the present Library and the centre of the present Examination Hall, there were four houses; the ground floors ofthese houses were occupied by students’ rooms, there being ten “studies” occupied by fourteen students. The house on the east of the south side had no other chambers occupied, and the first and second stories probably contained the library, which we may learn from the College accounts of the period had a gallery and a lower story which was fitted up with ten “pews” for readers. The next house had two students resident on the ground floor, and two Fellows on the first floor. The third house had three “studies” on the ground floor, but the first and second stories were not occupied by students or by Fellows. Possibly it was in this house that Ussher’s books were afterwards placed. The fourth house had two “studies” on the ground floor, and a Fellow and a student occupied the first floor.On the east side of the quadrangle there were six houses, each having “studies” for three students on the ground floor. In the first of these houses the remaining floors were unoccupied. In the second, three students occupied the attic. Chambers were there assigned also to one Fellow, one Master of Arts, and to the Professor of Divinity. In the third house there were three “studies” on the ground floor, but the remaining floors were not assigned for chambers. In the fourth house there were three “studies” on the ground floor—two Fellows and two Masters of Arts occupied the first floor, and a Master of Arts the attic. The fifth house had three “studies” on the ground floor—three Fellows and one student had chambers on the first floor, and five students resided in the attic story. The sixth house had three “studies” on the ground floor, and three graduates resided over them.On the west side there were three houses, with three “studies” on the ground floor of each. The first house had no occupied chambers over the ground floor. In the second house one Fellow and two Masters of Arts had chambers on the first floor; one Master of Arts and two students resided in the attic. The first floor of the third house on this side was occupied by two Fellows and by one Master of Arts, and the attic by two students, apparently brothers. The remainder of the west side was possibly occupied by the Provost’s chambers.There was no approach to the interior of the College from Hoggen Green, nor did the ground on the west side of the College at that time belong to it. We find in 1639 a letter from Provost Bedell to Ussher giving an account of a riot among the students, which arose from an attempt of one Arthur to make an enclosure on that side of the College on land which he had leased from the City of Dublin. A petition was forwarded from the College to the Council complaining of Arthur’s proceeding to erect a building on that side of theCollege, by which a passage would be taken away where there was in former times a gate or way leading into the site upon which the College was built, which, although at that time closed, was intended to be opened again by the College. It ended in the College acquiring Arthur’s interest in the plot, and so preserving a right of way.COLLEGE GREEN.The ground at present known as College Green was once the site of a considerable village outside the walls of the City of Dublin, known as Hog or Hogges.[142]A convent for nuns of the rule of St. Augustine was founded on les Hogges in 1146 by Dermot MacMurchard, King of Leinster, and the open space obtained the name of Hoggen Green.[143]How the nunnery of St. Mary atte Hogge was dissolved, and the buildings granted to the citizens of Dublin in 1534; how it was proposed to turn the buildings into a jail or bridewell; how, in consequence of some dispute with the builder, the property was handed over to the University, and became a second College or High School under the name of Trinity Hall; and how at length, in 1667, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Stearne, the President, Trinity Hall was converted into the College of Physicians of Ireland, is all very interesting, but it is quite outside the scope of the present chapter. The modern Trinity Street marks the site of Trinity Hall, which was only demolished about the year 1700. Hogges Gate, the eastern gate of the City of Dublin opening upon Hoggen Green, facing the College, and standing somewhere near the site of the modern Forster Place, was removed in 1663 as being not only useless, but ruinous. The equestrian statue of King William III., that is now so prominent a feature of College Green, was erected by the Corporation of Dublin, and unveiled with great pomp on the 1st of July, 1801. The figure of Henry Grattan was executed by J. H. Foley, R.A., an Irish artist, and placed in its present position in January, 1876. The fine bronze statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith, truly distinguished students of Trinity College, which are also the work of Foley, stand within the College railings on either side of the Grand Entrance. That of Goldsmith was placed in its present position in January, 1864; and that of Burke in April, 1868. They are both admirable. The statue of Goldsmith especially is one of the finest, if not the finest work of the sculptor.THE MODERN COLLEGE.Ampelopsis veitchii.The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of the students; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.Ampelopsis veitchii.The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of thestudents; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.Of the buildings that were erected in Trinity College at the end of the sixteenth century, we have neither roof nor foundation now remaining. Of the still older buildings that stood on Hoggen Green in 1583, we have neither trace nor exact record, beyond that they contained a church, a steeple, a building with a vault under it, and the spytor already alluded to.TRINITY COLLEGE—WEST FRONT.In a curious old print, however, of the beginning of the eighteenth century, some buildings are figured abutting upon the Library, and running westwards in the direction of the present Theatre, which were probably a portion of the old buildings erected in 1594. The lines of the Cistercian Monastery are supposed by Mr. Drew, the accomplished architect of the University, to have been a square, of which the south side occupied thesite now partially covered by the Theatre, and extending to the north about half way across the present main quadrangle of Parliament Square. That a sixteenth-century College should retain no stone of sixteenth-century masonry is certainly regrettable. But what is far more remarkable is, that of the presumably more appropriate and substantial structures which were in existence when William of Orange landed at Torbay, not a vestige is standing at the present time. And of the noble buildings which now compose the College, by far the greater part is no older than the reign of King George III.The University has ever been, as it is, one of the few entirely satisfactory and successful institutions planted by England in the sister isle, and it has ever promoted sound learning and religious education; but architecture, or even good building, was for the first century and a-half of its existence most certainly not its strong point. Nor has Irish artistic feeling at any time been commonly expressed in Architecture. Ireland has given to the Empire soldiers and statesmen, poets and orators, philosophers and divines, men of science and men of action, governors, ministers, judges, in numbers and in eminence quite out of proportion to her population and her advantages. But of architects of the first or even of the second class, no Irishman has inscribed his name on the roll of honour as a designer of great works at home or abroad. The domestic architecture and the national ecclesiastical style of building is poor, mean, and uninteresting; and although Dublin to-day is adorned with many handsome structures, none of them can be said to have any peculiarly national characteristics, and of the most important now existing, none are the work of native architects. Gandon, who built the Custom House and part of the Houses of Parliament, was a Frenchman; Cooly, who designed the Exchange and the Four Courts, was an Englishman;[145]Cassels, who did some of the best eighteenth-century work in Trinity College, was a German; Sir William Chambers, who designed the Theatre and the Chapel in Parliament Square, and who was perhaps the greatest British architect of the eighteenth century, was a Scotchman.[146]Nor does the architect, native or foreign, appear to have been held in honour at the University a hundred and fifty years ago. The very name of the designer of the admirable west front of the College is forgotten, unrecorded even in the College accounts; and the architect of the Provost’s House, who bore the very Saxon nameof Smith, is stated to have received a fee of £22 15s. for his services. The art could scarcely flourish on such very slender patronage! But whoever the designers may have been, and however remunerated, the College builders of the seventeenth century must have been grossly incompetent. For though work of various kinds seems to have been in constant progress from 1592 to the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in 1751 that many of the buildings had, from length of time, become ruinous, and were not even capable of being restored. Nor does any great improvement appear even in the eighteenth century. The new Dining Hall, put up in 1740, had to be taken down to prevent its tumbling about the students’ ears in 1750; and the Bell Tower, completed only in 1746, at a cost of nearly £4,000, was “removed” in 1791, as already, after a life of only five-and-forty years, it was “entirely unsafe.” But in the last half-century very different work has been done. The noble Campanile, erected in 1853, is at once admirable in design and most solid in construction, and, above all, most appropriately placed. The New Square, which covers a part of what was once suggestively termed the Wilderness, is irreproachable, if not very interesting in design and workmanship; and the Venetian Palace that forms its southern side affords some of that colour and variety which is so sadly wanting in other parts of the College, and is in itself a structure that would command admiration in any town or country. And the new buildings of the Medical School, if plain and unpretentious, are simple and appropriate and dignified in design, and their cut granite looks well fitted to last for a thousand years.THE PROVOST’S HOUSE, FROM GRAFTON STREET.THE PROVOST’S HOUSE.The Provost’s House is commonly said to be a copy of a design by Lord Burlington for General Wade’s house in Piccadilly. General, or rather Field-Marshal Wade was a notable person in his day. He put down the Glasgow Riots in 1727, and did much towards the pacification of Scotland by the construction of the celebrated military roads in the Highlands. He also commanded the English army in Lancashire and Yorkshire at the time of the Pretender’s invasion of England in 1745. His house, which was built in 1723, was not in Piccadilly, nor in any street leading out of it, but in Cork Street, extending back as far as Old Burlington Street; and on Marshal Wade’s death in 1748 it was sold by auction, according to Horace Walpole,[147]to Lord Chesterfield, and seems afterwards to havebeen the town house of the Marquess Cornwallis, and known as Cornwallis House.[148]And in 1826 it was added to, and included with Sir Thomas Neaves’ house, next door, as the Burlington Hotel, now Nos. 19, and 20, Cork Street.[149]The façade and ground plan of Lord Burlington’s design is given by Campbell, Moore, and Gandon in theirVitruvius Britannicus, vol. iii., plate 10; and the house is there said to be in Great Burlington Street (now Old Burlington Street), a much older street than Cork Street. Marshal Wade’s house has been scarcely altered since it was built in the eighteenth century; his arms are still over the front entrance in the court, and the interior is characteristic and interesting.[150]The working plans of the Dublin house were prepared by a local architect of the name of Smith; and he received for his work, as already mentioned, the modest sum of £22 15s., as is shown by the College accounts for 1759.The mansion stands on the east side of Grafton Street, about twenty yards from the western side of the Parliament Square. The main entrance is from Grafton Street, through a spacious courtyard, enclosed by a granite wall 310 feet in length, and is entered by a handsome gateway. There is a private corridor, or covered way, which connects the house directly with Parliament Square within the walls of the College. The façade is of granite, finely ashlared. The ground story is of icicled and rusticated work, over which a range of Doric pilasters, with their architrave, frieze, and cornice supporting a high pitched roof with no eave. In the principal story are five windows, with balusters beneath, arranged two on either side of a large Venetian window, with columns and ornaments of the Tuscan order. The interior of the house is original and interesting; the hall and ante-hall are spacious and dignified; the circular staircase, which is lighted by a lofty domed skylight, leads up to a fine suite of apartments. On the ground floor, with an entrance from the hall, and approached through an ante-room, is the large dining-room, which is now used as the Provost’s Library and as the Board-room, where the Provost and Senior Fellows assemble in council to deliberate upon the administration and government of the College. In this room and in the ante-room is a collection of portraits of all the Provosts, from the time of Adam Loftus to Dr. MacDonnell, and of many of the distinguished Fellows and Professors of the College, and other important personages connected with the University. On the staircase is a portrait of George I., by Sir Godfrey Kneller; another of George III., by Allan Ramsay; and one of Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, painted by Bindon for the Foundling Hospital. All these are full-length portraits. The most interesting picture in the house is, perhaps, a half-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth, by Zucchero, hanging in the large drawing-room; where there is also a full-length portrait by Gainsborough—the artistic gem of the collection—of John Russell, Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1757, and Chancellor of the University of Dublin. There is also in the drawing-room a half-length portrait of Archbishop Ussher, one of the earliest Fellows of the College (Professor of Divinity, 1607; Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1614; and Archbishop of Armagh, 1624), and buried, like Primate Boulter, in Westminster Abbey. In the Provost’s apartments on the ground floor is a picture of Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1567, and first Provost of Trinity College, 1592, by an unknown artist, as well as a copy of the same by Cregan; and a head of Archbishop Ussher. There are two portraits said to be of Samuel Winter, the Puritan Provost appointed by Cromwell in 1562, but possibly portraits of Luke Challoner, one of the more distinguished foundersof the University. There are also portraits of Sir William Temple, Provost of Trinity College, 1609; John Stearne, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1660; Michael Ward, D.D., Provost, 1674, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1678; Anthony Dopping, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1662; Narcissus Marsh, Provost of Trinity College, 1678; St. George Ashe, D.D., Provost, 1692; Peter Browne, D.D., Provost, 1699; H.R.H. George, Prince of Wales, Chancellor of the University of Dublin, 1715; Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., M.D. of theUniversity of Dublin, who died in 1752; Sir Philip Tisdall, Privy Councillor and M.P. for the University, 1739; William Clements, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1733, M.P. 1761; Francis Andrews, LL.D., Provost, 1758, by Antonio Maroni; Bryan Robinson, M.D., Regius Professor of Physic in the University, 1745, by Wilson; John Hely Hutchinson, LL.D., Provost, 1774, and Secretary of State for Ireland, by Peacock; Richard Murray, D.D. Provost, 1795, by Cumming; Hugh Hamilton, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1751; Henry Dalzac, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1760; John Forsayeth, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1762; John Kearney, D.D., Provost, 1799, by Cumming; Matthew Young, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1775; George Hall, D.D., Provost, 1806, by Cumming; Arthur Browne, LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1777, by Hamilton; Thomas Elrington, D.D., Provost, 1811, by Foster; Bartholomew Lloyd, D.D., Provost, 1831, by Campanile; Samuel Kyle, D.D., Provost, 1820; Franc Sadleir, D.D., Provost, 1837; Richard MacDonnell, D.D., Provost, 1852, by Catterson Smith.DRAWING ROOM, PROVOST’S HOUSE.The various offices attached to the house are conveniently disposed in the wings, the height of the ground story. The rooms at the back of the mansion look out upon a large lawn and pleasure-ground, beyond which are the Fellows’ Garden and the College Park. From the windows of the house to the Cricket Pavilion at the further end of the Park is nearly a quarter of a mile of green sward, a noble expanse in the heart of a great city. The only intervening structure is a small building of Portland stone, of pseudo Greek or classical design—the Magnetical Observatory. This little temple of modern science was built in the year 1837 at the instigation of the celebrated mathematician, Dr. Humphrey Lloyd, afterwards (1867) Provost of Trinity College; and at the time of its completion in 1838 it was the only observatory specifically devoted to magnetic research—with the exception of that at Greenwich, under the direction of the Astronomer-Royal—in the United Kingdom. And it was here that Dr. Lloyd conducted those numerous and most interesting experiments, of which the results were communicated to many successive meetings of the British Association. The building itself, in the Doric order of architecture, was erected under the superintendence and from the design of Mr. Frederic Darley, of Dublin. The front elevation is not ungraceful, being partly copied from an Athenian model. But the architectural beauty of the rest of the building has been sacrificed to the scientific necessities of the interior, and the result is very far from satisfactory as a work of art. It stands in latitude 53° 21′ N. and longitude 16° 6′ W. It is forty feet in length by thirty feet in width, constructed of Portland stone, the interior being of the calpe, or argillaceous limestone ofthe valley of Dublin. Several specimens of each of these stones were submitted to severe tests, and found to be entirely devoid of any magnetic influence. To preserve a uniform temperature, and also as a protection from damp, the walls are studded internally. The nails employed in the wood-work are all of copper, and all locks and metal work of every kind throughout the building of brass or gun metal. No iron, of course, was used in any part of the work. The interior is divided into one principal room and two smaller rooms, lighted by a dome at the top, and by one window at either end of the building.A complete account of this Observatory within and without, and of the numerous and most interesting instruments which it contains, will be found inAn Account of the Magnetical Observatory of Dublin, and of the Instruments and Methods of Observation employed there, by the Rev. Humphrey Lloyd, D.D., University Press, 1842.WEST FRONT.The principal or west front of Trinity College, looking on to Grafton Street, College Green, and the old Houses of Parliament, now occupied by the Bank of Ireland, is a Palladian façade three hundred feet in length and sixty-five feet in height, occupying the whole of the eastern side of the large paved space which is still called College Green. The centre or principalcorps de logisis one hundred feet in length. The entablature is supported by four detached columns with Corinthian capitals; and a bold but simple pediment surmounts the whole. At either corner is a square pilaster with a Corinthian capital. The building is continued on either side of this centre to a distance of seventy feet of plain and unadorned construction; the ground story of rustic ashlar, the remainder of fine cut granite. The north and south extremities of this great front are formed by two square pavilions rising above the height of the wings, and projecting about ten feet from the curtain line. The pavilions are pierced by four handsome Palladian windows, in the north and west and in the south and west fronts respectively; and the construction is ornamented at the projecting angles by coupled pilasters of the Corinthian order, supporting an attic story, surmounted by a very satisfactory balustrade. In the entire façade are fifty-one windows regularly disposed, giving light to four stories of rooms. According to the original plan the centre of the building was to have been crowned by a dome, and the abandonment of what might have given additional nobility to the whole is said to have been merely dueto want of sufficient funds. But the elevation as it is, is not wanting in dignity; and though somewhat severe in its outlines, it gives the impression at once of simplicity without meanness, of solidity without heaviness, and of richness without extravagance of detail.TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Masters of Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Mastersof Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.
FRONT OF TRINITY COLLEGE,from Brooking’s Map of Dublin,1728.
When Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, had induced Queen Elizabeth to grant a Charter of Incorporation to a University to be established in Dublin, he addressed himself to the Mayor and Corporation of the City with a view to obtaining a suitable site. And, happily for the success of the scheme which he and the more academic Luke Challoner so successfully carried out, and for the future welfare of the new Institution, a site the most suitable and the most admirable that could have been found in Ireland was at that moment at the disposal of the Corporation of Dublin—the old Augustinian Monastery of All Hallows, lying to the eastward, and just outside the City. As far as we can gather from the recitals in the lease of the monastic buildings and site made by the Mayor and Sheriffs in the year 1591 to John Spensfield, the precincts, besides a church, consisted of “a steeple, a building with a vault under it, the spytor, otherwisecalled the hall, with appurtenances all along to the north cheek of the Bawn Gate.” We find that there were also within the precincts of the Monastery the sub-prior’s orchard and the common orchard, and a field called the Ashe Park, wherein the prior and the monks had their haggard and cistern, with the western storehouse by the Great Bawn, together with a vestry cloister, a little garden within the precincts, and a tower over the gate adjoining Hoggen Green. The buildings, without the lands, appear to have been let to John Pepard, merchant, for sixty-one years, at ten shillings a-year, with a clause restraining him from taking stones, or slates, or timber out of the precincts; the materials thereon were to be used only for building on the site. Another lease was made to Edward Pepard, in 1584, of a small orchard in All Hallows for thirty-one years, at twenty-four shillings a-year; and in 1583 Edward Pepard had sub-let, for twenty-one years, to Peter van Hey and Thomas Seele, a garden with a vault at the north side of All Hallows, at a yearly rent of forty shillings, with a covenant that they should keep up the garden wall and the vaults. It would thus appear that at this time the Pepards had acquired the site of the buildings and a small orchard, possibly that formerly occupied by the sub-prior, as tenants on a terminable lease. During the fifty years which elapsed from the suppression of the Monastery, the buildings must have suffered very considerable dilapidation. Most likely they had not been originally erected in a very substantial and durable manner; and as little care seems to have been taken as to the maintenance of the church, the hall, and the monastic dwellings, they must have been for the most part in a ruinous condition. The total value of the site and precincts is stated in a letter from Queen Elizabeth to have been £20 a-year. At the close of the Queen’s reign the City of Dublin did not extend towards the east beyond St. George’s Lane, now called South Great George’s Street. An open space of ground stretched from thence to All Hallows, with paths diverging to different parts of a small stream, beyond which lay the site of the old Monastery. The whole of the precincts at that time covered about twenty-eight acres, of which twelve were in meadow, nine in pasture, and seven in orchard. On the north, towards the river, there was a boggy strip of ground covered by the water at high tide, and bounded on the south by the path leading to St. Patrick’s Well, near the present entrance to Kildare Street, and bounded on the east by lands formerly belonging to the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin, but then in the tenure of John Dougan, on the site of the modern Westland Row.[139]
And such was the influence of the Archbishop, supported by his Archdeacon, Henry Ussher, and by Luke Chaloner, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and two Scotch schoolmasters, James Hamilton and James Fullerton, who were at the time in Dublin, that the Corporation convened the citizens to a general assembly at the Tholsel, where they, after due deliberation upon the proposal to grant the site of the monastery for the intended College, immediately proceeded to make the grant. A Charter of Incorporation had in the meantime been obtained from the Queen, on the petition of Henry Ussher. The letter of Elizabeth to Sir William Fitzwilliam, Lord Deputy, and to the Irish Council, announcing her consent to this arrangement, is dated December 21st, 1591; and, on the 3rd of the following March, Letters Patent passed the Great Seal.[140]The first stone of the new building was laid on March 13th, 1592. Subscriptions from the gentry in every part of Ireland were received for the building, and on January 9th, 1594, the new College was completed. No remains of this structure exist at the present day; indeed, no buildings prior to the reign of William III. are now to be found in Trinity College. The Elizabethan edifice consisted of a small square court, which was always familiarly called The Quadrangle, and which was removed early in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Some parts of the old monastery were no doubt utilised in the new building. As the visitor approached from Hoggen Green he crossed an outer enclosed court, which formed an entrance to the College; he then entered through the great gate, and found himself in a small square, probably on the site of the southern portion of the great main square of the College, then surrounded by buildings constructed of thin red Dutch brick, with probably a good deal of wooden framework inserted. On the north side lay the old steeple of the monastery, having the porter’s lodge on the ground floor, and a chamber over it; and on the second loft was hung the College bell. Towards the east of the steeple lay the Chapel; on the same side of the quadrangle was the Hall, paved with tiles, with a gallery, and a lantern in the roof. The hall was separated from the kitchen by a wooden partition, and in the same range with them was placed the Library. This room was over the scholars’ chambers, and had a gallery, and the lower part of it was fitted with ten pews for readers. The Regent House seems to have been between the Chapel and the Hall, and a gallery in the Regent House looked into the Chapel. This range of buildings extended to the east side of the court, beyond the site of the present Campanile. On the north of this rangelay the kitchen, buttery chamber, and the storehouse. The east and west sides of the quadrangle contained students’ chambers, and on the south side were placed houses for the Fellows. The three sides composed in all seven buildings for residence—three on the south side, and two on each of the east and west sides. The upper story was lightened by dormer windows, with leaden lattices, and in the centre of the quadrangle stood the celebrated College pump.[141]
For this interesting section as to the Elizabethan College, the writer is indebted to the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, D.D., S.F.T.C.D.:—
For a long period it was impossible to form an accurate idea of the size and arrangements of the buildings of the original College. The very foundations have long since been obliterated. Speed’s map gives a rough idea of its site and general shape; and Rocque’s map, which was constructed in 1751, before the structure was removed, shows its position with regard to the present Library and some of the portions of the College which remain. Dunton’sLife and Errorsgives a description of the buildings as they stood one hundred years after their erection, yet his details are in some respects misleading.
In the present year, a paper in the handwriting of Sir William Temple, Provost in 1523, has been found, giving the distribution of the chambers in the College among the Fellows and students in that year, and which, with the aid of the preceding authorities and letters of the period, enables us to form a fairly accurate conception of the buildings as they existed in the time of James the First.
FROM ROCQUE’S MAP OF DUBLIN, 1750.
FROM ROCQUE’S MAP OF DUBLIN, 1750.
The College was a quadrangle, the eastern and western sides being longer than those on the north and south. The approach was through a tower which lay on the north side, and which was the “steeple” of the old Monastery, having the porter’s lodge on the ground floor, and a chamber over it. In the second story was placed the College bell. The remainder of the north side was occupied by the Chapel and the Hall; the Chapel lay towards the east, and the Hall towards the west, of the entrance. There appears to have been an attic over one of these buildings, which contained four “studies” for undergraduates. TheRegent House seems to have been located between the Chapel and the Hall, for candidates for degrees passed through the Hall into the Regent House, and a gallery in the Regent House looked into the Chapel. The Hall was paved with tiles, had a lantern in the roof, and had a gallery, probably communicating with the room over the porter’s lodge. On the south side of the quadrangle, which lay between the present Library and the centre of the present Examination Hall, there were four houses; the ground floors ofthese houses were occupied by students’ rooms, there being ten “studies” occupied by fourteen students. The house on the east of the south side had no other chambers occupied, and the first and second stories probably contained the library, which we may learn from the College accounts of the period had a gallery and a lower story which was fitted up with ten “pews” for readers. The next house had two students resident on the ground floor, and two Fellows on the first floor. The third house had three “studies” on the ground floor, but the first and second stories were not occupied by students or by Fellows. Possibly it was in this house that Ussher’s books were afterwards placed. The fourth house had two “studies” on the ground floor, and a Fellow and a student occupied the first floor.
On the east side of the quadrangle there were six houses, each having “studies” for three students on the ground floor. In the first of these houses the remaining floors were unoccupied. In the second, three students occupied the attic. Chambers were there assigned also to one Fellow, one Master of Arts, and to the Professor of Divinity. In the third house there were three “studies” on the ground floor, but the remaining floors were not assigned for chambers. In the fourth house there were three “studies” on the ground floor—two Fellows and two Masters of Arts occupied the first floor, and a Master of Arts the attic. The fifth house had three “studies” on the ground floor—three Fellows and one student had chambers on the first floor, and five students resided in the attic story. The sixth house had three “studies” on the ground floor, and three graduates resided over them.
On the west side there were three houses, with three “studies” on the ground floor of each. The first house had no occupied chambers over the ground floor. In the second house one Fellow and two Masters of Arts had chambers on the first floor; one Master of Arts and two students resided in the attic. The first floor of the third house on this side was occupied by two Fellows and by one Master of Arts, and the attic by two students, apparently brothers. The remainder of the west side was possibly occupied by the Provost’s chambers.
There was no approach to the interior of the College from Hoggen Green, nor did the ground on the west side of the College at that time belong to it. We find in 1639 a letter from Provost Bedell to Ussher giving an account of a riot among the students, which arose from an attempt of one Arthur to make an enclosure on that side of the College on land which he had leased from the City of Dublin. A petition was forwarded from the College to the Council complaining of Arthur’s proceeding to erect a building on that side of theCollege, by which a passage would be taken away where there was in former times a gate or way leading into the site upon which the College was built, which, although at that time closed, was intended to be opened again by the College. It ended in the College acquiring Arthur’s interest in the plot, and so preserving a right of way.
The ground at present known as College Green was once the site of a considerable village outside the walls of the City of Dublin, known as Hog or Hogges.[142]A convent for nuns of the rule of St. Augustine was founded on les Hogges in 1146 by Dermot MacMurchard, King of Leinster, and the open space obtained the name of Hoggen Green.[143]How the nunnery of St. Mary atte Hogge was dissolved, and the buildings granted to the citizens of Dublin in 1534; how it was proposed to turn the buildings into a jail or bridewell; how, in consequence of some dispute with the builder, the property was handed over to the University, and became a second College or High School under the name of Trinity Hall; and how at length, in 1667, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Stearne, the President, Trinity Hall was converted into the College of Physicians of Ireland, is all very interesting, but it is quite outside the scope of the present chapter. The modern Trinity Street marks the site of Trinity Hall, which was only demolished about the year 1700. Hogges Gate, the eastern gate of the City of Dublin opening upon Hoggen Green, facing the College, and standing somewhere near the site of the modern Forster Place, was removed in 1663 as being not only useless, but ruinous. The equestrian statue of King William III., that is now so prominent a feature of College Green, was erected by the Corporation of Dublin, and unveiled with great pomp on the 1st of July, 1801. The figure of Henry Grattan was executed by J. H. Foley, R.A., an Irish artist, and placed in its present position in January, 1876. The fine bronze statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith, truly distinguished students of Trinity College, which are also the work of Foley, stand within the College railings on either side of the Grand Entrance. That of Goldsmith was placed in its present position in January, 1864; and that of Burke in April, 1868. They are both admirable. The statue of Goldsmith especially is one of the finest, if not the finest work of the sculptor.
Ampelopsis veitchii.The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of the students; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.
Ampelopsis veitchii.
The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of the students; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.
The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of the students; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.
Ampelopsis veitchii.The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of thestudents; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.
Ampelopsis veitchii.
Ampelopsis veitchii.
The most distinguishing characteristic, from a material point of view, of Trinity College as it now stands in the heart of the City of Dublin, is perhaps that of spaciousness. It is the College of magnificent distances; for a space of over twenty-eight acres is enclosed by the outermost walls—twenty-eight acres of granite and of green sward, of park and plantation, of shrubbery and wilderness, of noble buildings and of uninteresting enclosures. Like most people and many places, Trinity College has what the French callles défauts de ses qualités. With abundant elbow-room, yet not without a touch of dreariness; with a site unsurpassed in any modern city, and needing nothing but variety in elevation, and running water, to make it unrivalled in the world—its very vastness makes it somewhat bare, its very dignity makes it somewhat cold, its very spaciousness makes it somewhat scattered. The granite of its buildings is grey; the limestone and freestone are grey; the slated roofs are grey. It would require a regiment of scarlet Lancers to give colour to the quadrangle.[144]To compare is usually idle, and is often impertinent; but it is obviously impossible to find, in anenceinteof hard upon thirty acres, the warmth and wealth of treatment, the perfection of finish, the fulness and richness of detail, that are so happily realised when the tender care of half-a-dozen centuries has been devoted to the adornment of a single quadrangle, to the artistic treatment of two or three acres of ground. And it must be remembered that all that we now see in Trinity College is the work of little over a century of most diligent and most faithful care. For some hundred and fifty years after the foundation of the University,the buildings of the new College seemed to have sufficed for the accommodation of thestudents; but in October, 1751, a petition of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Dublin to the Irish Parliament set forth “That the said College does not contain chambers sufficient for lodging the number of young gentlemen who, for several years past, have been sent thither for education, and that many of the buildings of the said College are, from length of time, become ruinous, and are not capable of being restored; that by the Statutes of the College no provision is made for new buildings, or for any other than the annual repairs of the buildings originally provided, notwithstanding which the petitioners have expended several large sums, which by great care they have saved out of the ordinary expenses of the College, on necessary public buildings, and to increase the number of chambers for the reception of students.” Five thousand pounds were granted by Parliament in response to this petition, and the money was expended on the necessary buildings. Two years afterwards (1753) we find a further sum of ten thousand pounds placed at the disposal of the College authorities by the Irish Government. The money was spent, and well spent, on building. And a further petition, on the 1st of November, 1755, was presented to George II., and a further grant of twenty thousand pounds made to the College to enable them to rebuild the West Front. In 1757, the College authorities appear once more as petitioners to Parliament, stating that they have, with all possible expedition and care, finished the said north side for which former grants had been made, and are now rebuilding the front, for which further funds were needed; and a further and final sum of ten thousand pounds was then placed at their disposal by His Majesty’s Government. And the College accounts show that between 1752 and 1763 a gross sum of £48,820 had been expended on the work of construction.
Of the buildings that were erected in Trinity College at the end of the sixteenth century, we have neither roof nor foundation now remaining. Of the still older buildings that stood on Hoggen Green in 1583, we have neither trace nor exact record, beyond that they contained a church, a steeple, a building with a vault under it, and the spytor already alluded to.
TRINITY COLLEGE—WEST FRONT.
TRINITY COLLEGE—WEST FRONT.
In a curious old print, however, of the beginning of the eighteenth century, some buildings are figured abutting upon the Library, and running westwards in the direction of the present Theatre, which were probably a portion of the old buildings erected in 1594. The lines of the Cistercian Monastery are supposed by Mr. Drew, the accomplished architect of the University, to have been a square, of which the south side occupied thesite now partially covered by the Theatre, and extending to the north about half way across the present main quadrangle of Parliament Square. That a sixteenth-century College should retain no stone of sixteenth-century masonry is certainly regrettable. But what is far more remarkable is, that of the presumably more appropriate and substantial structures which were in existence when William of Orange landed at Torbay, not a vestige is standing at the present time. And of the noble buildings which now compose the College, by far the greater part is no older than the reign of King George III.
The University has ever been, as it is, one of the few entirely satisfactory and successful institutions planted by England in the sister isle, and it has ever promoted sound learning and religious education; but architecture, or even good building, was for the first century and a-half of its existence most certainly not its strong point. Nor has Irish artistic feeling at any time been commonly expressed in Architecture. Ireland has given to the Empire soldiers and statesmen, poets and orators, philosophers and divines, men of science and men of action, governors, ministers, judges, in numbers and in eminence quite out of proportion to her population and her advantages. But of architects of the first or even of the second class, no Irishman has inscribed his name on the roll of honour as a designer of great works at home or abroad. The domestic architecture and the national ecclesiastical style of building is poor, mean, and uninteresting; and although Dublin to-day is adorned with many handsome structures, none of them can be said to have any peculiarly national characteristics, and of the most important now existing, none are the work of native architects. Gandon, who built the Custom House and part of the Houses of Parliament, was a Frenchman; Cooly, who designed the Exchange and the Four Courts, was an Englishman;[145]Cassels, who did some of the best eighteenth-century work in Trinity College, was a German; Sir William Chambers, who designed the Theatre and the Chapel in Parliament Square, and who was perhaps the greatest British architect of the eighteenth century, was a Scotchman.[146]Nor does the architect, native or foreign, appear to have been held in honour at the University a hundred and fifty years ago. The very name of the designer of the admirable west front of the College is forgotten, unrecorded even in the College accounts; and the architect of the Provost’s House, who bore the very Saxon nameof Smith, is stated to have received a fee of £22 15s. for his services. The art could scarcely flourish on such very slender patronage! But whoever the designers may have been, and however remunerated, the College builders of the seventeenth century must have been grossly incompetent. For though work of various kinds seems to have been in constant progress from 1592 to the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find in 1751 that many of the buildings had, from length of time, become ruinous, and were not even capable of being restored. Nor does any great improvement appear even in the eighteenth century. The new Dining Hall, put up in 1740, had to be taken down to prevent its tumbling about the students’ ears in 1750; and the Bell Tower, completed only in 1746, at a cost of nearly £4,000, was “removed” in 1791, as already, after a life of only five-and-forty years, it was “entirely unsafe.” But in the last half-century very different work has been done. The noble Campanile, erected in 1853, is at once admirable in design and most solid in construction, and, above all, most appropriately placed. The New Square, which covers a part of what was once suggestively termed the Wilderness, is irreproachable, if not very interesting in design and workmanship; and the Venetian Palace that forms its southern side affords some of that colour and variety which is so sadly wanting in other parts of the College, and is in itself a structure that would command admiration in any town or country. And the new buildings of the Medical School, if plain and unpretentious, are simple and appropriate and dignified in design, and their cut granite looks well fitted to last for a thousand years.
THE PROVOST’S HOUSE, FROM GRAFTON STREET.
THE PROVOST’S HOUSE, FROM GRAFTON STREET.
The Provost’s House is commonly said to be a copy of a design by Lord Burlington for General Wade’s house in Piccadilly. General, or rather Field-Marshal Wade was a notable person in his day. He put down the Glasgow Riots in 1727, and did much towards the pacification of Scotland by the construction of the celebrated military roads in the Highlands. He also commanded the English army in Lancashire and Yorkshire at the time of the Pretender’s invasion of England in 1745. His house, which was built in 1723, was not in Piccadilly, nor in any street leading out of it, but in Cork Street, extending back as far as Old Burlington Street; and on Marshal Wade’s death in 1748 it was sold by auction, according to Horace Walpole,[147]to Lord Chesterfield, and seems afterwards to havebeen the town house of the Marquess Cornwallis, and known as Cornwallis House.[148]And in 1826 it was added to, and included with Sir Thomas Neaves’ house, next door, as the Burlington Hotel, now Nos. 19, and 20, Cork Street.[149]The façade and ground plan of Lord Burlington’s design is given by Campbell, Moore, and Gandon in theirVitruvius Britannicus, vol. iii., plate 10; and the house is there said to be in Great Burlington Street (now Old Burlington Street), a much older street than Cork Street. Marshal Wade’s house has been scarcely altered since it was built in the eighteenth century; his arms are still over the front entrance in the court, and the interior is characteristic and interesting.[150]The working plans of the Dublin house were prepared by a local architect of the name of Smith; and he received for his work, as already mentioned, the modest sum of £22 15s., as is shown by the College accounts for 1759.
The mansion stands on the east side of Grafton Street, about twenty yards from the western side of the Parliament Square. The main entrance is from Grafton Street, through a spacious courtyard, enclosed by a granite wall 310 feet in length, and is entered by a handsome gateway. There is a private corridor, or covered way, which connects the house directly with Parliament Square within the walls of the College. The façade is of granite, finely ashlared. The ground story is of icicled and rusticated work, over which a range of Doric pilasters, with their architrave, frieze, and cornice supporting a high pitched roof with no eave. In the principal story are five windows, with balusters beneath, arranged two on either side of a large Venetian window, with columns and ornaments of the Tuscan order. The interior of the house is original and interesting; the hall and ante-hall are spacious and dignified; the circular staircase, which is lighted by a lofty domed skylight, leads up to a fine suite of apartments. On the ground floor, with an entrance from the hall, and approached through an ante-room, is the large dining-room, which is now used as the Provost’s Library and as the Board-room, where the Provost and Senior Fellows assemble in council to deliberate upon the administration and government of the College. In this room and in the ante-room is a collection of portraits of all the Provosts, from the time of Adam Loftus to Dr. MacDonnell, and of many of the distinguished Fellows and Professors of the College, and other important personages connected with the University. On the staircase is a portrait of George I., by Sir Godfrey Kneller; another of George III., by Allan Ramsay; and one of Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, painted by Bindon for the Foundling Hospital. All these are full-length portraits. The most interesting picture in the house is, perhaps, a half-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth, by Zucchero, hanging in the large drawing-room; where there is also a full-length portrait by Gainsborough—the artistic gem of the collection—of John Russell, Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1757, and Chancellor of the University of Dublin. There is also in the drawing-room a half-length portrait of Archbishop Ussher, one of the earliest Fellows of the College (Professor of Divinity, 1607; Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1614; and Archbishop of Armagh, 1624), and buried, like Primate Boulter, in Westminster Abbey. In the Provost’s apartments on the ground floor is a picture of Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1567, and first Provost of Trinity College, 1592, by an unknown artist, as well as a copy of the same by Cregan; and a head of Archbishop Ussher. There are two portraits said to be of Samuel Winter, the Puritan Provost appointed by Cromwell in 1562, but possibly portraits of Luke Challoner, one of the more distinguished foundersof the University. There are also portraits of Sir William Temple, Provost of Trinity College, 1609; John Stearne, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1660; Michael Ward, D.D., Provost, 1674, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1678; Anthony Dopping, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1662; Narcissus Marsh, Provost of Trinity College, 1678; St. George Ashe, D.D., Provost, 1692; Peter Browne, D.D., Provost, 1699; H.R.H. George, Prince of Wales, Chancellor of the University of Dublin, 1715; Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., M.D. of theUniversity of Dublin, who died in 1752; Sir Philip Tisdall, Privy Councillor and M.P. for the University, 1739; William Clements, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1733, M.P. 1761; Francis Andrews, LL.D., Provost, 1758, by Antonio Maroni; Bryan Robinson, M.D., Regius Professor of Physic in the University, 1745, by Wilson; John Hely Hutchinson, LL.D., Provost, 1774, and Secretary of State for Ireland, by Peacock; Richard Murray, D.D. Provost, 1795, by Cumming; Hugh Hamilton, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1751; Henry Dalzac, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1760; John Forsayeth, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1762; John Kearney, D.D., Provost, 1799, by Cumming; Matthew Young, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1775; George Hall, D.D., Provost, 1806, by Cumming; Arthur Browne, LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1777, by Hamilton; Thomas Elrington, D.D., Provost, 1811, by Foster; Bartholomew Lloyd, D.D., Provost, 1831, by Campanile; Samuel Kyle, D.D., Provost, 1820; Franc Sadleir, D.D., Provost, 1837; Richard MacDonnell, D.D., Provost, 1852, by Catterson Smith.
DRAWING ROOM, PROVOST’S HOUSE.
DRAWING ROOM, PROVOST’S HOUSE.
The various offices attached to the house are conveniently disposed in the wings, the height of the ground story. The rooms at the back of the mansion look out upon a large lawn and pleasure-ground, beyond which are the Fellows’ Garden and the College Park. From the windows of the house to the Cricket Pavilion at the further end of the Park is nearly a quarter of a mile of green sward, a noble expanse in the heart of a great city. The only intervening structure is a small building of Portland stone, of pseudo Greek or classical design—the Magnetical Observatory. This little temple of modern science was built in the year 1837 at the instigation of the celebrated mathematician, Dr. Humphrey Lloyd, afterwards (1867) Provost of Trinity College; and at the time of its completion in 1838 it was the only observatory specifically devoted to magnetic research—with the exception of that at Greenwich, under the direction of the Astronomer-Royal—in the United Kingdom. And it was here that Dr. Lloyd conducted those numerous and most interesting experiments, of which the results were communicated to many successive meetings of the British Association. The building itself, in the Doric order of architecture, was erected under the superintendence and from the design of Mr. Frederic Darley, of Dublin. The front elevation is not ungraceful, being partly copied from an Athenian model. But the architectural beauty of the rest of the building has been sacrificed to the scientific necessities of the interior, and the result is very far from satisfactory as a work of art. It stands in latitude 53° 21′ N. and longitude 16° 6′ W. It is forty feet in length by thirty feet in width, constructed of Portland stone, the interior being of the calpe, or argillaceous limestone ofthe valley of Dublin. Several specimens of each of these stones were submitted to severe tests, and found to be entirely devoid of any magnetic influence. To preserve a uniform temperature, and also as a protection from damp, the walls are studded internally. The nails employed in the wood-work are all of copper, and all locks and metal work of every kind throughout the building of brass or gun metal. No iron, of course, was used in any part of the work. The interior is divided into one principal room and two smaller rooms, lighted by a dome at the top, and by one window at either end of the building.
A complete account of this Observatory within and without, and of the numerous and most interesting instruments which it contains, will be found inAn Account of the Magnetical Observatory of Dublin, and of the Instruments and Methods of Observation employed there, by the Rev. Humphrey Lloyd, D.D., University Press, 1842.
The principal or west front of Trinity College, looking on to Grafton Street, College Green, and the old Houses of Parliament, now occupied by the Bank of Ireland, is a Palladian façade three hundred feet in length and sixty-five feet in height, occupying the whole of the eastern side of the large paved space which is still called College Green. The centre or principalcorps de logisis one hundred feet in length. The entablature is supported by four detached columns with Corinthian capitals; and a bold but simple pediment surmounts the whole. At either corner is a square pilaster with a Corinthian capital. The building is continued on either side of this centre to a distance of seventy feet of plain and unadorned construction; the ground story of rustic ashlar, the remainder of fine cut granite. The north and south extremities of this great front are formed by two square pavilions rising above the height of the wings, and projecting about ten feet from the curtain line. The pavilions are pierced by four handsome Palladian windows, in the north and west and in the south and west fronts respectively; and the construction is ornamented at the projecting angles by coupled pilasters of the Corinthian order, supporting an attic story, surmounted by a very satisfactory balustrade. In the entire façade are fifty-one windows regularly disposed, giving light to four stories of rooms. According to the original plan the centre of the building was to have been crowned by a dome, and the abandonment of what might have given additional nobility to the whole is said to have been merely dueto want of sufficient funds. But the elevation as it is, is not wanting in dignity; and though somewhat severe in its outlines, it gives the impression at once of simplicity without meanness, of solidity without heaviness, and of richness without extravagance of detail.
TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Masters of Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.
TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.
The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Masters of Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.
The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Masters of Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.
TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Mastersof Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.
TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.
TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.
The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of theCollege, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Mastersof Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.