Part 9
Tom Moore was a chum of Robert Emmet at Trinity College. After graduation he entered journalism and was connected with the _London Times_ and the _London Chronicle_. He went to Bermuda as British consul in 1803, and visited the United States before he returned. He was lionized everywhere because his plaintive Irish ballads, which he set to the music of the oldest peasant airs, were in the portfolio of every musician in the civilized world, and his social attractions made him a welcome guest. When he returned to England he was given a pension of $1,000 a year until his death.
Volumes might be written concerning the literary reminiscences of Dublin. Addison was private secretary to the notorious viceroy Wharton, and the evidence indicates that his behavior was not so blameless as the readers of Macaulay's sketch of his life would infer. His official correspondence shows that he was not exempt from the usual weaknesses of humanity and not above making an honest penny out of his office. He seemed to be avaricious, and, although holding a position of the closest confidence to the lord lieutenant, took an interest in several commercial ventures that were not entirely beyond criticism.
Samuel Lover and Charles Lever, those two greatest of all delineators of Irish character, were both born and educated in Dublin and did most of their work there. Their graphic sketches of Irish life may have been accurate in their day, and now and then, I am told, appears one of the rollicking types of the Irishman they describe; but, while the character of the race may not be changed, its habits and customs are quite different from those of the period they describe. There's a grammar school at which Tom Moore and Richard Brinsley Sheridan both received their education. Sheridan was born on the same block, and the house is marked by a tablet. Another tablet near the entrance of a house only a few steps distant shows where Sir William Hamilton, the great Irish mathematician, lived. Mrs. Hemans, that gentle hymn writer, whose lines were much more familiar to the reading public half a century ago than they are to-day, lived and died in the same neighborhood, and was buried in St. Anne's Church, near by. Her epitaph, taken from one of her own serene poems, reads:
"Calm on the bosom of thy God, Fair spirit, rest thee now! Even while with us thy footsteps trod, His seal was on thy brow."
Near by the home of Mrs. Hemans is the Royal Irish Academy, occupying a fine old mansion, once the residence of Lord Northland. It is the oldest and most influential of the learned societies of Ireland, and possesses a large number of ancient manuscripts in the Gaelic tongue, most of them, despite their great age, beautifully clear and legible. The academy, according to its charter, was founded "for the encouragement of science, polite literature, and antiquities." There is a good deal of interest in the attempt to revive the Gaelic tongue, but the bitter partisanship of politics renders polite literature quite useless.
There is a great deal that is green about Dublin, and the remark is not intended as a joke. There are several fine parks and breathing-places scattered about the city. Many of the residences have large back yards filled with trees and flowers that are hidden from the public by the high walls that guard them from the street, but one can see them from the tops of the tram cars as he rides about. The suburbs of the city are very attractive, with plenty of large trees and vine-clad walls and pretty gardens, and here and there a tennis court. As you look down upon the city from a tall tower there is almost as much foliage as in Washington. Phoenix Park is famous, and one of the largest public playgrounds in the world.
St. Stephen's Green is a rectangular inclosure, twenty-two acres in extent and corresponding to four city blocks, in the fashionable quarter, and is surrounded by the mansions of the nobility and the homes of the rich. Lord Iveagh, the representative of the Guinness Brewery family, has a residence on one of the sides, and the archbishop's palace is on the other side, near the Shelbourne Hotel, which is the best in the city, and several clubs. St. Stephen's is handsomely laid out, and has what I have never seen before in a city square,--a bridle-path nearly a mile long around the interior of the fence, where several gentlemen take their exercise on horseback in the morning.
Sir Walter Scott was entertained in what he writes was "a very large and stately house in Stephen's Green, which I am told is the most extensive square in Europe," and, writing to his wife, he said, "The streets contain a number of public buildings of the finest architecture I have seen anywhere in Britain."
A few blocks away from St. Stephen's Green is another large park known as Merrion Square, which is a private inclosure like many of the small parks in the city of London, and is accessible only to the residents of the neighborhood, who, I understand, purchased the land and made it into a park two or three hundred years ago, so that the public has no rights there. Each of the leaseholders who are entitled to its privileges is required to pay $5 a year for maintaining it and "half a crown for a key to the gates," as I was informed by a policeman on that beat. It is a pretty place, with deep, lustrous turf such as you seldom see outside of the British Isles, and find in Ireland smoother and richer and greener than anywhere else. There are a pond and several tennis courts, cricket and croquet grounds, which are occupied every afternoon by the rich families in the neighborhood; and it makes you feel a little resentful to see the children of the poor, who need that breathing space more than the owners, peeking through between the iron pickets. It is said that this square plot of ground, which is equal to four ordinary squares in area, was formerly a pond, and that the Duke of Leinster in early days used to sail a boat upon it. But it was drained two hundred years ago or more, and the splendid great trees that are growing there now were then planted. Leinster House is in the neighborhood.
The residences around St. Stephen's Green and Merrion Square are built of ugly brown bricks, but are spacious in their proportions, and were intended for large families of ample means, and the aristocracy have always occupied them. The Duke of Rutland has one of the largest, and in Merrion Street, just around the corner, at No. 24, in a large house now occupied by the land commission, the great Duke of Wellington was born. It was the town residence of the Earl of Mornington, his father, and her ladyship came in from Dangan Castle, twenty-four miles outside the city, and the country residence of the family, a few days before the event, which occurred on April 29, 1769. There is nothing either in the castle or in the town house to interest people to-day, except that they were the birthplace and the home of one of the greatest of Irishmen, and his fellow countrymen have raised a shaft, similar to that at Washington, in Phoenix Park in his honor.
Across from Merrion Square is the National Gallery of Ireland, which was built in 1864, and contains a fine collection of paintings, numbering about five hundred, which have been presented and purchased from time to time. All of the old masters are well represented, and the Dutch school is especially strong. Attached to the gallery is the Metropolitan School of Art, which is liberally supported by the British government, and has a large number of students. Corresponding to the Art Gallery, on the opposite side of a quadrangle known as Leinster Lawn, formerly the garden of the Earl of Kildare, is the Science and Art Museum and the Museum of Natural History. Both are well arranged and full of interesting things, particularly Irish antiquities, historical relics, and examples of Irish industries. The most precious object is an iron bell shaped like an ordinary cow-bell and riveted on each side, which, it is said, St. Patrick used to carry about with him and ring to call the people together to hear mass. It is accompanied by a silver "shrine" or case for its protection, made in the year 1100 at the expense of Donald O'Laughlan, king of Ireland from 1091 to 1105. The "Annals of Ulster," written in the year 552, refer to this precious object as "The Bell of the Will," and its history is known from that date. It came into possession of the Archbishop of Armagh in 1044, and was among the relics in the cathedral there until it was brought to the museum in 1869. No one here seems to doubt that it is genuine.
In the adjoining case is another "shrine," as the case or covering for sacred relics is called, that contains a tooth of St. Patrick, which, according to the tradition, was loosened and fell from his mouth on the door-sill of St. Brone's Church at Killaspugbrone in County Sligo, and can be accounted for all these years.
A brooch formerly worn by the King of Tara is also shown as an example of the prehistoric work of the silversmiths of Ireland, with many other beautiful pieces of silver and gold which were dug up in the bogs.
Between the museum and the library is a fine old mansion known as Leinster House, or Kildare House, erected by the great earls of Kildare, the leaders of the Geraldines, who chose this spot four hundred years ago for the location of the largest and at that time the most magnificent city residence in Ireland. It once stood in the center of large grounds, but they have been sold off from time to time, and nearly a hundred years ago the residence passed into the possession of the Royal Dublin Society, which has made it the center of activity during its long and honored career in encouraging and developing the arts, science, and industries of Ireland. The membership of the Royal Dublin Society for two centuries has included all of the famous men of this nation, and they have rendered a very important service. The Royal Library, the National Gallery, the Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Antiquities owe their existence to this venerable institution, and its influence has gathered the greater part of the pictures in the gallery and the articles of interest in the museums.
Kildare House is a severe pile of black stone, and the guide-book says that "the White House at Washington is largely a reproduction of its main features, though the American building has a semicircular colonnaded porch, which rather conceals the likeness." But a resident of Washington would find little resemblance between the two buildings, except that they are about the same size and both have windows and a roof.
The corner stone bears a curious inscription in stilted Latin, which illustrates the lofty pride of the earls of Kildare. It is addressed to "The Casual Explorer, who may find it among the stately ruins of a fallen house, and bids him mark the greatness of the noble builders and the uncertainty of all things terrestrial, when the men who raise such splendid monuments can rise superior to misfortune."
There are several other fine old edifices in the neighborhood, but unfortunately many of the historic houses are passing away from the families who built and lived in them, and are now being used for public offices or business purposes.
About half a mile from Trinity College, on the road to Phoenix Park, is the ancient prison of Dublin, called Newgate, after a similar institution in London, and it has had a similar history. It has been the scene of horrible incidents; it has detained many of the purest and ablest martyrs for Irish liberty within its walls, and a hundred years ago it was frequently described in sketches of Irish life, in terms similar to those that were written of the Fleet Prison and Newgate in London. It was customary to have executions outside the walls in public, and the night before they were hung favored criminals were allowed to entertain their friends in a reckless, disgraceful carousal. Such a scene is described in a ribald song entitled "The Night before Larry was Stretched."
"Then in came the priest with his book, And spoke to him smooth and so civil. Larry tipped him a Kilmainham look, Then pitched his big wig to the devil; Then raising a little his head, To get a swate drop of the bottle, And painfully sighing he said, O, the hemp will be soon round my throttle."
Phoenix Park has about eighteen hundred acres of lawn, flower beds, forest, meadow, and pasture, and nineteen miles of perfect roadway. It is open to the public at all times and there are no restrictions. A horseback rider can gallop over the grass anywhere, cricket matches can be played wherever is most convenient to the players. Racing meetings are held on the turf several days in each month, the course being laid out by movable fences. Polo, hockey, football, and all other kinds of outdoor games are going on all the time, and almost the entire working population of Dublin may be seen scattered over the park during these long summer evenings, when one can read outdoors until after nine o'clock. There is no more beautiful park, and no greater enjoyment is found in any similar place in the world.
The viceregal lodge, in which the lord lieutenant of Ireland resides nine months in the year, is in the center of the park, surrounded by an inclosure of fifteen acres with a garden, stables, and cottages for the servants. The chief secretary of Ireland and the under secretary have official residences in the same neighborhood, provided by the state. Immediately before the windows of the viceregal lodge Lord Frederick Cavendish, chief secretary for Ireland, and Thomas H. Burke, the under secretary, were assassinated in 1882. The assassination was witnessed by the occupants of the lodge, but before they could reach the place the assassins had escaped. The spot is now marked in an unobtrusive manner.
Phoenix Park was formerly owned by the Knights of St. John. When their lands were confiscated by Henry VIII. at the time of the Reformation, the monastery was selected as the official residence of the viceroy. Additional grounds were purchased later by the Duke of Ormonde, when he was viceroy, and the great Chesterfield, when he held the office, did the landscape gardening, which illustrates his exquisite taste. The park is beautiful always, they say, but it could not be more beautiful than it is in May, when the hawthorn trees are white with blossom, the furze bushes are blazing with orange, and the rhododendrons, which grow to enormous size, are great banks of purple against the rich, deep foliage. Every flower that grows in that climate seems to be in bloom, and Phoenix Park looks as if it had just left the hands of the Creator.
VII
THE OLD AND NEW UNIVERSITIES
Imagine a university and a campus of forty-seven acres of lawn and grove where Trinity Church stands in New York or where the post office stands in Chicago or St. Louis. In Washington we have something like it in the mall where the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Agricultural Department are. Trinity College, Dublin, has an equally expansive setting of green grass and grove and flowering shrubs, cricket grounds, and tennis courts, surrounded on all sides by business houses, clubs, and hotels. It is like an island of verdure in the midst of an ocean of trade and commerce. On one side of the campus the outside world is kept at bay by a continuous line of dormitories and lecture-rooms which overlook a busy street from the windows of one wall and a peaceful lawn from the windows of the other. On the south side the barrier is a high iron picket fence hidden in a wonderful hedge of hawthorn and laburnum bushes. On the other side of that hedge are shops, and a street-car line that leads to the more attractive part of the city. There are only two entrances to the college green, one at the east end and the other at the west, and it is nearly a half mile walk from one to the other across the green and among the buildings. The main entrance and the main buildings face the Bank of Ireland and look upon Dame Street, which is the Wall Street of Dublin. There is a little green crescent to divide the entrance from the street, with bronze figures of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith, two of the most distinguished of the alumni.
The main building is a fine example of architecture, and the house of the provost, which adjoins it, is a gem of the Elizabethan type. The other buildings are unpretentious. They are rather low and long and plain, in excellent proportions, but without particular individuality, although the engineering building, which stands out on the campus, is an exquisite example of modern architecture, and Ruskin pronounced it the most beautiful modern structure in the United Kingdom.
As you enter through a low archway under the main building you come into a quadrangle formed by a dormitory and an examination hall at the right. Beyond that is a library. Another dormitory stands on the left, and the chapel and the dining-hall (the last two have Grecian porticos), and directly before you a bell tower of beautiful and original design erected about one hundred years ago. Beyond the first quadrangle is another, which is gloomy and uninviting. The buildings are plain, and the dark stone of which they are made is not cheerful. The students call it "Botany Bay," because of the prison-like style of the architecture and its uninviting appearance. The buildings surrounding it are dormitories, and in one of them, No. 11, Oliver Goldsmith roomed. He wrote his autograph with a diamond upon one of the panes of glass, which has since been removed and preserved in the library, where it lies in a case beside the original manuscript of Handel's oratorio, "The Messiah," which was given there for the first time in 1745. A portion of it was written in England, but it was completed in Dublin and sung by a Dublin choral society immediately after.
In "Botany Bay" is a pump of great age and much history. In early days it was the focus of academic disorder, and any policeman, sheriff, or bailiff who dared violate the sacred precincts of Trinity was purged of his guilt by a thorough ducking. The origin of this form of punishment is attributed to a famous Dr. Wilder, who for many years was provost of the college. He happened to be crossing the campus one day, when a bailiff, who had a writ to serve, was being baited by a group of students, and called out to them something like this: "Young gentlemen, be careful that you do not put him under the pump," and they took the hint.
Another version of the story is that Dr. Wilder cried out, "Young gentlemen, for the love of God don't be so cruel as to nail his ears to the pump;" and certain authors have claimed that they interpreted him to mean the reverse, and did what he had forbidden them. But I am assured by competent authority that the former and more humane version is the true one, and all agree that ever since those boisterous days every officer of the law who has been caught within the college grounds has been given an involuntary bath from "Old Mary."
The war between the students and the police has continued ever since the foundation of the college, and as the buildings are situated in the very center of the city these conflicts have been unexpected and more frequent than they might have been otherwise. In former days "Trinity boys" never went out of the grounds without their peculiar weapons, which were the massive keys of their rooms, about six inches long and weighing a half a pound or more, which they would sling in handkerchiefs or in the skirts of their gowns and use very effectively for offense or defense, as the case might be. On one occasion several students were captured and hustled off from their fellows to a butcher-shop, where they were hung from the meat hooks. The rumor ran like a prairie fire that the captives had been impaled, but when the rescuing party arrived it was discovered that they were hanging only by the waistbands of their breeches.
The walls of Examination Hall are hung with portraits of eminent men, and in one corner is a full-length painting of Queen Elizabeth, the founder. There is a superstition among the students that the picture has an evil eye, and that whoever sits within her sphere of influence at examinations is bound to fail. Hence the benches in that neighborhood are empty. But a certain alcove in the library is quite crowded. Several full sets of examination papers are preserved from year to year in that particular alcove, and every day during examination weeks it is filled with students cramming from them.
Across the quadrangle is the chapel. It is not specially interesting, although there is some fine wood-carving in the stalls. The students are required to wear surplices, and look very awkward in them, although the white gowns light up the room and make it much more cheerful than if they wore black. When I attended service Sunday morning two-thirds of the stalls were vacant, although attendance is supposed to be compulsory. I counted exactly one hundred and four persons present, including the preacher, the professors, and ten boys in the choir. These boys belong to the choir of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and are loaned to the college authorities in order to increase the interest of the Sunday services. It is considered the finest choir in Ireland, but that isn't saying much.
The organ in the gallery has a curious history. It was made in the Netherlands for some church in Spain, and was on its way when the ship was captured in 1702. The Duke of Ormonde, serving in the fleet, claimed the organ as his part of the prize money, and presented it to the college. Many of the old pipes have been replaced, but the case remains the same. Another interesting relic is a great chandelier which formerly hung in the House of Commons when the Irish parliament occupied the building now used for the Bank of Ireland.
Beyond the chapel is a curious-looking recumbent statue made of onyx, which has been crumbling so rapidly for years that it now bears very little resemblance to a human form, and the features are entirely effaced. The students claim that it was intended for Queen Elizabeth, the founder, but it was really a figure of Luke Chaloner, one of the first promoters of the institution.
The grounds occupied by the college once belonged to All Hallows monastery, which was suppressed by Henry VIII. and the property confiscated. It stood well outside of the city walls and was unoccupied when, toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a number of Dublin scholars raised a fund of £2,000 to establish an institution for higher education. Queen Elizabeth gave the confiscated estates of several rebel chiefs and James I. increased the endowment, but it was not until the reign of William and Anne that the college was really prosperous. They were very generous toward it, and the Irish parliament made liberal grants. But many a time the fellows have been compelled to melt up the college plate and resort to other desperate means to find money to pay for food and fuel.