Chapter VIII: The Early Buildings (2)

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 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 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:--

1. Frederick, Prince of Wales, by Hudson.
2. Provost Baldwin.
3. Archbishop Price.
4. } { Viscount Avonmore, }
5. } Four Judges, { Lord Downes, } all by Joseph.
6. } { Viscount Kilwarden, }
7. } { Chief Baron Hussey Burgh, }
8. Primate Lord John Beresford, by Catterson Smith.
9. Lord Chancellor Cairns, by Duncan.
10. Henry Grattan, by Hill.
11. Henry Flood.
12. The Earl of Rosse, Chancellor of the University, by
Catterson Smith.

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, 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 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.

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 in Chapter VII.

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 Danish _Thingmote_, 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 the _Thingmote_, 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 on p. 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 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 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]

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] The _Ampelopsis veitchii_ planted 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] See _Notes 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 as _Parochia 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.