floor, and with the busts of the great men of Trinity ranged around the
walls. The wood-carvings of Grinling Gibbons that adorn this room, of
flowers, fruit, wheat, grasshoppers, birds, are of singular beauty, and
make the hard oak fairly blossom and live. This library contains the
most complete collection of the various editions of Shakespeare's Works
which exists. Thorwaldsen's statue of Byron, who was a student of this
college, stands at the south end of the room. It represents him in the
bloom of youth, attired as a pilgrim, with pencil in hand and a broken
Grecian column at his feet....

The next neighbor to Trinity on the north, and the next in point of size
and importance in the University, is St. John's College. It has four
courts, one opening into the other. It also is jealously surrounded by
high walls, and its entrance is by a ponderous old tower, having a
statue of St. John the Evangelist over the gateway. Through a covered
bridge, not unlike "the Bridge of Sighs," one passes over the stream to
a group of modern majestic castellated buildings of yellow stone
belonging to this college. The grounds, walks, and thick groves
connected with this building form an elegant academic shade, and tempt
to a life of exclusive study and scholarly accumulation, of growing fat
in learning, without perhaps growing muscular in the effort to
use it....

King's College, founded by Henry VII., from whom it takes its name,
comes next in order. Its wealthy founder, who, like his son, loved
architectural pomp, had great designs in regard to this institution,
which were cut off by his death, but the massive unfinished gateway of
the old building stands as a regal specimen of what the whole plan would
have been had it been carried out. Henry VIII., however, perfected some
of his father's designs on a scale of true magnificence. King's College