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.
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.