Ireland Trinity College (Dublin

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, otherwise called 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 range lay 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]

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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’s Life and Errors gives 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. The Regent 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 of these 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 the College, 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.

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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.

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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 call les 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 an enceinte of 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 call les 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 an enceinte of 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.

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 the site 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 name of 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.

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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 have been 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 their Vitruvius 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 founders of 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 the University 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 of the 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 in An 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.

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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 principal corps de logis is 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 due to 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 the
College, 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 the College, 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.

PARLIAMENT AND LIBRARY SQUARES.

LIBRARY SQUARE.

The name of the accomplished architect who designed the west faÇade of the College is, strange to say, lost to history; but we know at least that Sir William Chambers, the architect of Somerset House, designed the buildings looking on Parliament Square, as well as the fronts of the Theatre and Chapel, and that the work was carried out from his drawings—for he never visited Ireland—by his very accomplished assistant, a Lancashire artist of the name of Mayers, who also designed and superintended the internal decorations of the Theatre and the Chapel. There is good reason to suppose that some of the ornamental work of the faÇade, by whomsoever originally designed, was carried out by Smith, the modest architect or handicraftsman who prepared the plans for the Provost’s House in 1759. There are two large clocks—separate timepieces—placed over the inner and outer pediments of the faÇade respectively, showing the time within and without the College. They are built upon horizontal cast-iron plates, with 7in. main wheels, dead beat escapements, and electro-magnetic seconds. The pendulums are connected by wire with the Observatory at Dunsink. The time is indicated upon cast-iron dials, enamelled dark blue, and each 6ft. 6in. in diameter. Both these clocks were placed in their present position in 1878.

The name of the accomplished architect who designed the west faÇade of the College is, strange to say, lost to history; but we know at least that Sir William Chambers, the architect of Somerset House, designed the buildings looking on Parliament Square, as well as the fronts of the Theatre and Chapel, and that the work was carried out from his drawings—for he never visited Ireland—by his very accomplished assistant, a Lancashire artist of the name of Mayers, who also designed and superintended the internal decorations of the Theatre and the Chapel. There is good reason to suppose that some of the ornamental work of the faÇade, by whomsoever originally designed, was carried out by Smith, the modest architect or handicraftsman who prepared the plans for the Provost’s House in 1759. There are two large clocks—separate timepieces—placed over the inner and outer pediments of the faÇade respectively, showing the time within and without the College. They are built upon horizontal cast-iron plates, with 7in. main wheels, dead beat escapements, and electro-magnetic seconds. The pendulums are connected by wire with the Observatory at Dunsink. The time is indicated upon cast-iron dials, enamelled dark blue, and each 6ft. 6in. in diameter. Both these clocks were placed in their present position in 1878.

The noble expanse of ground that is enclosed by the principal buildings of the College is too large to be called a quadrangle, being six hundred and ten feet long, by three hundred and forty feet broad, at the widest part, and it is too irregular in shape to be called a square. It is the survival of at least five more ancient and less spacious enclosures—(1) the Old Square,[151] built in 1685, and taken down in 1751 to make room for the present handsome granite buildings known as Parliament Square, in grateful memory of the source from which the funds had been provided for the building; the Library Square, built in 1698, and the oldest portion of the College buildings now in existence, and which was itself divided into two quadrangles (2 and 3) by some new buildings standing east and west, which were taken down in the middle of the eighteenth century. The space between the present Dining Hall and the Fellows’ Garden was also divided into two quadrangles (4 and 5) by the old Hall and the old Chapel, which formed a continuation of these departed “New Buildings” to the westward, as far as the centre of Parliament Square.

THE CHAPEL.

The front of the Chapel, designed by Sir William Chambers, and erected between 1787 and 1789, at a cost of £22,000, is similar to that of the Theatre that stands opposite. Facing due south, it is ninety-six feet wide, with a deep and very handsome tetrastyle portico, forty-eight feet wide, of the Roman Corinthian order, immediately within which is a narthex or ante-chapel, in which is the main doorway of the building. The interior of the Chapel is eighty feet in length, exclusive of a semicircular apse six feet in diameter, at the north end. It is forty feet wide and forty-four feet high, having an organ loft and semicircular gallery over the entrance, of good carved oak. In the choir are four ranges of seats, rising gradually from the aisle to the side walls. The back row of stalls at the west and east sides are appropriated to the Fellows and Professors. The walls are wainscoted with finely polished oak panels to the height of twelve feet, over which is a broad surbase, from which spring the plain round-headed windows. The woodwork is elaborately carved, and cost over £5,300. The piers between the windows are ornamented with coupled pilasters, fluted, of the Ionic order, surmounted by an ornamented frieze and cornice. From the latter springs the coved and groined ceiling, which is painted and enriched with florid stucco ornaments of Italian design, similar to those employed in the same position in the Theatre. The ceiling of the Chapel is, however, somewhat more elaborate in design. In the year 1817, the number of students resident within the walls of the College increased to such an extent, that to afford accommodation for the necessarily increased attendance at Chapel, an iron gallery was put up along the east and west walls of the building. This was removed in 1872, when the floor of the Chapel was laid in black and red tiles of good design, and the marble steps and rails before the Communion Table were presented by the Provost, Dr. Humphrey Lloyd. At the same time, the oil lamps that were fitted to the fine brass chandeliers that hung from the east and west walls were replaced by gas burners. In the apse are three large round-headed windows, without tracery or ornamentation, which have recently been filled with painted glass. That on the north-west, representing the Recapitulation of the Law by Moses, and the Restoration under Solomon, was erected in memory of Dr. Richard Graves, by his son and other relations, in 1865. The window facing north-east was erected in memory of the great Bishop Berkeley by the Right Hon. R. R. Warren, when Attorney-General for Ireland, in 1867.

The central window directly over the Communion Table was erected in memory of Archbishop Ussher by Dr. Butcher, Bishop of Meath, in 1869. This window was painted in Munich, and the price, £300, which was paid by Dr. Butcher, was one quarter’s salary of the Regius Professorship of Divinity, of which office he continued for three months to perform the duties, after his consecration as Bishop of Meath. Partly over the narthex or ante-chapel, in the deep recess under the portico, and partly over the stalls of the Provost and Senior Fellows, is the spacious organ gallery, in which is placed the organ. When the present Chapel was approaching completion, a commission was given to Green, the favourite organ-builder of George III., to provide an instrument suitable for the new building. The price was to be five hundred guineas. And an instrument sweet rather than powerful in tone, like most of Green’s, was accordingly placed in the organ loft. All that now remains of this organ of Green’s is the present choir manual of only four stops. On account of the beauty of its stopt diapason (deep, and not deformed by the usual quintation effect), the Board retained this choir organ manual, but they were induced in 1838 to abandon the remainder to Telford, a local builder, who sold it to the Church at Durrow, Queen’s County, where Mr. Flower, subsequently Lord Ashbrook, maintained for some time a choir and the Cathedral service. In its place in the College Chapel, Telford put up a Great Organ and Swell Organ, which were used in conjunction with Green’s older manual and an imperfect pedal organ. In 1879 these two manuals and the pedals were enlarged, altered, and greatly improved, and further additions were made by Hill & Son, of London; and the mahogany cases of Green’s instrument were enlarged to admit of this augmentation. The organ as it stands at present contains the following stops, all effective and brilliant, but with none of the harshness to be heard in so many organs of the present day:—

Among accessory stops, &c., may be counted three coupling actions, great b pedals, swell to pedals, swell to great organ, tremolo by a horizontal bar, three hand-levers for shifting stops of the great organ, labelled “ff,” “mf,” and “p.” The choir organ is placed behind the performer, like the “Ruck-positif” of Continental examples.

In the ante-Chapel, on either side of the entrance door, are two slabs of white marble let into the wall, with the following names inscribed:—Fr. Sadleir, 1851; Ric. Macdonnell, 1867; Carol. Wall, 1862; Sam. Kyle, 1848; Henric. Wray, 1847; Thom. Prior, 1843; Steph. Sandes, 1842; Francis C. Hodgkinson, 1840; Bart. Lloyd, 1835; Richd. Murray, 1799; Gul. Newcome, 1800; Matt. Young, 1800; John Brinkley, 1835; Thom. Elrington, 1835; Geo. Hall, 1811; John Law, 1810. These are all buried within the precincts of the Chapel; and the slabs were put up by Provost Lloyd, when it was determined that intra-mural burial should cease. There are also in this wall ten mural tablets, with Latin inscriptions, to the memory of Henricus Wray, ob. 1846; George Hall, 1811; Thomas Elrington, 1835; Geo. Longfield, 1818; Stephen Creagh Sandes, 1842; Thos. Prior, 1843; Bartholomew Lloyd, 1837; Samuel Kyle, 1848; Sam. John McClean, 1829. The only inscription of any peculiar interest is to the memory of Bishop Newcome, and runs as follows:—

CEMETERIUM.

In a neglected corner on the outside of the Chapel, looking towards the east, railed in, but unprotected from the weather, is a little burying-ground, where may be seen the tombs of some few of the Provosts and other distinguished Fellows of the College. Simple stone slabs on the ground mark the last resting-place of Dr. Temple, Provost in 1609, and of other unnamed and forgotten dignitaries, whose remains were removed from the old Chapel when the new building was consecrated in 1798. The inscription on the plain flag nearest the entrance is as clear as the day it was cut, and runs as follows:—

Next to him lies Richard Andrews—

He was Provost in 1758, and died in 1774.

The third slab is—

A large mural tablet with Corinthian columns and alabaster mantlings, and bearing a long and not particularly interesting inscription, is raised to the memory of Dr. Browne, the Provost who is said to have been killed by a brickbat thrown in a College riot in 1699. The long inscription to his many virtues is silent on this point.

On the left-hand side of Dr. Browne’s pompous monument is a plain stone slab in memory of Dr. Stearne, who built the University Printing House, and was in other ways a distinguished benefactor of the College. The very curious inscription runs as follows:—

?????? ?S?? ?? ???T?????[152]

Dixit Epictetus, Credidit
Johannes Stearne
M. & J. U. D. Collegii SS Indiv.
Trinitatis Dublin Socius Senior.

On the right-hand side, and like all the other monuments removed from the old Chapel in 1798, is a slab with the following interesting inscription in Latin verse:—

P.M.S. ThomÆ Seele, S.T.D. Hujusce Collegii Dignissimi prÆsidis et instauratoris qui obiit Feb 11, Anno Domini MDCLXXIV. Ætatis SuÆ LXIII.

And lastly, there is a large tomb, surmounted by a ghost-like effigy of Luke Challoner, the real founder of the College in 1592, which occupies the most important place in the cheerless little enclosure. The monument, houseless on the destruction of the old Chapel, could not apparently find shelter in the new building of 1798. The recumbent figure of soft alabaster may once have been a work of art; at a later stage it may have been interesting to the antiquarian; at the present day it is merely remarkable as a geological specimen, a curious illustration of the grotesque result of the action of water upon alabaster, under certain conditions. The simple inscription on the tomb reads as follows:—

P.M.S.
LucÆ Chaloner
qui inter primos socios
Collegii S.S. Trinitatis.
A Regina Elizabetha
Constitutus fuit.
A.D. 1592.
obiit die 27 aprilis, A.D. 1613.

The shorter the epitaph the greater the man!

The vaults under the Chapel were closed in 1867. Several of the Provosts and Senior Fellows were buried in them; the last burial was that of Provost MacDonnell.

THE THEATRE.

The Examination Hall, or Theatre, as it is more correctly called, was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1777, and corresponds in its external appearance exactly with that of the Chapel, although its interior arrangement is naturally very different. Ten pilasters, with feeble capitals of a tasteless composite order, are disposed round the walls, standing each one singly at intervals of twelve feet on a rustic basement ten feet high, and supporting a handsome stucco frieze and bold cornice, the work of Italian artists. The pilasters themselves are ornamented with stucco scroll-work of florid Roman character. From the cornice springs the ceiling, which is also very richly ornamented in stucco, designed, modelled, and painted in the same style as the ceiling of the Chapel, by Mayers, under the direction of Sir William Chambers. In the five panels on the east side of the Hall are placed full-length portraits of Queen Elizabeth, the foundress, in her state robes; of Archbishop Ussher, Archbishop King, Bishop Berkeley, and Provost Baldwin.[153] In four of the panels on the opposite side are portraits of Edmund Burke—not by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as is usually asserted, but by Hoppner; of William Molyneux; of Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, by Stewart (an American artist of some reputation); and of Dean Swift. Under the centre panel is placed an elaborate monument (which is represented in the accompanying engraving) to Provost Baldwin, who died in 1758. The monument is some nine feet long and about six feet high and four feet in depth from the wall, and consists of three figures in white marble standing over a sarcophagus of dark porphyry. It is the work of a Dublin artist of the name of Hewetson, who executed it at his studio at Rome. The Hall is seventy feet long to the base line of the semicircular apse, which extends to a further distance of twenty feet, and is forty feet wide and forty-four feet high. It is lighted by three windows in the circular apse at the upper end, and by a range of small fan-shaped windows placed over the cornice. An elaborate gilt chandelier, designed to hold sixty wax candles, remarkably light and graceful in character, and which belonged to the old House of Commons in College Green, hangs in the centre of the Hall (see page 130). At the lower end, and over the deep portico and doorway, is a room in which is placed a small organ that formerly stood in the old Chapel, and which is traditionally said to have been taken out of a Spanish ship which formed part of the Armada, and was wrecked on the coast of Ireland.

But the legend is without form or foundation. The true history of the organ and its acquisition, however, is sufficiently interesting to be worth recording. On the 11th of October, 1702, a fleet of twenty-five English and Dutch ships of war, under the supreme command of Admiral Rooke, having been foiled in an attack on Cadiz, sailed into Vigo Bay, where the combined French and Spanish fleets were then collected. A body of 2,500 soldiers, under the command of Richard, second Duke of Ormonde,[154] landed under some fortifications eight or nine miles from the town of Vigo, silenced the batteries, and captured no less than forty pieces of cannon. A large number of the enemy’s ships were burned and sunk by the British fleet, including six great galleons with treasure on board to the extent of 14,000,000 pieces of eight; and a number of vessels of all kinds were taken as prizes. Among them was a ship containing, carefully packed as part of her freight, an organ destined in all probability for Mexico or Peru—the gift, it may be, of his most Catholic Majesty Philip the Fifth to some favoured church in Spanish America. Rooke declined to attack the town, and sailed away with his prizes to England. He was tried by court-martial on his arrival, and honourably acquitted, and lived to earn undying fame two years later by the taking of Gibraltar. But the Duke of Ormonde enjoyed all the credit of the victory at Vigo,[155] and was soon after appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1703), when he presented the organ, so strangely acquired, to Trinity College, Dublin. There was a solemn Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul’s in honour of Ormonde’s victory, at which Queen Anne was present, and a medal was struck in commemoration of the event, of which an example may be seen in the College Library. The organ is said to have been originally built in the Spanish Netherlands, and was repaired and enlarged in Dublin by Cuvillie in 1705, before it was placed in the old Chapel. But the instrument that now stands in the gallery of the Theatre is not the organ as it was presented by the Duke of Ormonde, or even as it left the hands of Cuvillie. “When the University Choral Society,” writes Sir Robert Stewart, “was founded (1837), they resolved to erect an organ for their accompaniments; and by the aid of the Lord Primate, who contributed £50 to the cost, this was done, and an instrument of two rows of keys and pedals was placed at the north end of the Commons Hall about 1839. But the Society, finding it useless for their purpose, sold it to the Board, who were glad to remove it from the space which was required for Commons, Examinations, and Lectures. The organ case which stands in the gallery of the Examination Hall contains at present the pipes of the organ built by Telford for the University Choral Society in 1839. All the old Spanish pipes having been removed from its interior, the case closely resembles all those organs built in the eighteenth century, a familiar type abounding in cherubs, heraldic mantlings, rococo scroll-work, all being surmounted by the Royal Arms.”[156]

Another more modern legend connected with this Theatre may be worth recording. When George IV. visited Dublin, he was entertained, as it was fitting that he should be, by the University. And to make his way plainer from the Provost’s House to the Theatre, where the Degrees were conferred in his presence, a part of the wall of the apse facing the Provost’s House, where his Majesty was received, was removed, and the grand procession entered the Hall without the necessity of going round to the main doorway. The masonry on the outside of the Hall still bears evidence of the destruction and restoration that was necessitated by this most loyal smoothing of the path of the royal guest.

One of the greatest improvements of recent times in the College precincts—a happy artistic inspiration—has been effected at comparatively small cost either of money or of trouble. In matters of art and taste, when the right thing is done, the result is commonly quite out of proportion to the material magnitude of the work. In the spring of 1892, the low granite wall, with its high iron railing, which ran from the north-east corner of the Library Buildings to the side of the Examination Hall, was moved back some fifty feet. As it stood before, it not only broke in upon the fine eastern faÇade of the Examination Hall, ninety feet in length, but it entirely concealed the lower story of the western end of the Library, and blocked up the main door of that building; and its lines were as meaningless and inappropriate as they are now harmonious and satisfactory. The actual amount of ground thus thrown into the quadrangle is only about five hundred square yards, or perhaps one-fiftieth part of the total area of the great square of the College. But it would be difficult to find a unit to express the magnitude of the improvement.

THE CAMPANILE.

The old Hall, which extended from the present Campanile in the direction of the College gate, and parallel to the Library, had a plain end towards the west, in which was the doorway. The view of the Hall from the gateway being somewhat unsightly, a sum of £600 was bequeathed to the College by Dean Pratt, formerly Provost, for the purpose of having an ornamental front erected at this end of the Hall; and Dr. Gilbert had also left by his will a further sum of £500 towards the building of a new Belfry. The Board accordingly employed Mr. Cassels to furnish a design for the combination of the two objects. The building was commenced in 1740, and in 1746 the new front to the Hall, with a Bell Tower surmounted by a dome and lantern, was completed, at a total cost of £3,886: and in 1747 the great Bell of the College, which had been cast at Gloucester in 1742, and which weighs nearly 37 cwt., was then hung in this Tower.[157] The upper portion of this Belfry was removed in 1791, having been condemned as unsafe, and the entire front was taken down in 1798. The present Belfry, or Campanile, as it is usually called, is the gift of Lord John George Beresford, when Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, in 1852. It is an isolated monumental building in the centre of Parliament Square—an architectural composition of three stages. The lower or basement stage is square in plan, and of the Doric order, elevated on a bold podium or sub-basement of rusticated granite ashlar. Each side presents an open archway between two pairs of Doric pilasters, the pilasters being raised on pedestals, and the whole surmounted by a Doric entablature. The keystones of arches have carved heads, representing Homer, Socrates, Plato, and Demosthenes. This story is built of granite, with chamfered joints and raised panels, the alternate courses of pilasters being raised in the same manner. From the blocking of the entablature rises a stage of circular steps, the angles of blocking being occupied by pedestals supporting figures representing Divinity, Science, Medicine, and Law. From the upper step of this chamber rises the bell-chamber—circular in plan, and formed by eight Corinthian columns, attached, and raised on pedestals. The space between each pair of columns is pierced by a semicircular-headed opening, filled with ornamental ironwork. The Corinthian entablature above is broken over each column. From this level rises the dome, divided vertically by bands in continuation of the columns below, the intervals being carved to resemble overlapping leaves. This dome is surmounted by a small open lantern, formed by piers and arches; above these is a small dental cornice, finished by a smaller dome, carved like the one below. The whole is surmounted by a gilt cross. Portland stone is used from the upper circular step; the rest is cut granite. The total height is about[215]
[216] one hundred feet.[158] The gradation of the composition from the square basement to the circular belfry stage is designed with remarkable artistic ability. It is by a series of stepped courses, and the angles or “broaches” are happily filled by the sitting figures, adapted to their place with great skill by the late Mr. Thomas Kirke, R.H.A., the sculptor. The whole design, while of refined and “correct” classic detail, is of an original character, skilfully adapted to its isolated position. The architect engaged in its erection in 1852-3 was the late Sir Charles Lanyon, R.H.A., then Mr. Lanyon, and, associated with him, Mr. W. H. Lynn, R.H.A., both of whom continued to design buildings in the Roman Classic manner with skill and refinement throughout a period known as that of the Gothic revival, when this style was for a time under undeserved popular disfavour. Few architects of the day would have been found to adapt a design, with such good judgment and restraint, to the genius loci of Trinity College, and to the surrounding architecture, the work in the previous century of Sir William Chambers. The foundation-stone of the Campanile was laid by the donor, His Grace Lord John George Beresford, Lord Primate of all Ireland, who was also Chancellor of the University, on the 1st of December, 1852; and the great Bell was first rung in the new Belfry before Divine Service on Sunday, November 26th, 1854.

THE HALL.

In the early part of the eighteenth century, the want of a commodious and appropriate Dining Hall for the use of the members of the College began to be seriously felt. In a pamphlet of the year 1734, it is stated that attendance of the Fellows at Commons was never as good as could be wished, and that this was attributed to the uncomfortable condition of the then existing Hall, which was a large and spacious room, flagged, open to the air at both ends, never warmed by fire—“in fact, the coldest room in Europe.” There was, moreover, no Common Room in the College, in which the Fellows could pass the evening together. In 1740, Dr. Elwood, the Vice-Provost, bequeathed £1,000 for the use of the College, which the Board determined to apply to the purpose of building a Hall. Plans were prepared by Mr. Cassels, and the work at once put in hand; and the new building was completed in 1745. But the Hall, so erected at a total cost of £3,020, must have been unusually badly built, for we find that at a meeting of the Board—November 13, 1758—it was ordered that the Dining Hall should be pulled down, the foundation walls having sagged to a dangerous extent on the laying of the new kitchen; and “Mr. Plummer, the bricklayer”—the name reads like a jest—was dismissed from the service of the College for his negligence in connection with the execution of the work. Mr. Plummer was apparently replaced by a better workman. A new building was at once commenced, and although Mr. Cassels, the architect, had unfortunately died while superintending the construction of the Duke of Leinster’s new house at Carton, his plans were carefully followed, and the Dining Hall as we now see it was finished about 1761, and is apparently as solid as it was the day Mr. Plummer’s successor laid the last stone of the edifice.[159] It is a detached building, in the lower part of which are the kitchen, cellars, and other offices. It presents a handsome front, fifty feet wide, of granite, with an angular pediment supported by six Ionic pilasters of cut granite. The main door is approached by a broad flight of ten steps, rising to a height of five feet from the base line, the whole width of the front.

The clock in the pediment was for a long time the only public dial in the College, and though it neither is nor was of any particular interest as a timepiece, it was, until October 15th, 1870, somewhat remarkable as timekeeper, the College time being a quarter of an hour behind the world in Dublin.[160] Within the building, and approached through a spacious outer hall or vestibule, is the Dining Room or Hall proper, a fine room 70 ft. long, 35 ft. broad, and 35 ft. high; it is wainscoted to the height of 12 ft. with oak panels surmounted by a plain moulding. Over this, on the east side, are four large plain round-headed windows carried quite up to the cornice, which, together with a handsome Venetian window at the north or upper end, opposite to the entrance, and over the Fellows’ tables, gives abundant light to the Hall. The west side is without windows, but in their place are seven recesses, in each of which hangs a full-length portrait of some one of the many distinguished graduates of the University. The niches are finished with broad mouldings in stucco, and immediately over them runs a bold deep cornice, of Italian design. From this cornice springs the ceiling, which is coved for about 10 ft. from the cornice, and flat in the[218]
[219] middle throughout its whole length. In this uppermost rib have lately been fixed two fine sunlights for gas, by which the Hall is brilliantly illuminated without heat or glare.

Round the room hang the following pictures:—

The Common Room over the great Entrance Hall is fifty feet long by nearly thirty feet broad, with a number of pictures of distinguished Fellows hung round the walls—Provost Barrett, by Joseph, and Provost Wall, by Catterson Smith; the great Bishop Berkeley, by Lathem, with an engraving of the same by Brooks, and a letter relating thereto framed and hung under the portrait;[161] Dr. Townsend; the present Provost—Dr. Salmon, Dr. Haughton, and Dr. Longfield, by Miss Purser; the late Provost, Dr. Jellett, by Chancellor; Dr. Magee,[220]
[221] Archbishop of Dublin, and grandfather of the late Bishop of York, by Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A.; Archbishop Palliser, by an unknown artist. A copy of a portrait of the Earl of Mornington, sometime Professor of Music in the University, and father of the great Duke of Wellington: the original, by Yeats, is now at Apsley House. And the last acquisition is a portrait of the first Provost, Adam Loftus,[162] presented to the College by Lord Iveagh in 1891. There is also hung in the ante-room another smaller portrait of Provost Loftus in an oval frame.

THE ENGINEERING SCHOOL.

The modern Venetian Palace in which the Engineering School of the College is so nobly lodged—a building which called forth the hearty commendation of Mr. Ruskin—was designed by the firm of Sir Thomas Deane, Son & Woodward, who subsequently were the architects of the University Museum at Oxford. The contractors were Gilbert Cockburn & Son. The building was erected in 1854-5, at a cost of £26,000. The carving of the capitals and other stone-work was done by two Cork workmen of the name of O’Shea, who were afterwards employed by the architects in the elaborate carvings executed for the Oxford Museum. The style has been described as Byzantine Renaissance of a Venetian type; but the building is in truth a highly original and beautiful conception worked out into a harmonious and satisfactory whole. The base is, critically considered, perhaps the best part. The exterior may suggest Venice, and the interior certainly suggests Cordova; and yet there is nothing incongruous with the very different surroundings, nor is there in the work any of that patchiness so often apparent in adaptations of foreign styles. It is something in itself complete, dignified, and appropriate. The general dimensions are—length, 160ft.; width, 91ft.; height, 49ft. to the eaves. The building is faced with granite ashlar, with Portland stone dressings elaborately carved. The building, as is shown in the accompanying drawing of the southern faÇade, looking on the College Park, is of two stories, with a broad and richly carved string course marking the division. The round-headed windows are disposed most effectively in groups: in the faÇade there is a group of four in the centre, one on either side, and a group of three at either end; in the east and west fronts there is a group of three in the centre, and one on either side. The arches of all these spring from square pilasters carved in florid style in Portland stone, and under the windows of the upper story are low balustrades. Between the groups of windows in either faÇade are discs of coloured marble let into the masonry, and with a circular bordure of carved Portland stone and smaller pieces of marble; the whole harmonising with the windows and forming a most effective ornament—simple, original, and interesting. At each corner of the building are scroll pilasters of great beauty. The roof is low pitched, and an Italian cantilever cornice forms the eaves.

The accompanying illustration represents the main doorway opening on to the New Square, and looking to the north. Within the building is a spacious Hall lined with Bath stone ashlar, with low marble pillars and rich stone capitals, twenty-four in number, disposed at different levels, and supporting Moorish arches; the whole suggestive, at least, of the architecture of Moslem Spain. The first floor is reached by a broad staircase of Portland stone, with a handrail. Irish marble is used in the pillars and Irish Serpentine in the handrail of the staircase. Two pillars of Penzance Serpentine are the only pieces of marble not of Irish production.[163] The whole is lighted by two low pendentive domes constructed of coloured enamelled bricks, arranged in geometric patterns, and singularly light and free in construction. The height from the floor is 46ft. 6in. The illustration on next page shows the Hall and Staircase looking east. Half-way up the staircase, facing the main entrance, is the clock in magnetic connection with the Observatory at Dunsink. It is a Regulator, fitted with an electro-magnetic pendulum; and was put up in March 1878. An electric current is sent out automatically every second by the standard clock at Dunsink Observatory. This current goes first through and controls the clock which releases the Time Ball at the Port and Docks Offices, then through the public clock in front of that office, and on to the standard clock in Trinity College. From this clock the current is sent out through the two timepieces over the Entrance Gate within and without the College, and then on to the Royal Dublin Society, where it controls the clock in the Entrance Hall. The Time Ball at the Port and Docks Office is furnished with an electrical arrangement, designed by Sir Robert Ball,[164] which automatically signals at Dunsink the moment the Time Ball falls, so that any error in time is immediately known to the person in charge. All the electrical arrangements were made and fitted up by Messrs. Yeates & Son of Grafton Street.

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 of[225]
[226] Clogher. 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 habuit
In Academiam et rem literariam
Posuit, A.D. 1734.