Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 онлайн

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But Baldwin may fairly be called the architect of the College. I do not include under that expression his vigilant supervision and enhancement of the College rents—a very important duty,—or his large bequests to the society, which have made the office of Provost one of wealth as well as of dignity. His claim to be remembered by the Irish public rests upon more obvious grounds. The undertaking of the present Library building coincides with his advent to power. It was actually commenced when, as Vice-Provost, he ruled for the easy-going Pratt. It was finished in the early and stormy years of his Provostship; and when we consider that of all the buildings which give Dublin the air and style of a capital not one then existed, we may better understand the largeness and boldness of the plan. The Royal Hospital at Kilmainham had indeed been recently erected, as the arms of the second Duke of Ormonde over the main door testify. This building, which a vague and probably false tradition in Dublin attributes to Wren, must have produced no small impression by its splendour. It was planned exactly as a college, with the hall and chapel in directum, forming one side of a quadrangle, and surmounted by a belfry. Such is the plan of many colleges at Oxford. And such was still the plan of Chapel and Hall in Trinity College when the eighteenth century opened, and when larger ideas suggested themselves with the increase of wealth and the disappearance of danger from war or tumult. Building had never ceased in the College since the Act of Settlement secured the great College estates in the North and West. Seele had worked hard to restore and enlarge the buildings, dilapidated through age and poverty; Marsh and Huntingdon had built a new Chapel and Hall on the site of the present Campanile, but excessively plain and ugly; even Pratt proposed the building of a new belfry over the Hall, a plan which was carried out thirty years after his resignation. The Chapel is compared by a visitor to a Welsh church. The old tower at the north side of the College, which had lasted from the days of All Hallowes’ Abbey, was restored by Seele, who evidently strove to save this relic of the past. The Front Square was being rebuilt, when the dangerous interlude of James II.’s occupation beggared the College for a moment, after which the houses of the Library Square, which still stand there, were taken in hand. Perfectly plain they were, but solid, and have stood the wear and tear of nearly 200 years, not to speak of the improving fury of occasional innovators, who, even in our day, have threatened them with destruction.[75] They have been disfigured, as the Royal Hospital has been, with ugly grey plaster. If the original red bricks were uncovered, and a tile roof set upon them, the public would presently find out that they were picturesque. At all events, the west side, which was taken down in this century, was a better and more suitable building than those erected (“Botany Bay”) by way of compensation.