reaching their outlet in the lantern.  Among the numerous portraits on the walls there are several of famous men.  Among them we find Dryden, Vaughan, Thompson (by Herkomer), the Duke of Gloucester (by Sir Joshua Reynolds), Coke (the great lawyer), Thackeray, Tennyson (by G.F.  Watts), Cowley and Bentley.  On the other side of the entrance passage are the kitchens with the combination rooms above, where more notable portraits hang.  The remainder of the court is composed of living-rooms broken by the Queen’s Gate, a fine tower built in 1597 facing King Edward’s Gate.  It has a statue of Elizabeth in a niche and the arms of Nevile and Archbishop Whitgift.

Nevile’s Court is approached by the passage giving entrance to the hall.  The eastern half was built when Nevile was master between 1593 and 1615, and the library designed by Sir Christopher Wren occupies the river frontage.  To the casual observer this building is a comparatively commonplace one, built in two stories, but although it allows space for the arcaded cloister to go beneath it, the library above consists of one floor and the interior does not in the least follow the external lines.  On great occasions Nevile’s Court is turned into a most attractive semi-open-air ball or reception room.  One memorable occasion was when the late King Edward, shortly after his marriage, was entertained with his beautiful young bride at a ball given at his old college.

Passing out of the court to the lovely riverside lawns, shaded by tall elms and chestnuts, we experience the ever-fresh thrill of the Cambridge “Backs,” and, crossing Trinity Bridge, walk down the stately avenue leading away from the river with glimpses of the colleges seen through the trees so full of suggestive beauty as to belong almost to a city of dreams.

There are other courts belonging to Trinity, including two gloomy ones of recent times on the opposite side of Trinity Street, but there is, alas! no space left to tell of their many associations.

CHAPTER IV

THE LESSER COLLEGES

Peterhouse.—­Taking the smaller colleges in the order of their founding, we come first of all to Peterhouse, already mentioned more than once in these pages on account of its antiquity, so that it is only necessary to recall the fact that Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded this the first regular college in 1284.  Of the original buildings of the little hostel nothing remains, and the quadrangle was not commenced until 1424, but the tragedy which befell the college took place in the second half of the eighteenth century, when James Essex, who built the dreary west front of Emmanuel, was turned loose in the court.  His hand was fortunately stayed before he had touched the garden side of the southern wing, and the picturesque range of fifteenth-century buildings, including the hall and combination room, remains one of the most pleasing survivals of mediaeval architecture in Cambridge.