Dr Atlay, a former Tutor of the College, kept in E 2 in 1836; E3 was occupied in 1867 by Isaac Todhunter, migrating from E 4, while E 5 is consecrated to Henry Martyn, Fellow in 1862, the indefatigable translator and missionary to India. Macaulay wrote him an eloquent epitaph, and a writer who was much more reticent than Macaulay, Sir James Stephen, speaks of Martyn's as "the one heroic name which adorns the annals of the Church of England, from the days of Elizabeth to our own." His delicate portrait hangs in the College Hall, making almost "a light within a shady place." F staircase is associated with the name of the late Professor Miller (F 1, 1830), the immediate predecessor of the present Professor of Mineralogy, a 5th wrangler, and the vigorous and inventive author of a new system of crystallography. G 2 was, for a time, the home of Dr Merivale, and also of Dr Ellicott, the present Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol; and these fathers of the Church were succeeded, in 1853, by Professor Mayor. G3 was occupied from 1797 to 1800 by Lord Denman, the father of the distinguished Trinity man who has not long resigned a judgeship. He was Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice, and a principal advocate of some of the important law reforms of the present century. The same set was also occupied in 1860 by Lord Dunlo, afterwards Earl of Clancarty, and, in 1861, by Professor Mayor. This last distinction had been also enjoyed in some very remote period by H 1. This set was occupied in 1859 by Professor Clifton, the father of a Johnian not many years gone down. In 1830 H 2 accommodated the second Lord Heytesbury, then the Hon W. H. A'Court, and in 1843 the late Dean of Hereford, then the Hon G. Herbert. K staircase has the distinction of having been, in 1814, the home of Sir John Herschel (K 3), a Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman, himself a great astronomer, though the son of a greater sire. The portrait of him by Pickersgill in the Combination Room, and the bust 4 G VOL. XVIII. in the Hall, opposite the bust of Adams, are known to every Johnian in his second term. On M Dr Churchill Babington kept till 1830 (M 1), and later the present Dean of Exeter, Dr Cowie (M6). O staircase is associated with the names of Dr Kennedy and Professor Palmer, whose portraits are in the Hall. As we go from the earlier to the later parts of the College, the interest distinctly declines. In the Third Court C 4 claims Dr. Speechley, the ex-Bishop of Travancore; D6 (as also F 8), possibly Kirke White, the poet; E 1, the Dean of Exeter as an undergraduate ; E 6, Blunt, the historian; and F3, the late Bishop of Hereford and Professor Palmer as Fellows. But the chief historical interest of the Court is in F 4-the rooms that were occupied by the ejected Nonjuror Thomas Baker, by grace of the College, from 1708 to his death in 1740. Baker was the Professor Mayor of his age. After his ejection from his Fellowship, he "lived comfortably and much to his own satisfaction" in these rooms on an annuity of £40, which he had inherited from his father, and occupied himself with indefatigable researches into the antiquities of England. Horace Walpole says of him that "it would be preferable to draw up an ample character of Mr Baker rather than a life. The one was most beautiful, amiable, conscientious; the other totally barren of more than one event." It was in these rooms that he was seized with his last short illness, being "found insensible on the floor of his study," and it was from here that he was carried to his last resting-place, near Dr Ashton's tomb in the Antechapel of the old College Chapel, with a funeral "very solemn, with procession round the First Court with surplices and candles." Another famous name connected with this court (E 1, 1815) is that of Samuel Roffey Maitland, the learned author of The Dark Ages and a collection of suggestive Essays on the Reformation. We note also Bishop Colenso on E 2 in 1832; and on F 1, about ten years later, T. Whytehead (E 5), the author of College Life, who died in New Zealand as Bishop Selwyn's chaplain; Bishop Pearson (F5, 1867); John Henry Rose (F 6, 1829-30), commemorated in Dean Burgon's Twelve Good Men; and, last of all, among living men, Leonard Courtney (F 8 1852, and F 2 in 1853), perhaps a future Speaker of the House of Commons. The New Court stands in Mr Moore Smith's pamphlet as an evidence of the vanity of such descriptive epithets, for the compiler informs us in his preface that the Second Court was originally called the New Court. It is satisfactory to know that the Tutors, with lively faith in the expansion of the College, are careful to describe it in their books as the Fourth Court. Here, if we exclude the names of those who lived in its newer and more palatial rooms as Fellows, but whose time of plain living and high thinking had been spent elsewhere, the number of distinguished men is surprisingly small. In A 6, as far back as 1845, Dr Bateson, the late Master, lived, and the present Master was called from the same rooms to fill his place. In A 8, some time in the forties, the late Dr Churchill Babington lived, and we find his name again in A 10, under date 1846. Archdeacon France of Ely lived in B 6; and Sir John Gorst in 1853 was occupying C6. D3 claimed in 1870 A. C. Hilton, the immortal author of the Light Green, and D 3, at some primeval date, the veteran Sir Patrick Colquhoun, who to the end of his long life retained all his College patriotism. E 12 possessed in 1866 a future Judge of the Scotch Court of Session in the person of A. Low; and E 14 in 1843 a Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Sir J. T. Hibbert, who took office in 1893. Politics of a different kind are also represented in G 8 by W. Lee Warner (1865), now a distinguished Indian official and Resident at the Court of Mysore. The New Court also claims as its own two important living head-masters, Dr Abbott, late of the City of London School (H 10, 1857, and H 6, 1860), and Archdeacon Wilson, late Head-Master of Clifton (H 16, 1858). Mr Moss, the present Head of Shrewsbury, also seems to have lived on almost every staircase in the Court. The longstanding connexion of the College with the Earls of Powis appears in 19, where the third Earl lived as Viscount Clive in the thirties, and the present Earl, then G. C. Herbert, in 1880. The Chapel Court is full of potential distinction, but a little more time is required for its actualisation. J. R. T. THE QUIET LIFE. THERE once was a Bishop of Rome, Would peep through the sky-light ANON. ἦν ποτέ τις Ῥωμαῖος Ἐπίσκοπος ὑψόθι ναίων ἐν θ λῳ ἀκροτάτῳ, στυλιτικὸς, αἴσιμα ειδώ. ἔνθ ̓ ὁ γέρων δι ̓ ὀπῆς παρέκυπτέ τε Γεῖπε τε μύθον Γοίκοι βέλτερον εἶναι, ἐπεὶ βλαβερὸν τὸ θύρηφι. S. PHILOMELA. SWEET, silver-throated, singer of the night, When every bird has wearied with the light, Surely thou hast not called all day in vain For him who ne'er shall come to thee again, And still, fond bird, when every voice is still, Floats upward to the peaceful moon thy trill, Poor soul, thou dost but serenade the dead, That stares with barren gaze above thy head, All, all, save only thee, sleep hath beguiled; That sometimes shudders like a dreaming child, The river, whispering still its waking moan, But ever gliding to the great unknown, I pass away." Sing on; what though my heart be thrilled with pain, I love thy tale. Sweeter than joy upborne on wildest strain Is thy sad wail. H. B. H. |