KING'S 103 



My leisure hours I spent partly in inspecting the far- 

 famed buildings of this celebrated university, and partly 

 in pursuing my love of literature, or in courting the Muses. 

 I of course shall not give a description of the beautiful 

 colleges and temples founded by our pious ancestors, and 

 erected for the advancement of religion, the diffusion of 

 knowledge, the cultivation of science, and the education 

 of the nobility and gentry of the land. At these I 

 wondered and admired, but turned with disgust from the 

 mean appearance of the houses, some of which were 

 attached to the churches and chapels, and from the un- 

 seemly approaches by which the exterior of these vener- 

 able buildings were hid from the public view. Indeed, it 

 would seem to a close observer that succeedino; o-enera- 

 tions had endeavoured to stop the progress which the arts 

 — architecture in particular — had made in the middle 

 ages, and to deface those beautiful specimens by barbarous 

 encroachments. 



In that chapel, which is supposed to stand unrivalled 

 in Europe for the unity of its design and its internal 

 decoration, one or two of the windows that have 

 obtained universal admiration for their splendid colours, 

 as well as for their beautiful illustrations of sacred 

 history from the Old and New Testaments, had long 

 been obscured by a wall, and a side of the building 

 desecrated by offices of the lowest description. 



But all these disfigurements, thanks to the spirit of 

 improvement, have been removed, the window restored, 

 and a magnificent screen substituted for the wretched 

 hovels that formed one side of the principal thorough- 

 fare, in a town that, void of form or uniformity, seemed 



