Trinity library forms the western side of one of the Courts of the College, known as "Nevile's Court" (from Dr. Thomas Nevile, Master at the close of the sixteenth century, who planned and began it in 1610), and also as "Cloister Court," from the wide cloisters which surround it on the north, south, and west. The eastern side is formed by the Hall, raised four feet above the ground level, and reached by a beautiful balustraded and terraced staircase of stone. It is the finest college hall in either university, and was also the work of Nevile. In the northern cloister which leads us to it, there are sundry points not to be overlooked. As we look along it from the library entrance we perceive at the far end a door with a stalwart iron knocker. Now there is a fine echo in this cloister, and a stamp of the foot at our end will evoke a sound from the door precisely like that of a knocker. So great a part does illusion play in human impressions, that five people out of six, when they hear this sound, are ready to declare that they have seen the knocker actually move. It was by timing this echo, we may mention, that Sir Isaac Newton first measured the velocity of sound. The echoing properties of these cloisters are referred to by Tennyson in the "Princess": "our cloisters echoed frosty feet." The massive block which pillars the angle of the cloister is known as the "Freshman's Pillar"; a favourite old-time amusement of the junior students (not yet wholly disremembered) having been to traverse the very narrow base-top right round, without setting foot to the ground. In old times, indeed until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these cloisters played a notable part in undergraduate life. Athletic pursuits were far less general than now, and exercise was largely pedestrian. On a wet day, accordingly, when the roads were uninviting, the cloisters used to be crowded with a veritable swarm of trampers, doing "quarter-deck" from end to end of the three covered sides of the court. [Illustration: _Clare College from Bridge._]