Among the matters of especial interest is the library of Samuel Pepys, Esq., who died in 1703, and left his whole collection of books and manuscripts to this college. In the library is that curious and inexpressibly interesting manuscript, the original of the celebrated Diary of Mr. Pepys. We confess that nothing in any of the college libraries was of so much interest as were these works of the gossipy Pepys, and so while at this college it was our good fortune to examine the original manuscripts of the remarkable Diary in six volumes, about eight inches or so square, and two inches thick. If we say that the short-hand resembles almost strictly any of our present styles of phonography, with here and there a word fully written out, we give the best possible idea of it. All is exceedingly clean and free from any blot or blemish, and just such as may be imagined would have been prepared by the nice Pepys. The Diary was to us, before, one of a few choice books; and now since we have seen his work, and his portrait by Sir G. Kneller, we are more than ever if possible in mood to think well of him who has written as none but he could or would write.
The distinguished personages of this college, besides Pepys, are Bryan Walton, Bishop of Chester and editor of the Polyglot Bible, who died in 1661; Dr. James Dupont, the celebrated Greek Professor, and master of the college, 1679; and that other learned divine and college master, Dr. Daniel Wheatland, 1740.
The fourteenth is Trinity, and without question this is the noblest collegiate institution of the kingdom, whether we regard the number of its members, or the extent and value of its buildings, or the illustrious men who have been educated within its walls. A large volume might be written in relation to these, and then but a synopsis be given. It is composed, or rather was organized, of others,—St. Michael's House, founded in 1324, King's Hall, in 1337, and Physwick's Hostel, the most important institution of that kind in Cambridge, and with this was included, six other minor hostels. These, in 1546, were surrendered to Henry VIII. as a preparatory step to the founding of one magnificent college, and he by letters-patent, Dec. 19, 1546, founded this in honor of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, and endowed it with very considerable possessions; but his death in a few weeks after stopped whatever further he may have contemplated. His son and successor Edward VI. issued the statutes of the college, and his daughter, Queen Mary, considerably augmented its endowments.
The courts, five in number, are very elegant and full of interest, but we must pass all by, simply stating that what is called the Old Court is said to be the most spacious quadrangle in the world and is in dimensions as follows, for the four sides respectively, omitting inches, 287 feet, 344 feet, 256 feet, and 325 feet, giving an area of 79,059 square feet.
There is nothing done in the preparation of this series of articles that demands a greater sacrifice of inclination to the contrary than does this abrupt termination of what would be a long and interesting statement, but limited space forbids even the record of full regrets. Of thousands of eminent men here educated may be named the illustrious philosophers Bacon and Newton, who died in 1626, 1727; also Crowley, Dryden, Byron, and Crabbe, poets; Dr. Isaac Barrow, the learned divine; Richard Porson, the eminent Greek critic and scholar; and Lord Macaulay, the historian and essayist; and we cannot well refrain from adding that there also was educated England's greatest modern poet, Alfred Tennyson.
Having begun a somewhat extended description of the colleges composing this famed university, we are devoting more space to them than at first anticipated, but feel justified, as the subject is one of great interest to us all, our own University City being most intimately related to it; and so we speak of the remaining of the seventeen colleges before we proceed to speak of other items of interest.
The next in order, the fifteenth, is one of very great moment to us of New England, for our interests are so closely connected with it; and that is Emanuel, which occupies the site of a dissolved monastery of Dominicans, or Black Friars. On the dissolution of monasteries this site was granted to Edward Ebrington and Humphrey Metcalf, of whose heirs it was purchased by Sir Walter Mildmay. This distinguished statesman was one of the most eminent adherents of what were termed Puritanical principles; and, with possibly the idea of establishing a nursery of those doctrines, in the year 1584 he obtained from Queen Elizabeth a charter for the incorporation of this college.
No college of the University has done so much toward deciding the fortunes, and it may be said the existence of New England, as has this. Established in 1584, which was but 29 years after the burning of the martyrs at Smithfield and Oxford, and coming into existence as it were in spite of those deeds of darkness, it became the one of all others to which those stanch men and advancing ones would send their sons, and a grand and mighty power was wielded, and strength and even respectability were given to the movement. This college is intimately connected with our history; and New England will not have done her duty, nor availed herself of a good privilege that is hers, till in these college-grounds she has erected a memorial to those determined and worthy men who did so much for New England.
John Robinson, the Pilgrims' minister, who was to have come to America the next spring but who died before his eyes could be gladdened by the sight, was educated at Emanuel. To our disgrace be it said, his dust to-day moulders in the soil of Holland, without so much as a plain slab to tell of his resting-place; and only as the guide in the church informs one, in reply to a request to be pointed to the spot, is the resting-place of the great departed ever seen.
Thomas Shepard and Henry Dunster, the latter our Harvard's second president,—these also to-day in their death, as they did in life, honor this as their Alma Mater.