Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2 — John Shaqi
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
General
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Description and travel
The Clarendon was built with the proceeds of the history written by the
Minister of the early Restoration, who was Chancellor of the University,
and whose touching letter of farewell to her, on his fall and flight
from England, may be seen in the Bodleian Library. There, also, are
preserved documents which may help to explain his fall. They are the
written dialogs which passed between him and his master at the board of
the Privy Council, and they show that Clarendon, having been the
political tutor of Charles the exile, too much bore himself as the
political tutor of Charles the king. In the Clarendon are the University
Council Chamber and the Registry. Once it was the University press, but
the press has now a far larger mansion yonder to the northwest, whence,
besides works of learning and science, go forth Bibles and prayer-books
in all languages to all quarters of the globe. Legally, as a printer of
Bibles the University has a privilege, but its real privilege is that
which it secures for itself by the most scrupulous accuracy and by
infinitesimal profits.
Close by is the University Library, the Bodleian, one of those great
libraries of the world in which you can ring up at a few minutes' notice
almost any author of any age or country. This Library is one of those
entitled by law to a copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom,
and it is bound to preserve all that it receives, a duty which might in
the end burst any building, were it not that the paper of many modern
books is happily perishable.... We stand in the Radcliffe, formerly the
medical and physical library, now a supplement and an additional
reading-room of the Bodleian, the gift of Dr. Radcliffe, Court Physician
and despot of the profession in the times of William and Anne, of whose
rough sayings, and sayings more than rough, some are preserved in his
"Life." He it was who told William III. that he would not have His
Majesty's two legs for his three kingdoms, and who is said to have
punished the giver of a niggardly fee by a prediction of death, which
was fulfilled by the terrors of the patient. Close at hand is the
Ashmolean, the old University Museum, now only a museum of antiquities,
the most precious of which is King Alfred's gem. Museum and Medical
Library have together migrated to the new edifice on the north side
of the city.
But of all the University buildings the most beautiful is St. Mary's
Church, where the University sermons are preached, and from the pulpit
of which, in the course of successive generations and successive
controversies, a changeful and often heady current of theology has
flowered. There preached Newman, Pusey, and Manning; there preached
Hampden, Stanley, and the authors of "Essays and Reviews." ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account