THE PRINTING HOUSE.

CARVINGS AT BASE OF STAIRCASE.In addition to a fine Drawing School and numerous Lecture Rooms, some of which are used by the Professors of Divinity and Law, this building also contains the Geological and Mineralogical collections, a series of engineering models, and a collection of instruments for Natural Philosophy researches. For the workshops attached, the motive power is supplied by an Otto gas engine.THE PRINTING HOUSE.The Printing House, a charming little antique temple standing at the extreme north-east of the Library Square, was designed by Cassels, and built between 1726 and 1734, at a cost of about £1,200, which was almost entirely provided by Dr. Stearne, Bishop ofClogher. The tetrastyle portico is of Roman Doric, nearly 8 ft. in width, with a bold cornice and triglyphs, and a plain metope, all in fine Portland stone. And the smoke of a hundred and fifty years has already sufficed to give it a somewhat venerable appearance. Underneath the portico and immediately over the door is the following inscription:—R. R. Joannes Stearne,Episcopus Clogherensis,Vice-Cancellarius hujus Academiæ,Pro benevolentia quam habuitIn Academiam et rem literariamPosuit,A.D.1734.THE PRINTING OFFICE, FROM NEW SQUARE.BOTANY BAY.Botany Bay Square, said by Mr. Wright[165]to have been designed by Provost Murray, lies to the extreme north, and behind the northern buildings of Library Square. It was built in 1812, and is a cold and somewhat neglected-looking quadrangle without any architectural pretensions. It encloses just one statute acre and a-half of ground, with some grass in the centre, fenced in by a poor railing, and planted with the scarlet flowering hawthorn. Were the buildings covered with ivy, the square enlivened with trim green sward and flowering shrubs, and the present railing removed, Botany Bay would still be a long way behind picturesque Port Philip. But its name would be somewhat better justified than it is at present.THE LIBRARY.As regards the Library, one of the most ancient of the existing buildings in the College precincts, and in many ways the most interesting, not only as regards the books which it contains, but the very admirable and satisfactory structure in which the volumes are so worthily housed, a full and detailed account will be found inChapter VII.VIEW IN THE COLLEGE PARK—LIBRARY—ENGINEERING SCHOOL.ST. PATRICK’S WELL LANE—THE COLLEGE PARK.In the year 1688, a most interesting monument of antiquity in Dublin was demolished to make way for City improvements. The old DanishThingmote, or Parliament Hill, an artificial mound some forty feet high, that stood on the spot now partially occupied by the new Ulster Bank, and not a hundred yards from the Provost’s House, was levelled with the ground.[166]And the earth of the old mound, as it was removed, was carted away and thrown down in front of a poor street, St. Patrick’s Well Lane, facing the dreary and neglected expanse of waste land that is now the College Park. The street so widened and levelled was called—in honour of William of Orange Nassau, Protestant King of England—Nassau Street. The College authorities soon afterwards built a high brick wall on the boundary between the City and the College property; and the level of the street, in consequence of the immense accumulation of added soil from theThingmote, was left, as it now is, some six feet higher than that of the College land which adjoins it. The College Park was first laid out and planted with elm and plane trees in 1722; and in the same year a wall was built on the north-eastern boundary of the College grounds, with a gateway and lodge for a porter.[167]For over a hundred years there was no great change of any kind, either in the Park or in its surroundings; but in 1842, one of the greatest improvements that has been made for the last half-century in the Dublin streets was effected by the College authorities, who pulled down the ugly brick wall of 1688, and supplied its place by the present fine granite wall, surmounted by a round coping and a handsome iron railing, which marks the boundary of the College Park on the north side of Nassau Street. The stonework is four feet six inches in height; the railing rises about seven feet higher, and is the work of the once well-known firm of William Turner & Co. And about the time this most admirable change was made, Nassau Street was still further improved by the demolition of some houses and shops, of which the leases fell in to the College, at the north-west corner of the street, and a considerable slice of ground was given up by the College to the City to widen and improve the street. The new stables—of fine cut granite—attached to the Provost’s House were erected at the same time. Nassau Street, thus raised, as it were, by favour of the University,from a third-rate to a first-rate street, became and continued for some considerable time to be the chosen afternoon resort of fashionable Dublin. But of late, although the street has been greatly improved by new buildings and high-class shops, it is neglected by the smart pleasure-seekers, who have to a great extent abandoned the town for more attractive residences in the suburbs. And a place of public meeting—like Hyde Park or the Boulevards, the Prater or the Prado, the Corso or the Rambla, Unter den Linden or even “Under the Trees”—is one of the most marked wants of modern social Dublin.Under the granite wall and railings of 1842, just within the Fellows’ Garden, and opposite the northern end of Dawson Street, is the old Holy Well of St. Patrick, a sacred spring from which St. Patrick’s Well Lane took its earlier name; now neglected and ill-cared for, but once the most celebrated holy well in Dublin, and the resort of numerous pilgrims and devotees from all parts of Ireland. At the extreme south-east corner of the College precincts, opening on to Lincoln Place, is a handsome granite gateway, with large iron gates and a porter’s lodge in cut stone, erected in 1855, in place of a mean doorway familiarly known as “The Hole in the Wall.” This entrance, which affords the most convenient access to all Collegians residing in the east and south-east, at present the more fashionable quarters of the town, is of special advantage to the Medical students, whose Lecture Rooms and Laboratories are situated just inside the gate. When these were completed in 1888, the ground between them and the gate was newly laid out and planted. And it is proposed, on the falling in of the leases of the row of houses between the Lincoln Place gate and the east end of the granite wall and railings in Nassau Street, to pull down the houses and shops, and continue the railings up to the gate in Lincoln Place, a distance of 120 yards; an improvement which will be equally great both to the College and the adjacent City property. One of the most striking views of the College grounds is from the windows of Kildare Street Club, the finest house in Nassau Street, and itself a striking object as seen from the College Park.THE MEDICAL SCHOOL.THE MEDICAL SCHOOL.The Medical School, which is shown in the illustration onp. 229, was built in 1886, from the designs of Mr. J. M‘Curdy (who died in that year), developed by Mr. Thomas Drew, under whose supervision the entire work was carried out. The site is one of the finest,and would be, perhaps, the finest in the College, were it not for the ugly back view of a building in dull grey cement, put up for the accommodation of the Cricket Club, that shuts off the view of and from the College Park. The Medical School has a frontage of 140 feet to the west, and two wings, extending 150 feet eastward, at right angles to the façade. The whole of this 440 feet is in fine cut granite. The main door is in the centre of the principal elevation, and three tiers of fourteen windows, those in the first and third stories being square, those in the second story round-headed, are disposed in pairs, without ornamentation or special architectural feature of any kind. Yet the building, if somewhat severe in character, is appropriate to the objects for which it is destined, and is, as a whole, entirely satisfactory. For six feet from the ground the masonry is of rustic ashlar; from thence to the eaves, fine cut granite. Behind the building, and enclosed by the wings, is a yard containing the pumping engine, by which the Park is kept dry even in the wettest weather. The water is drained into a reservoir, and pumped from thence through iron pipes into the river Liffey, which at low tide only is some feet below the College Park. In comparatively recent times all this part of the grounds was swampy, and in wet winters impassable. And that part of the Park between the Museum and the New Square is still called the Wilderness. To the north of the yard of the Medical School, and separated by six feet from the north wing of the Museum, is the Histological Laboratory, built in 1880. It is 85 feet long by 30 feet broad, with two tiers of seven windows, alternately square and round headed, looking to the north.THE MEDICAL SCHOOL.The Medical School, which is shown in the illustration onp. 229, was built in 1886, from the designs of Mr. J. M‘Curdy (who died in that year), developed by Mr. Thomas Drew, under whose supervision the entire work was carried out. The site is one of the finest,and would be, perhaps, the finest in the College, were it not for the ugly back view of a building in dull grey cement, put up for the accommodation of the Cricket Club, that shuts off the view of and from the College Park. The Medical School has a frontage of 140 feet to the west, and two wings, extending 150 feet eastward, at right angles to the façade. The whole of this 440 feet is in fine cut granite. The main door is in the centre of the principal elevation, and three tiers of fourteen windows, those in the first and third stories being square, those in the second story round-headed, are disposed in pairs, without ornamentation or special architectural feature of any kind. Yet the building, if somewhat severe in character, is appropriate to the objects for which it is destined, and is, as a whole, entirely satisfactory. For six feet from the ground the masonry is of rustic ashlar; from thence to the eaves, fine cut granite. Behind the building, and enclosed by the wings, is a yard containing the pumping engine, by which the Park is kept dry even in the wettest weather. The water is drained into a reservoir, and pumped from thence through iron pipes into the river Liffey, which at low tide only is some feet below the College Park. In comparatively recent times all this part of the grounds was swampy, and in wet winters impassable. And that part of the Park between the Museum and the New Square is still called the Wilderness. To the north of the yard of the Medical School, and separated by six feet from the north wing of the Museum, is the Histological Laboratory, built in 1880. It is 85 feet long by 30 feet broad, with two tiers of seven windows, alternately square and round headed, looking to the north.THE MUSEUM (TENNIS COURT).THE ANATOMICAL MUSEUM.The Anatomical Museum, built in 1875-6 from the design of Mr. J. M‘Curdy, for a long time architect to the College, is placed some seventy feet to the north of the Medical School, has a façade of 150 feet looking west, and a depth of forty-five feet. It is constructed of cut granite, without ornament or special features. Two doors and nine windows on the ground floor are surmounted by eleven windows on the upper story, all square, simple, solid, and harmonious. In this building are found the Museum collections both of Anatomy and of Natural History, and on the ground floor is the Anthropometric Laboratory, where measurements and records are taken on a somewhat more extended plan than that introduced by Captain Francis Galton at South Kensington. And a metric system of notation has been adopted similar to that in use on the Continent of Europe,especially in Paris, and lately introduced into the Anthropometric Department of the Military Medical School at Washington.THE DISSECTING ROOM.The Anatomical School presents the great advantage of having all its Lecture Rooms and Laboratories on the ground floor.The Dissecting Room is large, well lighted, and well ventilated—so spacious and so well arranged that three hundred students can work at the same time without inconvenience. It is in every respect well suited for the work that is carried on, and presents none of that dinginess so generally characteristic of rooms of the kind. It is lighted by the electric light. The floor is of oak parquet. Round the walls are a series of cases, in which are placed permanent typical specimens, which are largely used by the students. Every inch of wall space above these cases is made use of for framed plates and diagrams appropriate to the subjects, and in the centre of the room on lofty pedestals stand two statues, the Venus of Milo and the Boxer, bearing witness to the fact that Anatomy has artistic as well as medical aspects.The Bone Room and the Lecture Theatre are entered directly from the Dissecting Room. The Bone Room is a lofty room surrounded by a gallery. On the floor, osteological specimens are arranged in revolving cases on long narrow tables. Few anatomical departments can boast of so numerous and so varied an assortment of teaching preparations. The gallery is chiefly devoted to specimens which bear upon the applications of anatomy to the practice of medicine. It is here also that are displayed (1) the large series of models prepared in the department to illustrate cerebral growth and the cranio-cerebral topography of the child and the adult; (2) the series of models representing the anatomy of inguinal hernia, also prepared in the department; (3) the mesial sections of the four anthropoid apes—gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon—preparations which are unique. The Theatre is capable of seating 400 students. It is not handsome; but it is comfortable and, most important of all, its acoustic property admirably well adapted for the purpose for which it was designed. There are also a Museum of Surgical and Medical Pathology, and one of Materia Medica.THE CHEMICAL SCHOOL.The Chemical Department adjoins the Medical School, and is in the southern part of the buildings, just within the Lincoln Place gate of Trinity College. The new Lecture Theatre of the School is situated between two groups of Laboratories, and is fitted with all modern appliances for lecture-illustration in the various branches of Chemical Science. The seats are numbered, and are assigned in the order of entry for the different courses of lectures. Behind the Lecture Theatre is a large Demonstration Room, fitted with Assay and Cupelling furnaces and other apparatus, and beyond are the Laboratories for Qualitative Analysis and Preparation. These consist of four lofty and well-ventilated rooms, capable of accommodating 112 students, who work at compartments fully provided with the necessary apparatus tests and materials. Off the larger room of this series are (1) a special sulphuretted-hydrogen chamber, with separate ventilation, (2) a general store, and (3) cases of apparatus used at lectures. These Laboratories, as well as the Lecture Theatre and other rooms, are heated by means of hot water pipes, and the special ventilation required for carrying off fumes, &c., from the different compartments is obtained by the powerful draught of a chimney stack, sixty feet high, connected with the furnace of the heating apparatus.The Quantitative and Research Laboratories and their related rooms are at the east front of the new buildings. The main Laboratory is a fine room, provided with all modern appliances, and adjoining it are special rooms for (a) Balances and other instruments of precision, together with the special apparatus required for Quantitative Analysis; (b) for Organic Analysis; (c) for Pressure Tube work; (d) for Gas and Water Analysis, and for Spectrum Analysis. In addition to all these there is a Chemical Museum, containing a great variety of specimens for use at lectures, and everything that is required for the prosecution of the various researches conducted in the School. The Professor’s Rooms and private Laboratory are on the floor immediately above the Quantitative Laboratory, and in direct communication with all the departments.[168]THE PRINTING OFFICE.PULPIT NOW IN DINING HALL, ONCEIN OLD CHAPEL.FOOTNOTES:[139]Stubbs’History of the University of Dublin, pp. 5, 6.[140]Stubbs,op. cit.p. 7.[141]Stubbs,op. cit.pp. 11, 12.[142]Derived by Gilbert from a Hoge—a small sepulchral mound.[143]Hoggen Green was long the Tyburn of Dublin.—Gilbert, iii. 3.[144]TheAmpelopsis veitchiiplanted on the eastern front in 1887 by G. L. C. & E. P. W., as seen in summer and autumn, has done wonders for the New Square. The hawthorns in every quadrangle brighten the whole face of the College in early summer.[144]TheAmpelopsis veitchiiplanted on the eastern front in 1887 by G. L. C. & E. P. W., as seen in summer and autumn, has done wonders for the New Square. The hawthorns in every quadrangle brighten the whole face of the College in early summer.[145]He began life as a house carpenter.[146]There are in Dublin, at the present day, accomplished architects who have done, and are doing, good work both within and without the College walls. It is obvious that these remarks have no application nor reference to them, save in so far that even their best work has in it nothing peculiarly Irish.[147]Letter to Montagu, May 18th, 1748.[148]Graphic, May 29th, 1886.[149]Milizia:Lives of Architects, p. 295.[150]I am obliged to Mr. George Cook, the manager of the Burlington Hotel, for this information, and for afterwards showing me over the house.[151]The Old Square of 1685 occupied apparently the site of two yet older quadrangles.[152]“It is an accursed thing not to die.” This strange saying will be found in Epictetus, Diss. II. VI. 12, where the philosopher adds that man, like corn, having once been sown, must look forward with satisfaction to the harvest when he shall also be reaped. The slave moralist may perhaps have met St. Paul at Rome.[153]These are modern pictures of no value or interest. There is an authentic and most interesting portrait of Bishop Berkeley in the Common Room.[154]Born 1665; died 1745.[155]Vigo Street, built at this time, takes its name from this most popular victory.[156]Sir Robert Stewart, Mus. Doc., Professor of Music in the University, and Organist of the College Chapel, to whom my best thanks are due, not only for this information, but for many details as to the Chapel Organ kindly communicated in MS.[157]The clapper weighs 2 cwt. 13 lbs., and the total cost was £230.[158]The belfry stage is not of sufficient size to admit of the swinging of so great a bell as that of the College; it is accordingly rung by chiming only.[159]One corner, indeed, had to be strengthened about the middle of the present century.[160]The clock was made by Chancellor in the year 1846; it has a duplex escapement, and strikes the hours and half-hours. It was repaired and added to by Dobbyn in 1870.[161]SeeNotes and Queries, I., vii., 428.[162]This portrait was purchased by Lord Iveagh at Messrs. Christie & Manson’s, at a sale of some of the present Marquess of Ely’s pictures, in 1891.[163]Cork, Midleton, Armagh, Kilkenny, Clare, and Connemara are all represented.[164]Now Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.[165]Historical Guide to Dublin, Rev. G. N. Wright, 1821.[166]St. Andrew’s Church appears in old documents asParochia Sancti Andrea de Thengmothe.[167]Stubbs:History of the University of Dublin, p. 145.[168]A Grace passed the Senate of the University on the 20th of June, 1890, authorising admission to the degree of Doctor in Science of those who shall have been engaged in Scientific Investigation for not less than three years after graduating in Arts, and published results of independent work tending to the advancement of any branch of Science, and judged of sufficient merit by the Provost and Senior Fellows. Graduates of Trinity College who desire to devote themselves to the pursuit of any branch of Science can therefore now obtain a Scientific Degree on the ground of research. Facilities are afforded in the various schools for those who desire to acquire experience in conducting scientific researches, either by assisting in carrying out investigations actually in progress, working independently, or pursuing inquiries arising out of those recently conducted in the Schools.(Decorative chapter heading)CHAPTER IX.DISTINGUISHED GRADUATES.Felix prole virum.—Virgil.The close of the sixteenth century was a brilliant period in the history of the English people. Three years before the measure for the foundation in Dublin of a College “whereby knowledge and civility might be increased” passed the Great Seal, the “Invincible Armada” had suffered disastrous defeat at the hands of English seamen. The Queen, who had “confirmed to her people that pillar of liberty, a free press,” had shown herself possessed of a deeper sympathy with her subjects than enemies were willing to allow her, and the determined spirit of her ancestors—determined whether in the good cause or the bad—had been displayed at a crisis of supreme gravity. It was a good omen for the future of the “College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,” that it could write beneath the portrait of this sovereign, “Hujusce Collegii Fundatrix.”The history of the University founded by Elizabeth is the history of the greatest institution in this country, which, amidst so much failure, has been a permanent and indisputable success. During the dark ages of Ireland’s confusion and misery, the lamp of learning and culture was here kept alight. No small achievement will this seem in the eyes of those to whom the social and political condition of the country, during the two hundred years which followed the granting of the Charter to the “mother of a University” in Dublin, are even superficially known.In 1591, the meadow land and orchards of the Monastery of All Hallows, near the city, which had become the property of the Corporation upon the dissolution of all such establishments by Henry VIII., were transferred to the Provost and Fellows appointed under the Royal Seal; and where, fifty years before, the brotherhood of Prior and Monks had passed their days in the quiet seclusion of a life apart from the busy world of ambitious men, there now began the quick and vivid play of thought and feeling which mark a University in which the minds of the future leaders of the people are moulded and exercised. The more prominent names in the list of the graduates of Elizabeth’s College are abundant proof of the paramount position of influence from the first maintained by it in every department of the public life of the country, and the importance of its work in training the men who have been in the van of progress in culture and science, and among the leaders of every political movement in Ireland; many of them, too, in the wider field offered by England, and, in these later days, in the still wider field of the colonies and dependencies under the Crown. The traditions and prestige attached to such an institution are inalienable, and it will indeed be strange if any statesman attempt, as is sometimes apprehended, the impossible task of disturbing or transferring them. The greater part of the history of Ireland since the opening of the seventeenth century can be read in the more public lives of the alumni of Trinity College.Oxford, it is said, has been the University of great movements; Cambridge, of great men. Genius indeed is not the outcome or resultant of academic life and traditions, while intellectual and social movements may in a measure be traced to such sources. Thus may Oxford fairly claim for herself influences more wide-reaching than her sister, although she cannot boast an equally distinguished family. It must indeed be remembered that genius is resentful of restrictions, and the debt acknowledged to any University by its greatest sons is usually but a limited one. To her poets, Landor and Shelley, Oxford was a harsh stepmother, and many a young man, afterwards to be famous, left the banks of Cam without gratitude and without regret. Nevertheless, a distinctive type of culture, often of directing power, even though resisted, prevails at every great centre of learning. If the dignity of a seat of learning is to be determined by the intellectual splendour of the names associated with it, Oxford must give place to Dublin as well as to Cambridge. There is no Oxonian to rank with Swift or Burke.But all such comparisons are idle; the Irish sister of the two great English Universities has had a far different career, and her type of culture is essentially distinctive, and not thatof another. Oxford, “the home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs and impossible loyalties,” has a charm all her own. The old Irish College does not lie, like that “Queen of Romance, steeped in sentiment, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the middle ages.” To sentiment she has ever been a stranger, and she lies at the heart of a metropolis. But perhaps the atmosphere of sentiment is not compatible with that of reason, and Dublin has been the home of intellectual sanity. Unadorned by creeper or “ivy serpentine,” no quaint windows or secluded cloisters bring to the thoughtful student of “Old Trinity” visions of the monks of the Monastery of All Saints; and no one who knows her history, or has breathed her keen disillusionising air, would conceive as possible the fostering of an intellectualism such as that of Newman under the shadow of her Greek porticoes. Like her architecture, the mind of the University of Dublin has been more Greek than that of her English sisters. The spirit of Plato dwelt in Berkeley as it never could have done in a thinker educated in a University dominated by the methods of Bacon. In Edmund Burke the philosophical statesmanship of the Athenian Republic was revived as the “last enchantments of the middle ages,” with all their witchery, could never have revived it. Dublin has never given herself over to the idols of the forum or the market-place, nor worshipped at the shrine of utilitarian philosophies. She has not swung incense in the chapel of Hobbes or Herbert Spencer, nor bowed the knee to a dictator in the Vatican of science. She has betrayed as little enthusiasm for the cause of the Stuarts as for that of Pusey and Keble. When we call to mind her position in the heart of a country misunderstood and misgoverned for centuries, we cannot but marvel that she has so serenely kept thevia mediabetween political, philosophical, and social extremes. At once less conservative and less radical than her sisters, a dry intellectual light has been her guide. It may be that the native humour of the soil has preserved her from the follies of dogmatism—ecclesiastical, scientific, political, or literary,—and equally so from frenzied devotion to hopeless causes or extravagant theories. Stranger to sentiment, and no “Queen of Romance,” I cannot think that an enemy could deny beauty to the solemn stateliness of her quadrangles. In the quiet of moonlit nights, or when the summer sun shines upon the grey walls and the green of grass and foliage in her courts and park, there are few so unimpressionable as to remain insensible to her dignity and loveliness. But her truest dignity is in the intellectual honour of her sons.JACOBUS USSERIUS,ARCHIEPISCOPUS ARMACHANUS,TOTIUS HIBERNIÆ PRIMASAmong the very first batch of graduates in these the infant days of the College a great personality appears. At the first Public Commencements held in 1601, on ShroveTuesday, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, “Sir Ussher,” one of the students entered at the first matriculation examination, was admitted to his Master’s degree. James Ussher was of a family that had been resident in Ireland since the time of King John, and on both sides of the house his ancestors had held important public offices. His grandfather had been Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and his uncle, afterwards Primate of Ireland, while Archdeacon in Dublin had had much to do with the foundation of the Irish University. “Sir Ussher” became Fellow and Proctor in due time, and while still under age was by a faculty ordained Priest and Deacon. His first recorded visit to England was that upon the errand in which he met with Sir Thomas Bodley buying books for the Oxford Library which now bears his name. Two of the greatest Libraries of the United Kingdom were thus associated in their foundation. The energy and extraordinary abilities of Ussher were soon very widely recognised, and he was offered the Provostship in 1609, which position, however, he declined. On the occasion of his next visit to England, he bore a letter of recommendation to King James from the Lord Deputy and Council, it being supposed that the King was prejudiced against him. The gifts and learning which had made him so conspicuous a figure in Ireland did not fail to impress the King, who appointed him Bishop of Meath, “a Bishop of his own making,” as he said. He preached, while in London, before the Commons and at St. Margaret’s. During his tenure of the Bishopric he was very prominent in public affairs, and in 1625 he was raised to the Primacy. While occupied with the high civil and episcopal duties of his many offices,he was extending that learning which placed him at the head of the scholars of the day, and for which he is still read and honoured. Burnet writes of him as a man “of a most amazing diligence and exactness, joined with great judgment. Together with his vast learning, no man had a better soul and a more apostolical mind. In his conversation he expressed the true simplicity of a Christian, for passion, pride and self-will, and the love of the world seemed not so much as in his nature; so that he had all the innocence of the dove in him. He was certainly one of the greatest and best men that the age, perhaps the world, has produced.” Selden spoke of him as “vir summa pictate, judicio singulari, usque ad miraculum doctus.”To compass, even in a volume, the bare record of the important public acts of Ussher while Archbishop of Armagh, would be a difficult task. He is the towering figure of his time, and seems to stand as centre to its history, overshadowing both churchmen and statesmen of ordinary stature, a period which reckoned among its prominent men educated in Dublin such scholars as Dudley Loftus, and such antiquarians as Sir James Ware. In 1640 the Primate was forced by the troubles of the time to go for a sojourn to England, which proved to be for the rest of his life. He was taken into the counsels of King Charles about the modification of Episcopal government such as to satisfy Presbyterians, and propounded a scheme with that view. From this time he was one of the King’s confidential advisers, and warned him against the signing of the Bill of Attainder against Strafford. When he knew that it had been done, Ussher broke out with “O sir! what have you done? Pray God your Majesty may never suffer by signing this Bill!” He bore the King’s last messages to Strafford, and attended him in prison and to the scaffold, bearing back the report of his execution to Charles.At this period of his life, an unhappy and stormy one, he had many invitations from abroad; among others, from Cardinal Richelieu, who offered him a pension and free exercise of his religion in France. After the manner of the Greek heroes, these two princes of the Church interchanged gifts, the Cardinal sending Ussher a gold medal, and the Primate, in return, two Irish-greyhounds. The invitation to settle in France was renewed by the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria; but this, among other offers, such as that of a Chair in the University of Leyden, he declined. During the civil war his experiences were most unhappy, and although reverenced by the chiefs of the Parliamentary party as a man of astonishing genius and unswerving rectitude, his property was frequently plundered, and his life, if not actually endangered, rendered hopeless and miserable by the uncertainties and distress of hiscondition. He suffered, indeed, at the hands of the Government; for when summoned to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster by Parliament, he declined to present himself, and was, as a consequence, denounced, and his library confiscated; but by the help of influential friends it was restored to him. Ussher’s learning was so wide and deep, especially in theology, that in many instances the researches and discoveries of modern scholars have only served to confirm his judgments. A striking example of his acumen is to be found in his edition of Ignatius and Polycarp. Observing that three English writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cite Ignatius in a different form from what was then known, but agreeing with citations made by Eusebius and others, he was led to divine the existence of copies of the different form in England. Search was accordingly made, and his forecast was verified by the discovery of two Latin versions—one in Caius College, Cambridge, while a Greek text corresponding was recovered in Florence. This is the text of Ignatius now generally received, and has recently been established as the true text, as against that current before Ussher’s time, by the late Bishop Lightfoot, who speaks of this work as “showing not only marvellous erudition, but also the highest critical genius.” The great Primate’s sagacity, not only in matters of scholarship but in matters of State, was regarded in his own day as approaching that of inspiration, and a volume of his predictions respecting public affairs was actually published.The Parliament relented towards Ussher so far as to vote him a pension in his later years, which was, however, but irregularly paid. The death of his royal master was a great blow to Ussher, and he ever after kept the momentous day of execution as a fast. A few years before his death he published hisOld Testament Chronology, whence is taken the Table commonly inserted in Bibles. The great Protector sent for him, treated him with marked courtesy, and was indeed almost persuaded by him to grant a certain toleration to the Episcopal worship, but finally refused any such boon to his “implacable enemies;” showing himself, as Ussher tersely described him, a man possessed of “intestina non viscera.” At his death the honours of a public funeral were ordered by Cromwell, who, with all his sternness against his foes, could not but reverence the moral grandeur of the man; and the service of his own church was read over the grave of the greatest churchman of his time, in the chapel of St. Erasmus.While Dodwell, that prolific author, whose name is also connected with the Camden Professorship bestowed on him by the University of Oxford, was a Fellow of Trinity lecturing in logic, his most brilliant pupil, soon to become a friend, was William King.Among his contemporaries several names of note occur in the College records—Tate and Brady; Dillon, Earl of Roscommon; Leslie, Denham, Peter Browne, Robert Boyle, and Wilson, the author ofSacra Privata. But King has claims to more than passing notice. A churchman of whom Swift, a warm admirer, could write as follows, can have been no common man—“He spends his time in the practice of all the virtues that can become public or private life. So excellent a person may justly be reckoned among the greatest and most learned prelates of this age.”

CARVINGS AT BASE OF STAIRCASE.

In addition to a fine Drawing School and numerous Lecture Rooms, some of which are used by the Professors of Divinity and Law, this building also contains the Geological and Mineralogical collections, a series of engineering models, and a collection of instruments for Natural Philosophy researches. For the workshops attached, the motive power is supplied by an Otto gas engine.

The Printing House, a charming little antique temple standing at the extreme north-east of the Library Square, was designed by Cassels, and built between 1726 and 1734, at a cost of about £1,200, which was almost entirely provided by Dr. Stearne, Bishop ofClogher. The tetrastyle portico is of Roman Doric, nearly 8 ft. in width, with a bold cornice and triglyphs, and a plain metope, all in fine Portland stone. And the smoke of a hundred and fifty years has already sufficed to give it a somewhat venerable appearance. Underneath the portico and immediately over the door is the following inscription:—

R. R. Joannes Stearne,Episcopus Clogherensis,Vice-Cancellarius hujus Academiæ,Pro benevolentia quam habuitIn Academiam et rem literariamPosuit,A.D.1734.

THE PRINTING OFFICE, FROM NEW SQUARE.

Botany Bay Square, said by Mr. Wright[165]to have been designed by Provost Murray, lies to the extreme north, and behind the northern buildings of Library Square. It was built in 1812, and is a cold and somewhat neglected-looking quadrangle without any architectural pretensions. It encloses just one statute acre and a-half of ground, with some grass in the centre, fenced in by a poor railing, and planted with the scarlet flowering hawthorn. Were the buildings covered with ivy, the square enlivened with trim green sward and flowering shrubs, and the present railing removed, Botany Bay would still be a long way behind picturesque Port Philip. But its name would be somewhat better justified than it is at present.

As regards the Library, one of the most ancient of the existing buildings in the College precincts, and in many ways the most interesting, not only as regards the books which it contains, but the very admirable and satisfactory structure in which the volumes are so worthily housed, a full and detailed account will be found inChapter VII.

VIEW IN THE COLLEGE PARK—LIBRARY—ENGINEERING SCHOOL.

In the year 1688, a most interesting monument of antiquity in Dublin was demolished to make way for City improvements. The old DanishThingmote, or Parliament Hill, an artificial mound some forty feet high, that stood on the spot now partially occupied by the new Ulster Bank, and not a hundred yards from the Provost’s House, was levelled with the ground.[166]And the earth of the old mound, as it was removed, was carted away and thrown down in front of a poor street, St. Patrick’s Well Lane, facing the dreary and neglected expanse of waste land that is now the College Park. The street so widened and levelled was called—in honour of William of Orange Nassau, Protestant King of England—Nassau Street. The College authorities soon afterwards built a high brick wall on the boundary between the City and the College property; and the level of the street, in consequence of the immense accumulation of added soil from theThingmote, was left, as it now is, some six feet higher than that of the College land which adjoins it. The College Park was first laid out and planted with elm and plane trees in 1722; and in the same year a wall was built on the north-eastern boundary of the College grounds, with a gateway and lodge for a porter.[167]

For over a hundred years there was no great change of any kind, either in the Park or in its surroundings; but in 1842, one of the greatest improvements that has been made for the last half-century in the Dublin streets was effected by the College authorities, who pulled down the ugly brick wall of 1688, and supplied its place by the present fine granite wall, surmounted by a round coping and a handsome iron railing, which marks the boundary of the College Park on the north side of Nassau Street. The stonework is four feet six inches in height; the railing rises about seven feet higher, and is the work of the once well-known firm of William Turner & Co. And about the time this most admirable change was made, Nassau Street was still further improved by the demolition of some houses and shops, of which the leases fell in to the College, at the north-west corner of the street, and a considerable slice of ground was given up by the College to the City to widen and improve the street. The new stables—of fine cut granite—attached to the Provost’s House were erected at the same time. Nassau Street, thus raised, as it were, by favour of the University,from a third-rate to a first-rate street, became and continued for some considerable time to be the chosen afternoon resort of fashionable Dublin. But of late, although the street has been greatly improved by new buildings and high-class shops, it is neglected by the smart pleasure-seekers, who have to a great extent abandoned the town for more attractive residences in the suburbs. And a place of public meeting—like Hyde Park or the Boulevards, the Prater or the Prado, the Corso or the Rambla, Unter den Linden or even “Under the Trees”—is one of the most marked wants of modern social Dublin.

Under the granite wall and railings of 1842, just within the Fellows’ Garden, and opposite the northern end of Dawson Street, is the old Holy Well of St. Patrick, a sacred spring from which St. Patrick’s Well Lane took its earlier name; now neglected and ill-cared for, but once the most celebrated holy well in Dublin, and the resort of numerous pilgrims and devotees from all parts of Ireland. At the extreme south-east corner of the College precincts, opening on to Lincoln Place, is a handsome granite gateway, with large iron gates and a porter’s lodge in cut stone, erected in 1855, in place of a mean doorway familiarly known as “The Hole in the Wall.” This entrance, which affords the most convenient access to all Collegians residing in the east and south-east, at present the more fashionable quarters of the town, is of special advantage to the Medical students, whose Lecture Rooms and Laboratories are situated just inside the gate. When these were completed in 1888, the ground between them and the gate was newly laid out and planted. And it is proposed, on the falling in of the leases of the row of houses between the Lincoln Place gate and the east end of the granite wall and railings in Nassau Street, to pull down the houses and shops, and continue the railings up to the gate in Lincoln Place, a distance of 120 yards; an improvement which will be equally great both to the College and the adjacent City property. One of the most striking views of the College grounds is from the windows of Kildare Street Club, the finest house in Nassau Street, and itself a striking object as seen from the College Park.

THE MEDICAL SCHOOL.The Medical School, which is shown in the illustration onp. 229, was built in 1886, from the designs of Mr. J. M‘Curdy (who died in that year), developed by Mr. Thomas Drew, under whose supervision the entire work was carried out. The site is one of the finest,and would be, perhaps, the finest in the College, were it not for the ugly back view of a building in dull grey cement, put up for the accommodation of the Cricket Club, that shuts off the view of and from the College Park. The Medical School has a frontage of 140 feet to the west, and two wings, extending 150 feet eastward, at right angles to the façade. The whole of this 440 feet is in fine cut granite. The main door is in the centre of the principal elevation, and three tiers of fourteen windows, those in the first and third stories being square, those in the second story round-headed, are disposed in pairs, without ornamentation or special architectural feature of any kind. Yet the building, if somewhat severe in character, is appropriate to the objects for which it is destined, and is, as a whole, entirely satisfactory. For six feet from the ground the masonry is of rustic ashlar; from thence to the eaves, fine cut granite. Behind the building, and enclosed by the wings, is a yard containing the pumping engine, by which the Park is kept dry even in the wettest weather. The water is drained into a reservoir, and pumped from thence through iron pipes into the river Liffey, which at low tide only is some feet below the College Park. In comparatively recent times all this part of the grounds was swampy, and in wet winters impassable. And that part of the Park between the Museum and the New Square is still called the Wilderness. To the north of the yard of the Medical School, and separated by six feet from the north wing of the Museum, is the Histological Laboratory, built in 1880. It is 85 feet long by 30 feet broad, with two tiers of seven windows, alternately square and round headed, looking to the north.

THE MEDICAL SCHOOL.

The Medical School, which is shown in the illustration onp. 229, was built in 1886, from the designs of Mr. J. M‘Curdy (who died in that year), developed by Mr. Thomas Drew, under whose supervision the entire work was carried out. The site is one of the finest,and would be, perhaps, the finest in the College, were it not for the ugly back view of a building in dull grey cement, put up for the accommodation of the Cricket Club, that shuts off the view of and from the College Park. The Medical School has a frontage of 140 feet to the west, and two wings, extending 150 feet eastward, at right angles to the façade. The whole of this 440 feet is in fine cut granite. The main door is in the centre of the principal elevation, and three tiers of fourteen windows, those in the first and third stories being square, those in the second story round-headed, are disposed in pairs, without ornamentation or special architectural feature of any kind. Yet the building, if somewhat severe in character, is appropriate to the objects for which it is destined, and is, as a whole, entirely satisfactory. For six feet from the ground the masonry is of rustic ashlar; from thence to the eaves, fine cut granite. Behind the building, and enclosed by the wings, is a yard containing the pumping engine, by which the Park is kept dry even in the wettest weather. The water is drained into a reservoir, and pumped from thence through iron pipes into the river Liffey, which at low tide only is some feet below the College Park. In comparatively recent times all this part of the grounds was swampy, and in wet winters impassable. And that part of the Park between the Museum and the New Square is still called the Wilderness. To the north of the yard of the Medical School, and separated by six feet from the north wing of the Museum, is the Histological Laboratory, built in 1880. It is 85 feet long by 30 feet broad, with two tiers of seven windows, alternately square and round headed, looking to the north.

THE MEDICAL SCHOOL.

THE MUSEUM (TENNIS COURT).

The Anatomical Museum, built in 1875-6 from the design of Mr. J. M‘Curdy, for a long time architect to the College, is placed some seventy feet to the north of the Medical School, has a façade of 150 feet looking west, and a depth of forty-five feet. It is constructed of cut granite, without ornament or special features. Two doors and nine windows on the ground floor are surmounted by eleven windows on the upper story, all square, simple, solid, and harmonious. In this building are found the Museum collections both of Anatomy and of Natural History, and on the ground floor is the Anthropometric Laboratory, where measurements and records are taken on a somewhat more extended plan than that introduced by Captain Francis Galton at South Kensington. And a metric system of notation has been adopted similar to that in use on the Continent of Europe,especially in Paris, and lately introduced into the Anthropometric Department of the Military Medical School at Washington.

THE DISSECTING ROOM.

The Anatomical School presents the great advantage of having all its Lecture Rooms and Laboratories on the ground floor.

The Dissecting Room is large, well lighted, and well ventilated—so spacious and so well arranged that three hundred students can work at the same time without inconvenience. It is in every respect well suited for the work that is carried on, and presents none of that dinginess so generally characteristic of rooms of the kind. It is lighted by the electric light. The floor is of oak parquet. Round the walls are a series of cases, in which are placed permanent typical specimens, which are largely used by the students. Every inch of wall space above these cases is made use of for framed plates and diagrams appropriate to the subjects, and in the centre of the room on lofty pedestals stand two statues, the Venus of Milo and the Boxer, bearing witness to the fact that Anatomy has artistic as well as medical aspects.

The Bone Room and the Lecture Theatre are entered directly from the Dissecting Room. The Bone Room is a lofty room surrounded by a gallery. On the floor, osteological specimens are arranged in revolving cases on long narrow tables. Few anatomical departments can boast of so numerous and so varied an assortment of teaching preparations. The gallery is chiefly devoted to specimens which bear upon the applications of anatomy to the practice of medicine. It is here also that are displayed (1) the large series of models prepared in the department to illustrate cerebral growth and the cranio-cerebral topography of the child and the adult; (2) the series of models representing the anatomy of inguinal hernia, also prepared in the department; (3) the mesial sections of the four anthropoid apes—gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon—preparations which are unique. The Theatre is capable of seating 400 students. It is not handsome; but it is comfortable and, most important of all, its acoustic property admirably well adapted for the purpose for which it was designed. There are also a Museum of Surgical and Medical Pathology, and one of Materia Medica.

The Chemical Department adjoins the Medical School, and is in the southern part of the buildings, just within the Lincoln Place gate of Trinity College. The new Lecture Theatre of the School is situated between two groups of Laboratories, and is fitted with all modern appliances for lecture-illustration in the various branches of Chemical Science. The seats are numbered, and are assigned in the order of entry for the different courses of lectures. Behind the Lecture Theatre is a large Demonstration Room, fitted with Assay and Cupelling furnaces and other apparatus, and beyond are the Laboratories for Qualitative Analysis and Preparation. These consist of four lofty and well-ventilated rooms, capable of accommodating 112 students, who work at compartments fully provided with the necessary apparatus tests and materials. Off the larger room of this series are (1) a special sulphuretted-hydrogen chamber, with separate ventilation, (2) a general store, and (3) cases of apparatus used at lectures. These Laboratories, as well as the Lecture Theatre and other rooms, are heated by means of hot water pipes, and the special ventilation required for carrying off fumes, &c., from the different compartments is obtained by the powerful draught of a chimney stack, sixty feet high, connected with the furnace of the heating apparatus.The Quantitative and Research Laboratories and their related rooms are at the east front of the new buildings. The main Laboratory is a fine room, provided with all modern appliances, and adjoining it are special rooms for (a) Balances and other instruments of precision, together with the special apparatus required for Quantitative Analysis; (b) for Organic Analysis; (c) for Pressure Tube work; (d) for Gas and Water Analysis, and for Spectrum Analysis. In addition to all these there is a Chemical Museum, containing a great variety of specimens for use at lectures, and everything that is required for the prosecution of the various researches conducted in the School. The Professor’s Rooms and private Laboratory are on the floor immediately above the Quantitative Laboratory, and in direct communication with all the departments.[168]

THE PRINTING OFFICE.

PULPIT NOW IN DINING HALL, ONCEIN OLD CHAPEL.

FOOTNOTES:[139]Stubbs’History of the University of Dublin, pp. 5, 6.[140]Stubbs,op. cit.p. 7.[141]Stubbs,op. cit.pp. 11, 12.[142]Derived by Gilbert from a Hoge—a small sepulchral mound.[143]Hoggen Green was long the Tyburn of Dublin.—Gilbert, iii. 3.[144]TheAmpelopsis veitchiiplanted on the eastern front in 1887 by G. L. C. & E. P. W., as seen in summer and autumn, has done wonders for the New Square. The hawthorns in every quadrangle brighten the whole face of the College in early summer.[144]TheAmpelopsis veitchiiplanted on the eastern front in 1887 by G. L. C. & E. P. W., as seen in summer and autumn, has done wonders for the New Square. The hawthorns in every quadrangle brighten the whole face of the College in early summer.[145]He began life as a house carpenter.[146]There are in Dublin, at the present day, accomplished architects who have done, and are doing, good work both within and without the College walls. It is obvious that these remarks have no application nor reference to them, save in so far that even their best work has in it nothing peculiarly Irish.[147]Letter to Montagu, May 18th, 1748.[148]Graphic, May 29th, 1886.[149]Milizia:Lives of Architects, p. 295.[150]I am obliged to Mr. George Cook, the manager of the Burlington Hotel, for this information, and for afterwards showing me over the house.[151]The Old Square of 1685 occupied apparently the site of two yet older quadrangles.[152]“It is an accursed thing not to die.” This strange saying will be found in Epictetus, Diss. II. VI. 12, where the philosopher adds that man, like corn, having once been sown, must look forward with satisfaction to the harvest when he shall also be reaped. The slave moralist may perhaps have met St. Paul at Rome.[153]These are modern pictures of no value or interest. There is an authentic and most interesting portrait of Bishop Berkeley in the Common Room.[154]Born 1665; died 1745.[155]Vigo Street, built at this time, takes its name from this most popular victory.[156]Sir Robert Stewart, Mus. Doc., Professor of Music in the University, and Organist of the College Chapel, to whom my best thanks are due, not only for this information, but for many details as to the Chapel Organ kindly communicated in MS.[157]The clapper weighs 2 cwt. 13 lbs., and the total cost was £230.[158]The belfry stage is not of sufficient size to admit of the swinging of so great a bell as that of the College; it is accordingly rung by chiming only.[159]One corner, indeed, had to be strengthened about the middle of the present century.[160]The clock was made by Chancellor in the year 1846; it has a duplex escapement, and strikes the hours and half-hours. It was repaired and added to by Dobbyn in 1870.[161]SeeNotes and Queries, I., vii., 428.[162]This portrait was purchased by Lord Iveagh at Messrs. Christie & Manson’s, at a sale of some of the present Marquess of Ely’s pictures, in 1891.[163]Cork, Midleton, Armagh, Kilkenny, Clare, and Connemara are all represented.[164]Now Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.[165]Historical Guide to Dublin, Rev. G. N. Wright, 1821.[166]St. Andrew’s Church appears in old documents asParochia Sancti Andrea de Thengmothe.[167]Stubbs:History of the University of Dublin, p. 145.[168]A Grace passed the Senate of the University on the 20th of June, 1890, authorising admission to the degree of Doctor in Science of those who shall have been engaged in Scientific Investigation for not less than three years after graduating in Arts, and published results of independent work tending to the advancement of any branch of Science, and judged of sufficient merit by the Provost and Senior Fellows. Graduates of Trinity College who desire to devote themselves to the pursuit of any branch of Science can therefore now obtain a Scientific Degree on the ground of research. Facilities are afforded in the various schools for those who desire to acquire experience in conducting scientific researches, either by assisting in carrying out investigations actually in progress, working independently, or pursuing inquiries arising out of those recently conducted in the Schools.

[139]Stubbs’History of the University of Dublin, pp. 5, 6.

[140]Stubbs,op. cit.p. 7.

[141]Stubbs,op. cit.pp. 11, 12.

[142]Derived by Gilbert from a Hoge—a small sepulchral mound.

[143]Hoggen Green was long the Tyburn of Dublin.—Gilbert, iii. 3.

[144]TheAmpelopsis veitchiiplanted on the eastern front in 1887 by G. L. C. & E. P. W., as seen in summer and autumn, has done wonders for the New Square. The hawthorns in every quadrangle brighten the whole face of the College in early summer.

[145]He began life as a house carpenter.

[146]There are in Dublin, at the present day, accomplished architects who have done, and are doing, good work both within and without the College walls. It is obvious that these remarks have no application nor reference to them, save in so far that even their best work has in it nothing peculiarly Irish.

[147]Letter to Montagu, May 18th, 1748.

[148]Graphic, May 29th, 1886.

[149]Milizia:Lives of Architects, p. 295.

[150]I am obliged to Mr. George Cook, the manager of the Burlington Hotel, for this information, and for afterwards showing me over the house.

[151]The Old Square of 1685 occupied apparently the site of two yet older quadrangles.

[152]“It is an accursed thing not to die.” This strange saying will be found in Epictetus, Diss. II. VI. 12, where the philosopher adds that man, like corn, having once been sown, must look forward with satisfaction to the harvest when he shall also be reaped. The slave moralist may perhaps have met St. Paul at Rome.

[153]These are modern pictures of no value or interest. There is an authentic and most interesting portrait of Bishop Berkeley in the Common Room.

[154]Born 1665; died 1745.

[155]Vigo Street, built at this time, takes its name from this most popular victory.

[156]Sir Robert Stewart, Mus. Doc., Professor of Music in the University, and Organist of the College Chapel, to whom my best thanks are due, not only for this information, but for many details as to the Chapel Organ kindly communicated in MS.

[157]The clapper weighs 2 cwt. 13 lbs., and the total cost was £230.

[158]The belfry stage is not of sufficient size to admit of the swinging of so great a bell as that of the College; it is accordingly rung by chiming only.

[159]One corner, indeed, had to be strengthened about the middle of the present century.

[160]The clock was made by Chancellor in the year 1846; it has a duplex escapement, and strikes the hours and half-hours. It was repaired and added to by Dobbyn in 1870.

[161]SeeNotes and Queries, I., vii., 428.

[162]This portrait was purchased by Lord Iveagh at Messrs. Christie & Manson’s, at a sale of some of the present Marquess of Ely’s pictures, in 1891.

[163]Cork, Midleton, Armagh, Kilkenny, Clare, and Connemara are all represented.

[164]Now Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.

[165]Historical Guide to Dublin, Rev. G. N. Wright, 1821.

[166]St. Andrew’s Church appears in old documents asParochia Sancti Andrea de Thengmothe.

[167]Stubbs:History of the University of Dublin, p. 145.

[168]A Grace passed the Senate of the University on the 20th of June, 1890, authorising admission to the degree of Doctor in Science of those who shall have been engaged in Scientific Investigation for not less than three years after graduating in Arts, and published results of independent work tending to the advancement of any branch of Science, and judged of sufficient merit by the Provost and Senior Fellows. Graduates of Trinity College who desire to devote themselves to the pursuit of any branch of Science can therefore now obtain a Scientific Degree on the ground of research. Facilities are afforded in the various schools for those who desire to acquire experience in conducting scientific researches, either by assisting in carrying out investigations actually in progress, working independently, or pursuing inquiries arising out of those recently conducted in the Schools.

(Decorative chapter heading)

Felix prole virum.—Virgil.

The close of the sixteenth century was a brilliant period in the history of the English people. Three years before the measure for the foundation in Dublin of a College “whereby knowledge and civility might be increased” passed the Great Seal, the “Invincible Armada” had suffered disastrous defeat at the hands of English seamen. The Queen, who had “confirmed to her people that pillar of liberty, a free press,” had shown herself possessed of a deeper sympathy with her subjects than enemies were willing to allow her, and the determined spirit of her ancestors—determined whether in the good cause or the bad—had been displayed at a crisis of supreme gravity. It was a good omen for the future of the “College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,” that it could write beneath the portrait of this sovereign, “Hujusce Collegii Fundatrix.”

The history of the University founded by Elizabeth is the history of the greatest institution in this country, which, amidst so much failure, has been a permanent and indisputable success. During the dark ages of Ireland’s confusion and misery, the lamp of learning and culture was here kept alight. No small achievement will this seem in the eyes of those to whom the social and political condition of the country, during the two hundred years which followed the granting of the Charter to the “mother of a University” in Dublin, are even superficially known.

In 1591, the meadow land and orchards of the Monastery of All Hallows, near the city, which had become the property of the Corporation upon the dissolution of all such establishments by Henry VIII., were transferred to the Provost and Fellows appointed under the Royal Seal; and where, fifty years before, the brotherhood of Prior and Monks had passed their days in the quiet seclusion of a life apart from the busy world of ambitious men, there now began the quick and vivid play of thought and feeling which mark a University in which the minds of the future leaders of the people are moulded and exercised. The more prominent names in the list of the graduates of Elizabeth’s College are abundant proof of the paramount position of influence from the first maintained by it in every department of the public life of the country, and the importance of its work in training the men who have been in the van of progress in culture and science, and among the leaders of every political movement in Ireland; many of them, too, in the wider field offered by England, and, in these later days, in the still wider field of the colonies and dependencies under the Crown. The traditions and prestige attached to such an institution are inalienable, and it will indeed be strange if any statesman attempt, as is sometimes apprehended, the impossible task of disturbing or transferring them. The greater part of the history of Ireland since the opening of the seventeenth century can be read in the more public lives of the alumni of Trinity College.

Oxford, it is said, has been the University of great movements; Cambridge, of great men. Genius indeed is not the outcome or resultant of academic life and traditions, while intellectual and social movements may in a measure be traced to such sources. Thus may Oxford fairly claim for herself influences more wide-reaching than her sister, although she cannot boast an equally distinguished family. It must indeed be remembered that genius is resentful of restrictions, and the debt acknowledged to any University by its greatest sons is usually but a limited one. To her poets, Landor and Shelley, Oxford was a harsh stepmother, and many a young man, afterwards to be famous, left the banks of Cam without gratitude and without regret. Nevertheless, a distinctive type of culture, often of directing power, even though resisted, prevails at every great centre of learning. If the dignity of a seat of learning is to be determined by the intellectual splendour of the names associated with it, Oxford must give place to Dublin as well as to Cambridge. There is no Oxonian to rank with Swift or Burke.

But all such comparisons are idle; the Irish sister of the two great English Universities has had a far different career, and her type of culture is essentially distinctive, and not thatof another. Oxford, “the home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs and impossible loyalties,” has a charm all her own. The old Irish College does not lie, like that “Queen of Romance, steeped in sentiment, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the middle ages.” To sentiment she has ever been a stranger, and she lies at the heart of a metropolis. But perhaps the atmosphere of sentiment is not compatible with that of reason, and Dublin has been the home of intellectual sanity. Unadorned by creeper or “ivy serpentine,” no quaint windows or secluded cloisters bring to the thoughtful student of “Old Trinity” visions of the monks of the Monastery of All Saints; and no one who knows her history, or has breathed her keen disillusionising air, would conceive as possible the fostering of an intellectualism such as that of Newman under the shadow of her Greek porticoes. Like her architecture, the mind of the University of Dublin has been more Greek than that of her English sisters. The spirit of Plato dwelt in Berkeley as it never could have done in a thinker educated in a University dominated by the methods of Bacon. In Edmund Burke the philosophical statesmanship of the Athenian Republic was revived as the “last enchantments of the middle ages,” with all their witchery, could never have revived it. Dublin has never given herself over to the idols of the forum or the market-place, nor worshipped at the shrine of utilitarian philosophies. She has not swung incense in the chapel of Hobbes or Herbert Spencer, nor bowed the knee to a dictator in the Vatican of science. She has betrayed as little enthusiasm for the cause of the Stuarts as for that of Pusey and Keble. When we call to mind her position in the heart of a country misunderstood and misgoverned for centuries, we cannot but marvel that she has so serenely kept thevia mediabetween political, philosophical, and social extremes. At once less conservative and less radical than her sisters, a dry intellectual light has been her guide. It may be that the native humour of the soil has preserved her from the follies of dogmatism—ecclesiastical, scientific, political, or literary,—and equally so from frenzied devotion to hopeless causes or extravagant theories. Stranger to sentiment, and no “Queen of Romance,” I cannot think that an enemy could deny beauty to the solemn stateliness of her quadrangles. In the quiet of moonlit nights, or when the summer sun shines upon the grey walls and the green of grass and foliage in her courts and park, there are few so unimpressionable as to remain insensible to her dignity and loveliness. But her truest dignity is in the intellectual honour of her sons.

JACOBUS USSERIUS,ARCHIEPISCOPUS ARMACHANUS,TOTIUS HIBERNIÆ PRIMAS

Among the very first batch of graduates in these the infant days of the College a great personality appears. At the first Public Commencements held in 1601, on ShroveTuesday, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, “Sir Ussher,” one of the students entered at the first matriculation examination, was admitted to his Master’s degree. James Ussher was of a family that had been resident in Ireland since the time of King John, and on both sides of the house his ancestors had held important public offices. His grandfather had been Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and his uncle, afterwards Primate of Ireland, while Archdeacon in Dublin had had much to do with the foundation of the Irish University. “Sir Ussher” became Fellow and Proctor in due time, and while still under age was by a faculty ordained Priest and Deacon. His first recorded visit to England was that upon the errand in which he met with Sir Thomas Bodley buying books for the Oxford Library which now bears his name. Two of the greatest Libraries of the United Kingdom were thus associated in their foundation. The energy and extraordinary abilities of Ussher were soon very widely recognised, and he was offered the Provostship in 1609, which position, however, he declined. On the occasion of his next visit to England, he bore a letter of recommendation to King James from the Lord Deputy and Council, it being supposed that the King was prejudiced against him. The gifts and learning which had made him so conspicuous a figure in Ireland did not fail to impress the King, who appointed him Bishop of Meath, “a Bishop of his own making,” as he said. He preached, while in London, before the Commons and at St. Margaret’s. During his tenure of the Bishopric he was very prominent in public affairs, and in 1625 he was raised to the Primacy. While occupied with the high civil and episcopal duties of his many offices,he was extending that learning which placed him at the head of the scholars of the day, and for which he is still read and honoured. Burnet writes of him as a man “of a most amazing diligence and exactness, joined with great judgment. Together with his vast learning, no man had a better soul and a more apostolical mind. In his conversation he expressed the true simplicity of a Christian, for passion, pride and self-will, and the love of the world seemed not so much as in his nature; so that he had all the innocence of the dove in him. He was certainly one of the greatest and best men that the age, perhaps the world, has produced.” Selden spoke of him as “vir summa pictate, judicio singulari, usque ad miraculum doctus.”

To compass, even in a volume, the bare record of the important public acts of Ussher while Archbishop of Armagh, would be a difficult task. He is the towering figure of his time, and seems to stand as centre to its history, overshadowing both churchmen and statesmen of ordinary stature, a period which reckoned among its prominent men educated in Dublin such scholars as Dudley Loftus, and such antiquarians as Sir James Ware. In 1640 the Primate was forced by the troubles of the time to go for a sojourn to England, which proved to be for the rest of his life. He was taken into the counsels of King Charles about the modification of Episcopal government such as to satisfy Presbyterians, and propounded a scheme with that view. From this time he was one of the King’s confidential advisers, and warned him against the signing of the Bill of Attainder against Strafford. When he knew that it had been done, Ussher broke out with “O sir! what have you done? Pray God your Majesty may never suffer by signing this Bill!” He bore the King’s last messages to Strafford, and attended him in prison and to the scaffold, bearing back the report of his execution to Charles.

At this period of his life, an unhappy and stormy one, he had many invitations from abroad; among others, from Cardinal Richelieu, who offered him a pension and free exercise of his religion in France. After the manner of the Greek heroes, these two princes of the Church interchanged gifts, the Cardinal sending Ussher a gold medal, and the Primate, in return, two Irish-greyhounds. The invitation to settle in France was renewed by the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria; but this, among other offers, such as that of a Chair in the University of Leyden, he declined. During the civil war his experiences were most unhappy, and although reverenced by the chiefs of the Parliamentary party as a man of astonishing genius and unswerving rectitude, his property was frequently plundered, and his life, if not actually endangered, rendered hopeless and miserable by the uncertainties and distress of hiscondition. He suffered, indeed, at the hands of the Government; for when summoned to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster by Parliament, he declined to present himself, and was, as a consequence, denounced, and his library confiscated; but by the help of influential friends it was restored to him. Ussher’s learning was so wide and deep, especially in theology, that in many instances the researches and discoveries of modern scholars have only served to confirm his judgments. A striking example of his acumen is to be found in his edition of Ignatius and Polycarp. Observing that three English writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cite Ignatius in a different form from what was then known, but agreeing with citations made by Eusebius and others, he was led to divine the existence of copies of the different form in England. Search was accordingly made, and his forecast was verified by the discovery of two Latin versions—one in Caius College, Cambridge, while a Greek text corresponding was recovered in Florence. This is the text of Ignatius now generally received, and has recently been established as the true text, as against that current before Ussher’s time, by the late Bishop Lightfoot, who speaks of this work as “showing not only marvellous erudition, but also the highest critical genius.” The great Primate’s sagacity, not only in matters of scholarship but in matters of State, was regarded in his own day as approaching that of inspiration, and a volume of his predictions respecting public affairs was actually published.

The Parliament relented towards Ussher so far as to vote him a pension in his later years, which was, however, but irregularly paid. The death of his royal master was a great blow to Ussher, and he ever after kept the momentous day of execution as a fast. A few years before his death he published hisOld Testament Chronology, whence is taken the Table commonly inserted in Bibles. The great Protector sent for him, treated him with marked courtesy, and was indeed almost persuaded by him to grant a certain toleration to the Episcopal worship, but finally refused any such boon to his “implacable enemies;” showing himself, as Ussher tersely described him, a man possessed of “intestina non viscera.” At his death the honours of a public funeral were ordered by Cromwell, who, with all his sternness against his foes, could not but reverence the moral grandeur of the man; and the service of his own church was read over the grave of the greatest churchman of his time, in the chapel of St. Erasmus.

While Dodwell, that prolific author, whose name is also connected with the Camden Professorship bestowed on him by the University of Oxford, was a Fellow of Trinity lecturing in logic, his most brilliant pupil, soon to become a friend, was William King.Among his contemporaries several names of note occur in the College records—Tate and Brady; Dillon, Earl of Roscommon; Leslie, Denham, Peter Browne, Robert Boyle, and Wilson, the author ofSacra Privata. But King has claims to more than passing notice. A churchman of whom Swift, a warm admirer, could write as follows, can have been no common man—“He spends his time in the practice of all the virtues that can become public or private life. So excellent a person may justly be reckoned among the greatest and most learned prelates of this age.”

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