The grand mediæval-looking structure of University College in the grounds at the head of the Avenue, continues to this day to be a surprise somewhat bewildering to the eye and mind, whenever it breaks upon our view. It looks so completely a thing of the old world and of an age long past away. To think that one has walked over its site before one stone was laid upon another thereon, seems almost like a mental hallucination.
A certain quietness of aspect and absence of overstrain after architectural effect give the massive pile an air of great genuineness. The irregular grouping of its many parts appears the undesigned result of accretion growing out of the necessities of successive years. The whole looks in its place, and as if it had long occupied it. The material of its walls, left for the most part superficially in the rough, has the appearance of being weather-worn. An impression of age, too, is given by the smooth finish of the surrounding grounds and spacious drives by which, on several sides, the building is approached, as also by the goodly size of the well-grown oaks and other trees through whose outstretched branches it is usually first caught sight of, from across the picturesque ravine.
Of the still virgin condition of the surrounding soil, however, we have some unmistakeable evidence in the ponderous granitic boulders every here and there heaving up their grey backs above the natural greensward, undisturbed since the day when they dropped suddenly down from the dissolving ice-rafts that could no longer endure their weight.
Seen at a little distance, as from Yonge Street for example, the square central tower of the University, with the cone-capped turret at its north-east angle, rising above a pleasant horizon of trees, and outlined against an afternoon sky, is something thoroughly English, recalling Rugby or Warwick. On a nearer approach, this same tower, combined with the portal below, bears a certain resemblance to the gateway of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, as figured in Palgrave's "Anglo-Saxons;" and the elaborate and exquisite work about the recessed circular-headed entrance enables one to realize with some degree of certainty how the enriched front of that and other noble mediæval structures, seen by us now corroded and mutilated, looked when fresh from the hands that so cunningly carved them.
In the two gigantic blind-worms, likewise, stretched in terrorem on the sloping parapets of the steps leading to the door, benumbed, not dead; giving in their extremities, still faint evidence of life, we have a sermon in stone, which the brethren of a masonic guild of Wykeham's day would readily have expounded. As we enter a house devoted to learning and study, is it not fitting that the eye should be greeted with a symbol of the paralyzing power of Science over Ignorance and Superstition?
Moreover, sounds that come at stated intervals from that central tower, make another link of sympathy with the old mother-land. Every night at nine, "swinging slow with solemn roar," the great bell of the University is agreeably suggestive of Christ Church, Oxford, St. Mary's, Cambridge, and other places beyond the sea, which to the present hour give back an echo of the ancient Curfew.
And if to this day the University building, in its exterior aspect and accidents, is startling to those who knew its site when as yet in a state of nature, its interior also, when traversed and explored, tends in the same persons to produce a degree of confusion as between things new and old; as between Canada and elsewhere. Within its walls are to be seen appliances and conveniences and luxuries for the behoof and use of teacher and student, unknown a few years since in many an ancient seat of learning.
In a library of Old World aspect and arrangement, is a collection rich in the Greek and Latin Classics, in Epigraphy and Archæology, beyond anything of the kind in any other collection on this continent, and beyond what is to be met with in those departments in many a separate College within the precincts of the ancient Universities—a pre-eminence due to the tastes and special studies of the first president and other early professors of the Canadian Institution.
Strange, it is, yet true that hither, as to a recognized source of certain aid in identification and decipherment, are duly transmitted, by cast, rubbing and photograph, the "finds" that from time to time create such excitement and delight among epigraphists, and ethnologists, and other minute historical investigators in the British Islands and elsewhere.
There used to be preserved in the Old Hospital a model in cork and card-board, of the great educational establishment to which, in the first instance, the Avenue was expected to form an approach. It was very curious. Had it been really followed, a large portion of the park provided for the reception of the University would have been covered with buildings. A multitude of edifices, isolated and varying in magnitude, were scattered about, with gardens and ornamental grounds interspersed. These were halls of science, lecture-rooms, laboratories, residences for president, vice-president, professors, officials and servants of every grade. On the widely extended premises occupied by the proposed institution, a population was apparently expected to be found that would, of itself, have almost sufficed to justify representation in Parliament—a privilege the college was actually by its charter to enjoy. We should have had in fact realized before our eyes, on a considerable scale, a part of the dreams of Plato and More, a fragment of Atlantis and Utopia.