When a Fellow of St. John's, Henry Martyn occupied the three rooms in the highest storey of E block, entered from the right-hand corner of the Second Court before passing through the gateway into the Third Court. The Court is that pronounced by Ruskin the finest in the University, because of the beautiful plum-red hue of the old brick, going back to 1595, and the perfect architecture. From the same stair the fine College Library is entered. The low roof was formed of reed, instead of lath, and plaster, down to a very recent date. On one occasion, while the outer roof was being repaired, the foot of a workman suddenly pushed through the frail inner ceiling above the study table, an incident which has enabled their present occupant[9] to identify the rooms. Here Martyn studied, and taught, and prayed, while hour after hour and quarter after quarter, from the spire of St. Clement's on the one side, and the tower of Trinity College on the other, the flight of time was chimed forth. When, a generation after, Alexander Duff visited Charles Simeon and his successor, Carus, and expressed surprise that so few Cambridge men had, by 1836, given themselves to foreign missions, Carus pointed to the exquisite beauty of the Cam, as it winds between Trinity and St. John's, as one explanation of the fact. Both forgot Henry Martyn, whose Cornish temperament was most susceptible to the seductive influence, and whose academic triumphs might have made the ideal life of a Fellow of St. John's an overpowering temptation. As we stand in these hallowed rooms, or wander through the four courts, and in the perfect gardens, or recall the low chapel--which has given place to Sir Gilbert Scott's, with a frescoed figure of Henry Martyn on its roof--we can realise the power of the motive that sent him forth to Dinapore and Cawnpore, Shiraz and Tokat. Samuel Pearce--the 'seraphic' preacher of Birmingham, whom a weak body, like Martyn's, alone prevented from joining his beloved Carey at Serampore; Vanderkemp, the Dutch physician, who had given up all for the good of the Kafirs, and whom he was soon to see in the midst of his converts; David Brainerd, also like himself in the shortness and saintliness of his career; the transactions of the London Missionary Society; the latest works on the East; and the experimental divinity of Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, and Law, with the writings of Bishops Butler and Hopkins, and Dr. Paley--these were the men and the books he used to train his spirit for the work of the ministry abroad, when he had fed it with the words of Jesus Christ, Isaiah, and Paul. He thus describes his examination for Deacon's orders, and his ordination by the Bishop of Ely on the title of his Fellowship, after which he became Mr. Simeon's curate, and took charge of the neighbouring small parish of Lolworth.