There is another point on which complaints are sometimes made, namely, the excessive cold of the building in winter. It was originally intended that no fires should be lit in it, as a security to its valuable but highly combustible contents against accident through that medium; but in this provision, it is plain, the preservative principle was much more attended to than the utilitarian, and is carried, as we conceive at the present day, to an unreasonable length. But, at all events, modern ingenuity can meet the difficulty; for the air may be heated by means of tubes, without the immediate presence of combustion; wherefore we are led to expect that the same liberal and enlightened spirit which has suggested and directed the realization of other improvements, will direct and realize this also in due time. By the bye, the origin of this great establishment is curious. On the defeat of the Spaniards by the English at the battle of Kinsale in 1603, we are told that the triumphant soldiery determined to commemorate their victory by some permanent monument, and that they collected among themselves the sum of £1800, which they resolved should be laid out in the purchase of books for a library, to be founded in the then infant establishment of Trinity College.[1] This sum was handed to the celebrated Ussher, and by him judiciously expended, conformably to the wishes of the generous conquerors at Kinsale. And here we pause to pay our most profound respects to the memory of these literary warriors. Who would have expected that the most scientific, and studious, and intellectual men of _our_ age, would owe the most splendid temple dedicated to their use, which the country can boast, to the bounty of a victorious soldiery in the beginning of the seventeenth century? There was a spirit of chivalry in this transaction which we cannot sufficiently admire; and though we live in an age in which we pique ourselves excessively on the march of intellect, we doubt that any testimonial more solid and convincing is producible by us to show that our organ of veneration in this respect is at all more highly developed than that of men who went before us in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The bequest at all events does honour to the profession of arms, and we are sure would be duly appreciated by a grateful posterity, as a memorial of their mind and achievements, if it were only more generally known.