Note 56 — Chapter IV

When we leave the Chapel, and proceed towards the Great Gate, we are treading on classic ground. For it was along this flagged path that Macaulay, while at Trinity, used to take his daily exercise, pacing assiduously up and down, always the while devouring some author, whose pages he turned over with incredible rapidity, and at the same pace whether they were filled with the weightiest thought or the lightest fancy. Yet whether the book were profound philosophy or exquisite poetry or the trashiest of rhyme and fiction, he was ever afterwards able to recall its whole scheme and even to quote lengthy portions of it verbatim. His rooms were in the staircase facing us—the set on the ground-floor to the left of the entrance. This particular staircase has been the home of more great men than any other in the University. The ground-floor rooms opposite Macaulay's were those of Thackeray,[56] and the set above Thackeray's are hallowed as the habitation of Sir Isaac Newton: for whom the College built an observatory on the roof of the Gate Tower, and who also had the use of a small bit of ground which we see outside the gate, now a railed-in lawn, but then a pretty little garden, as Logan's view shows, with trees and flower-beds, surrounded by a high wall.