ON THE CAM.
 
 * 
 
 
 

 
 ON THE CAM. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 IN ENGLAND., 
 
 BY WILLIAM EVERETT, M.A., 
 
 TRIN. COLL.. CAM. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1869.
 
 TO THE 
 
 REV. JAMES WALKER, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 EX-PBESIDEM OF HARVARD CO1I.EOE, 
 
 MY CONSTANT MODEL OP CHRISTIAN ELOQUENCE AND 
 
 ACADEMIC CULTURE, AND THE 
 BELOVED FRIEND OF TWO FORMER HOLDERS OF THE 
 
 SAME HONOURABLE POSITION, 
 
 WHOSE EXAMPLE WAS MY BEST INSTRUCTION 
 
 IN COLLEGE, AND WHOSE MEMORY 
 
 IS AMONG MY CHOICEST 
 
 TREASURES.
 
 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. 
 
 ITS jump :" Adams and Leverrier 
 sprang at a star simultaneously, and 
 while " A Don " was delighting Eng- 
 land in general and old Cantabs in 
 particular with " Sketches " sharp, faithful, and y.et 
 most artistic, like photographs on ivory, touched 
 by the brush of a Master, a younger son of Cam- 
 bridge was astonishing his countrymen on the 
 other side of the Atlantic with a series of frank, 
 outspoken lectures upon the studies, habits, amuse- 
 ments, and characteristics of his Britisher brothers. 
 We took the book up with the expectation of 
 finding that Mr. Everett had acted towards us 
 as full-fledged cuckoos towards their brothers and 
 sisters, though we had reasons for suspecting that 
 the notes he poured forth the while would be of 
 no cuckoo character ; we put it dowiv in a state 
 of utter bewilderment. What ! Could an orator,
 
 viii Preface to the 
 
 addressing an American audience, in the present 
 state of feeling, about us and our institutions, 
 which rankles in their hearts, cry us up, express 
 his good-will towards us, nay, hold up one of 
 our Universities as a pattern to their own colleges, 
 and escape the tar-pot, the feather-bag, and the 
 rail ? 
 
 One of three things could alone account for the 
 phenomenon : either the speaker's eloquence held 
 his audience spell-bound ; or, Boston, where the 
 lectures were delivered, is an exceptional and 
 Anglo-maniac town ; or, our preconceived ideas 
 of the state of society in America were wrong 
 altogether. 
 
 When we have somewhat recovered from this 
 first surprise, a second presents itself ; it is won- 
 derful that this fearless speaker should have been 
 listened to, when he confessed that on one or two 
 points the colleges of America might take a lesson 
 from those of the old country, but how did he 
 manage to own such an heretical truth to himself? 
 Is he a lukewarm cosmopolitan? On the con- 
 trary, he is a red-hot patriot ; stars and stripes to 
 the back-bone. Perhaps he has resided for many 
 years in England ? Only the time necessary for 
 his University career, added to which, he is still a 
 very young man, not having yet reached the age
 
 English Edition. ix 
 
 at which the faiths and enthusiasms often begin to 
 peel off, carrying some of the prejudices with them. 
 No ; he is simply a scholar, with a keen insight, a 
 comprehensive intellect, a calm judgment, a warm 
 heart, and the gift of the Gods ; and he is also an 
 Everett. 
 
 When one who has devoted his life to study and 
 the accumulation of knowledge passes away, we 
 are sometimes inclined to look upon his labours as 
 vain. As the wise man dieth, so dieth the fool : 
 what good is there in storing the brain with varied 
 learning, when we cannot bequeath an atom of it 
 to those who come after us ? Why take pains to 
 pile up grains of golden sand below high-water 
 mark, when the rising tide is certain to sweep 
 them away with the first wave ? " Eat, drink, 
 and love ; the rest is not worth that /" Or, if we 
 do not care for self alone, let us gather tangible 
 wealth, which will benefit those we love when we 
 are gone, not the perishable riches of the under- 
 standing, which are annihilated with the brain 
 that held them. We forget that mental as well 
 as physical qualities are transmitted to our des- 
 cendants ; and that the man who leaves a family 
 behind him endows its members with many a 
 bequest of more real significance than money, 
 land, or social position. As gout, scrofula, con-
 
 x Preface to the 
 
 sumption, idiotcy, are the prices paid by succeeding 
 generations for the physical vices of their ances- 
 tors, so will their moral and intellectual faculties 
 be affected by the self-discipline or lethargy of 
 those who have gone before them, and the enforced 
 celibacy of the only learned class in the middle 
 ages probably retarded the mental growth of the 
 world by centuries. 
 
 The gentleman who delivered the lectures 
 which lie before us has inherited the love of 
 learning and the gift of oratory which already 
 distinguish him. His father was Edward Everett, 
 
 O 
 
 a man famous in his own country for his learning 
 and eloquence, and well-known iu England as 
 the American Ambassador who conducted several 
 matters of dispute between the two countries 
 with a tact, judgment, and delicacy which at- 
 tracted universal applause and admiration. A 
 short summary of Mr. Edward Everett's career 
 will be interesting, as exemplifying the curious 
 changes to which the life of a public man in 
 America is subject. He was descended on the 
 father's side from Richard Everett, of Dedham, 
 one of the early settlers in New England, who had 
 served in the Low Countries. His mother was 
 a Hill ; so that he was an Englishman pur sang, 
 descended on both sides from ancestors of the first
 
 English Edition. xi 
 
 Puritan emigration. His maternal grandfather, 
 Alexander Sears Hill, graduated at Harvard ; 
 his father was minister of the New South Church, 
 Boston ; retired, and was made a judge. He went 
 to a school kept by Ezekiel Webster, elder brother 
 of Daniel Webster, and once, when the school- 
 master was unable to attend to his duties, the 
 younger brother and future minister took his place 
 for a week. Edward Everett entered Harvard 
 College in 1807, graduated in 1811, and was 
 ordained in 1814, when he was appointed minister 
 of Brattle Square Church, Boston. In the fol- 
 lowing year he was called to the chair of Greek 
 professorship; then he went to Gottingen, re- 
 turning to America in 1819, when he entered 
 upon the duties of his professorship, and in the 
 next four years gave an impulse to the study of 
 Greek literature in America which is not yet lost. 
 In 1822 he married Charlotte Gray, daughter of 
 the late Hon. Peter Chardon Brookes. His 
 surviving children are three in number; one 
 daughter, married to Captain Wise, of the United 
 States' Navy; and two sons, the youngest of 
 whom, William Everett, is the present lecturer. 
 He was elected to Congress in 1824, when he 
 left his academic pursuits, and became, a States- 
 man, serving for ten years, through Mr. Adams'
 
 xii Preface to the 
 
 administration, and part of that of General Jack- 
 son. In 1835 he was elected Governor of Massa- 
 chusetts ; a post which he held with honour to 
 himself and benefit to all for four years, when he 
 lost his re-election by one vote. 
 
 After this he was appointed minister to the Court 
 of St. James's, at that critical period when the 
 questions of the North-Eastern Boundary, the 
 Fisheries, the Caroline, the Creole, and other 
 delicate matters, stirred the public mind ; and that 
 the judgment, delicacy, and grace, with which he 
 discharged his diplomatic duties, were appreciated 
 in this country, was proved by the many marks 
 of respect which were paid him, including honor- 
 ary degrees conferred by Oxford, Cambridge, and 
 Dublin, while the repeated offers of the conduct 
 of diplomatic negotiations of a confidential nature, 
 made to him by the Lincoln government during 
 the late war, testified to the fact that his own 
 countrymen were impressed with the manner in 
 which he had upheld their interests. 
 
 In 1846 he returned to America, and was elected 
 president of his Alma Mater. At the death of Mr. 
 Webster he was made Secretary of State by Pre- 
 sident Fillmore ; but the administration changed, 
 and in 1853 he took his seat in the United States' 
 Senate, but was compelled to resign in 1854. Ten
 
 English Edition. xiii 
 
 years later the people of Massachusetts chose him 
 for their First Presidential Elector, and in the 
 following year, 1865, on the 15th of January, he 
 died. 
 
 His youngest son, Mr. William Everett, the 
 author of the present Lectures, was a Bachelor 
 scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. His 
 degree was a good one, as he took mathematical 
 honours, and was at the head of the second class 
 in the Classical Tripos. He has left a strong im- 
 pression of his powers of oratory for the exercise 
 of which he found an arena in the debates at the 
 Union upon his contemporaries at the Univer- 
 sity; and though a printed speech is like flat 
 champagne, the reader will be able to form some 
 idea of his eloquence from the noble perorations 
 of the Lectures before him. 
 
 There is no need to give any reasons for intro- 
 ducing these Lectures to the English Public; 
 Cambridge men will be curious to see how an 
 American was struck by the customs of their Uni- 
 versity, while any serious and genuine remarks 
 upon the relative positions of the two countries, 
 uttered by a clever man, a keen observer, as free 
 from prejudice as a partisan possibly can be, must 
 be generally interesting at the present time. Before 
 the civil war we were wonderfully indifferent about
 
 xiv Preface to the 
 
 our relatives on the other side of the Atlantic ; we 
 looked upon them as a community of tenth-rate 
 Englishmen, who had slaves, shot one another in 
 the streets, were perpetually blaspheming in quaint 
 language, chewing tobacco and spitting, who re- 
 pudiated their public debts, and openly and gene- 
 rally prided themselves on their freedom from the 
 restraints of honour and honesty. We could hardly 
 recognize the fact of Washington Irving, Long- 
 fellow, Hawthorne, Prescott, and a few others, 
 being Americans, but looked upon them as Eng- 
 lishmen who had got out there in some abnormal 
 way. In short, our habitual idea of " Jonathan " 
 was as gross a caricature as the picture represented 
 to the minds of our grandfathers by the name of 
 " Monseer," or the notion Frenchmen yet have of 
 " John Bull." But the newspapers were so full 
 of America during the civil war, and the letters of 
 the " special correspondents " were so graphic and 
 amusing, that we were obliged to take some inte- 
 rest in the country where alone there was anything 
 exciting going on, and began to see that Mr. 
 Bright's proteges really were a considerable people, 
 who had a sort of government which was not en- 
 tirely a sham, who waged war on European prin- 
 ciples, and positively took prisoners, whom they 
 treated with average humanity. Our interest in
 
 English Edition. xv 
 
 once aroused is not likely to flag; and 
 
 i we are too near relatives ever to like each 
 
 L very cordially for people are seldom fond 
 
 their cousins the next generation of English- 
 men will probably recognize the imperial future 
 towards which America is tending; and when the 
 poor old country is dead of age or geological 
 change, Americans will brag proudly enough of 
 their descent from her. 
 
 There are only two other matters of any im- 
 portance in these Lectures to which we would 
 refer. One is the opinion Mr. Everett expresses 
 about Oxford. It is natural enough that a repub- 
 lican should feel slight sympathy with the orthodox 
 and loyal city, and he had not the opportunities of 
 correcting his theoretical opinions by personal 
 observation that he enjoyed at Cambridge. The 
 other is the difficulty he finds to account for the 
 wide-spread sympathy felt in England for the 
 Southern States; but as none of us know the 
 reason of it ourselves, this is not so wonderful. 
 Some suppose that it originated in the fact of 
 our getting our cotton from the South, but we 
 are not so wrapped up in our shirts as all that ; 
 others think that we merely patted the weaker 
 combatant on the back ; others have received hos- 
 pitality and enjoyed good shooting amongst the
 
 xvi Preface to the English Edition. 
 
 planters; some refer to a superstition that the 
 rowdies of South Carolina were more " gentle- 
 manly " than the quiet and learned lights of Bos- 
 ton ; a good many were disgusted by the rant of 
 the Abolitionists and the blood and dirt which 
 defiled the Northern (we never saw any files of 
 the Southern) papers generally. But none of 
 these guesses solve the riddle satisfactorily ; and 
 in fact it is like one of those enigmas for the un- 
 ravelling of which the pocket-books offer a prize 
 of 10 it has no answer.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 HE following twelve lectures were 
 delivered in the hall of the Lowell 
 Institute in Boston, in the months of 
 January and February, 1864. In 
 preparing them for the press, it could not escape 
 my notice that much of the matter they contained 
 was of an essentially rhetorical character, better 
 suited for a lecture than an essay. It was no less 
 evident, however, that any attempt to change their 
 tone to something more didactic would be to re- 
 write them entirely ; and as they form a connected 
 whole, the result would probably be that the facts 
 and theories brought forward would be made less 
 interesting, without any gain in perspicuity or 
 accuracy. They have therefore been submitted 
 to the public exactly as- delivered. 
 
 For the emphasis with which certain views are 
 b
 
 xviii Author's Preface. 
 
 advanced, I trust no apology is needed. A resi- 
 dence of seven years and more in two Universities 
 can hardly fail to generate strong opinions on such 
 topics as the value of College studies ; and between 
 three and four years passed in a foreign country is 
 apt to leave the mind in a very different disposi- 
 tion towards its inhabitants from that contracted 
 by occasional and short encounters with them. 
 The pages in which a sentiment of the most cor- 
 dial good-will towards England is advanced were 
 written and spoken at a time when our relations 
 with her were most apathetic, if not antagonistic ; 
 I can see no reason to change them now, when 
 recent events, glorious or sad, have brought the 
 countries so much nearer. No class of men ap- 
 pears to me less truly patriotic than those whose 
 only idea of upholding our own country is to run 
 down others; there are such everywhere, and 
 whether Americans or English, they will find little 
 satisfaction in these pages. 
 
 It may be proper to say that all statistics with 
 reference to the present condition of Cambridge 
 are taken from the Cambridge Calendar for 1863; 
 the architectural and antiquarian notes from Le 
 Keux's " Memorials of Cambridge ;" the reminis- 
 cences of the early Puritans from Young's " Chro- 
 nicles of Massachusetts."
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xxiii 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 
 Introduction. Old and New Cambridge. American Ig- 
 norance of English Universities. Cambridge and 
 Vicinity described. Connection and Distinction of 
 University and Colleges. Analogy of the Union and 
 the States 1 
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 
 HISTORY AND OBJECTS OF CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARSHIP. 
 Mediaeval Scholarship confined to the Church. Its Cha- 
 racter. Kevival of Greek Literature. Erasmus. 
 Bentley. The Newtonian Mathematics. General 
 Character of Cambridge Scholarship. Advantages in 
 a University Course of Mathematical Study, and of 
 Classical. 25 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 METHODS OF INSTRUCTION AND STUDY. 
 Competitive Examinations. The final one described. 
 University and College Lectures. College and Private 
 Tutors. Vindication of the Competitive System, and 
 of the Pursuit of College Studies generally. " The 
 Wanderers." . . 
 
 49
 
 xx Contents. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 INCENTIVES TO STUDY AND NON-STUDENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 College Examinations. Prizes of Various Kinds. Com- 
 memoration. Scholarships and Fellowships. The 
 " Poll " Degree. Professors' Lectures. Shifts to 
 avoid Study. Generosity between Students and Non- 
 Students. General Discussion of the Cambridge Sys- 
 tem. . 73 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 LIFE OF AN UNDERGRADUATE. REGULAR. 
 
 Trinity College selected as the Type. Dinner in Hall. 
 College Kitchen and Courtyard. Union Society. 
 Vespers on a Saint's Day. A Student's Evening. 
 A Breakfast Party. Treatment of Younger by Older 
 Classes. Private Tutor. A Walk. 98 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 LIFE OF AN UNDERGRADUATE. EXCEPTIONAL. 
 
 Length of the College Course. Vacation. Taking the 
 Degree. Discipline. Sundays. Clubs and Associa- 
 tions. Cricket and Rowing. Description of a Boat- 
 race. Trinity Boat Song. 122 
 
 LECTURE VTI. 
 
 SURTET OF THE DIFFERENT COLLEGES. 
 
 St. John's. Magdalene. Sidney Sussex. Jesus. 
 Christ's. Emmanuel. Downing. St.Peter's. Pem- 
 broke. Queens'. St. Catherine's. Corpus Christi. 
 King's. Clare. Trinity Hall. Caius. . . .147
 
 Contents. xxi 
 
 LECTUKE VIH. 
 GREAT MEN OF CAMBRIDGE BEFORE 1C88. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Erasmus and Early Scholars. Reformers. Elizabethan 
 Statesmen and Poets. Sir Edward Coke. Translators 
 of the Bible. Bacon. New England Puritans. Straf- 
 ford. Cromwell. Milton. 170 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 GREAT MEN OF CAMBRIDGE SINCE 1688. 
 
 Mathematicians. Scholars. Divines. Lawyers. 
 Statesmen. Authors. Newton, Bentley, Barrow, 
 Lyndhurst, Pitt, Macaulay, and others. Song for 
 Cambridge 193 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 DRAWBACKS OF THE CAMBRIDGE LIFE. 
 
 Favourable Opinion heretofore expressed. Abuses and 
 Extortions by Servants. Expense of Living. Posi- 
 tion of the Aristocracy. Hardships of Average Men 
 and Advantages of Specialists. Strong Nationality of 
 the University. 217 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 RELATIONS OF CAMBRIDGE TO THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Character of the Colleges. Attendance on 
 Chapel and other Religious Duties. Act of 1662. 
 Theological Examination and other Requisites for Or- 
 dination. Parties in the Church. Oxford the Seat of 
 Extremists, Cambridge of Broad-Church Divines. . 239
 
 xxii Contents. 
 
 LECTUEE XII. 
 RELATIONS OF CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, AND AMERICA. 
 
 PAQE 
 
 The Universities and the Professions. Middle-Class Exa- 
 minations. The Universities Aristocratic. Cam- 
 bridge and Oxford contrasted. Cambridge the Liberal 
 University. English Opinions of America. Mutual 
 Needs of the two Countries. Concluding Stanzas. . 262 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. OLDER AND YOUNGER STUDENTS . . . 285 
 
 II. DIFFERENT COLLEGES 289 
 
 III. EXPENSES 290
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 order that the reader may thoroughly 
 appreciate the position in which these 
 lectures were written, I must here 
 trouble him, once for all, with certain 
 personal records, in order to avoid constant egotis- 
 tical reminiscences in the body of the work. 
 
 Having graduated at Harvard in July, 1859, I 
 sailed for England on September 21st of that year. 
 Arriving on October 2nd, I was admitted a pen- 
 sioner of Trinity College, Cambridge, on October 
 10th, Rev. William Whewell, D.D., being Master 
 of the College, and Rev. J. B. Lightfoot the Col- 
 lege tutor, under whose care I was placed. I 
 remained here for three entire academic years of 
 three terms each, including also portions of the
 
 xxiv Introduction. 
 
 Christmas and Easter vacations of each year, and 
 the months of July and August in the long vaca- 
 tions of 1860 and 1862. In June, 1861, being the 
 beginning of the long vacation, I returned to 
 America, leaving it again in October of the same 
 year. Beginning the fourth academic year in 
 October, 1862, I took the degree of B.A. on the 
 31st of January, 1863, remaining at Cambridge 
 as a Bachelor of Arts till June of that year, ex- 
 cepting seven weeks spent on the Continent in 
 March and April, and returned to America in the 
 summer of 1863. 
 
 During this interval I passed the following 
 University examinations : three for the University 
 scholarships in February, 1860, 1861, and 1862; 
 Little-go or previous examination in April, 1861 ; 
 Mathematical Tripos in January, 1863, in virtue 
 of which I received the degree ; and Classical Tri- 
 pos in the ensuing February ; also competing for 
 certain University prizes. My College examina- 
 tions were : For admission, October, 1859 ; May 
 examinations, 1860, 1861, 1862 ; Christmas exa- 
 mination, 1860 ; for Foundation Scholarships, 
 Easter 1861 and 1862, after the second of which
 
 Introduction. xxv 
 
 I was chosen to one of the Scholarships. I also 
 competed for certain College prizes with a partial 
 amount of success. 
 
 During this period the Prince Consort, Chan- 
 cellor of the University, died, and the Duke of 
 Devonshire was elected to the vacant place. The 
 successive Vice-Chancellors were Rev. W. H. 
 Bateson, Master of St. John's ; Hon. and Rev. 
 L. Neville, Master of Magdalene; Rev. George 
 Phillips, President of Queens', and Rev. Edward 
 Atkinson, Master of Clare. From the hands of this 
 last I received my degree. The Prince of Wales 
 connected himself with the University in the spring 
 of 1861, and left on his father's decease ; and the 
 British Scientific Association met at Cambridge 
 in 1862. 
 
 It will be observed that this period embraces in 
 the history of England the outbreak and termina- 
 tion of the Chinese War ; the gradual cessation of 
 Reform agitation ;* the death of Lord Macaulay ; 
 the publication of Essays and Reviews, and of Dr. 
 
 * Any stranger living amongst us for four whole years would 
 have an opportunity of seeing the British lion mumble and drop 
 that bone. ED.
 
 xxvi Introduction. 
 
 Colenso's Theological Works ; the distress in the 
 manufacturing districts ; the death of the mother 
 and husband of the reigning sovereign ; the antici- 
 pation of French invasion; the inauguration of 
 the Rifle Volunteer movement ; the Trent aftair, 
 and other complications of England in American 
 matters ; the death of Lord Herbert and Sir G. 
 Cornewall Lewis; the gradual uneasy breaking 
 up and reuniting of parties ; the marriage of the 
 Prince of Wales and others of the royal family. 
 The death of Count Cavour, the consolidation of 
 Italy, and the Polish outbreak, are the chief topics 
 of interest in Europe. 
 
 American history during the same time compre- 
 hends the visit of the Prince of Wales to this 
 country ; the election of 1860 ; and the whole his- 
 tory of the secession, rebellion, and war, down to 
 Lee's advance into Pennsylvania, which was the 
 news received at the quarantine ground in New 
 York by the steamer in which I finally returned. 
 During the first battles of the war, Rich Moun- 
 tain, Bull's Run, &c, I was in this country. 
 
 These great public events make less stir in an 
 English than in an American college. The almost
 
 Introduction. xxvii 
 
 monastic isolation is so great, that it seemed a 
 greater event to me to change my rooms from let- 
 ter D, New Court, where I was for two years and 
 a half, to letter I, Old Court, where I ended my 
 course, than for the command of the army to pass 
 from McClellan to Burnside. The effect of con- 
 temporary events is therefore but slightly touched 
 in these lectures, which are meant to exhibit 
 Cambridge as it is. 
 
 Soon after I entered, I was entreated by several 
 friends in America to collect all the materials I 
 could for a book on Cambridge and England. 
 Had I made a business of this, these lectures would 
 be fuller of educational and architectural lore; but 
 they would have entirely lost the spirit of the 
 place, and after all would have been inferior to 
 Le Keux's " Memorials," and Cooper's " Athena? 
 Cantabrigiensis." I conceived that the best mate- 
 rials I could collect were those picked up in the 
 daily pathway of an undergraduate, and never 
 went out of that path to gather precious gems or 
 hew out shapely blocks. 
 
 As I finish these lines, the last written of this 
 book, a feeling of irresistible sadness comes over
 
 xxviii Introduction. 
 
 me, which no one will reprehend. I went to 
 Cambridge with the counsel, the help, the blessing 
 of one to whom, under heaven, I owe all that 
 makes my life worth living. I passed nearly four 
 years of exile in the light of home thoughts where 
 he was the central sun. I delivered these lectures 
 on my return with his constant encouragement 
 and favour : and now that I make my first start 
 on the path he chose for his own, I can only sigh 
 for the presence which would have excused all 
 errors, doubled all efforts, and supplied all needs, 
 and which is taken from me, from his country, 
 for ever. 
 
 " Manibus date lilia plenis ; 
 Purpureos spargam flores, aniniamque parentis 
 His saltern accumulem donis, et f'ungar inani 
 Munere." 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., June 29, 1865. 

 
 I. 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF CAMBRIDGE 
 UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Introduction. Old and New Cambridge. American Ignorance 
 of English Universities. Cambridge and Vicinity described. 
 Connection and Distinction of University and Colleges. 
 Analogy of the Union and the States. 
 
 T is a task, arduous in no slight degree, for 
 a wholly untried lecturer, a young man, 
 scarce assured that he is free from the 
 discipline of school and college, to appeal- 
 before such an audience as this, and in 
 such a place. If America is the country, par excellence, 
 of popular lecturing, the Lowell Institute must be the 
 head of all the institutions that offer this form of instruc- 
 tion to the people ; and any one, however experienced or 
 well-informed, may well feel a tremor, on first attempting 
 so honourable a work, and one where so much is expected, 
 as a course of Lowell Lectures. I know, my honoured 
 fellow-citizens, that I may expect at your hands sympathy 
 and indulgence for all the imperfections of youth. You 
 are not to listen to-night, as all of us used to do with so 
 much pleasure, to the voice of the most learned and 
 accomplished classical scholar of Massachusetts ; but you 
 will be satisfied when I tell you that my model of a
 
 2 On the Cam. 
 
 lecturer is he whose instructions were my delight at home, 
 whose encouragement attended me ahroad, and whose loss 
 has given the harshest shock to my happiness at return- 
 i n g } the erudite, the brilliant, the beloved Felton. 
 
 If I fail as who should hope to succeed ? in repro- 
 ducing to you the lecturers of other years, you will at 
 least give me credit for an ardent wish to please you, for 
 a young man's enthusiasm in my subject, and for Ameri- 
 can loyalty. And I fear that this last quality, which we 
 all need so much now, I shall need doubly to-night, for 
 my subject will involve what, in the opinion of many good 
 Americans, is a fatal objection to any writer or speaker, 
 the praises of England and of some English institutions. 
 Having passed nearly four years in England ; returning 
 with a sadly fragmentary knowledge of the great events 
 that have taken place at home, though I have tried to 
 make the most of them abroad, my heart is full, and so 
 must my course be, of the place where I went to seek 
 education. I must therefore impose upon you a frequent, 
 though I hope not undiscriminating, eulogy of the Old 
 Country. Nor am I sorry to have this opportunity so to 
 do. I am not proposing to defend her conduct in the first 
 years of the war.* I believe it to be indefensible, though 
 
 It is a sad thing that even .1 man so clear-sighted and so 
 partial to England as our lecturer should misunderstand the action 
 of our government during the civil war in America. If ever a 
 ruling power struggled hard to he perfectly just and impartial in a 
 matter of peculiar intricacy and difficulty, ours did; and when the 
 natural excitement which still agitates the United States has 
 calmed down, Americans, we think, will confess as much. As for 
 the words, and, indeed, in some few instances the actions, of indi- 
 vidual Englishmen, that is different. Many of us endeavoured at 
 the onset to come to the rights of the quarrel, and could make 
 neither head nor tail of it, so we watched the fight much as we 
 might a pugilistic encounter in the street; and some of us took 
 one side, some the other Southern sympathy meaning, in the 
 majority of instances, nothing more than the admiration wo 
 instinctively feel for a plucky little boxer who is overmatched. 
 What is there "selfish" in such a sentiment ? ED.
 
 On the Cam. 3 
 
 not perhaps inexcusable. Even the excuses which might 
 be, which are given by intelligent Englishmen, I will not 
 go through here. But is it fair, is it just, is it overcoming 
 evil with good, to indulge in indiscriminate and fanatical 
 abuse of a great nation, because her conduct to us has 
 been ill-judged and selfish ? We blame the editorials of 
 the " Times ;" have not our own newspapers been rapidly 
 bringing their criticisms on foreign affairs to the standard 
 of the " Times ? " Are we, after the reception we gave 
 the Prince of Wales in 1860, really and truly prepared 
 to make Louis Napoleon our model of a sovereign instead 
 of tlue good Queen Victoria ? Or has the conduct of 
 England in the present war altered a single item in that 
 domestic life, wherein so many points used to excite our 
 admiration and love ? It is my hope, ladies and gentle- 
 men, that I may succeed in interesting you not only in the 
 great English University, but in the country by which 
 that University is supported, and to which it gives so 
 much of her strength ; and that as I have fought in 
 England for the country of my birth, I may not have hard 
 work to fight here for the country that extended to me 
 her hospitality. 
 
 It is remarked of the Americans, that beginning their 
 national, and so to speak, their physical existence so 
 recently, they are of all peoples the most eager to search 
 out the previous history of all that belongs to them ; to 
 know all about everything American as it was before it 
 became American. The chief support of genealogists in 
 England is derived from Yankees, who, with more than 
 their native inquisitiveness, will know from what precise 
 
 * Is this " rote sarcastical," as Artemus Ward says ? We do 
 not defend theline taken by the "Times" on the American question, 
 for it seems to us that, while it blamed the North for fighting to 
 uphold the Union, it would have been the first to have taunted it 
 for its pusillanimity had it let the Southern States go without a 
 struggle. But the idea of the American papers turning to its 
 columns for a lesson in international vituperation, is grand. ED.
 
 4 On the Cam. 
 
 lovely pasture in Northamptonshire came the particular 
 John Brown, in honour of whom their town is called 
 Fairfield. To facilitate these researches, an enterprising 
 and ubiquitous citizen has re-edited the " Massachusetts 
 Colonial Kecords," that we may, at all events, get our 
 ancestors safe as far back as the first settlement. I 
 extract therefrom, without attempting to do justice^ to 
 the admirable and ingenious orthography, the following 
 entries : 
 
 " 1637. Nov. 15. The College shall be at Newtown. 
 " 1638. May 2. Newtown shall be called Cambridge." 
 And why Cambridge? Why should one of the most 
 insignificant of English boroughs be picked out to give its 
 name to the settlement, where such men as Winthrop and 
 Leverett seriously thought of establishing the seat of 
 government of " the Massachusetts? "the town whence 
 the pioneers of Springfield departed on their fourteen days' 
 journey to the Connecticut? the town where the first 
 printing-press in the United States was established? Was 
 not Norwich, the second city in England, or York, the 
 capital of the North, where Saltonstall had so often 
 attended the assizes, or Huntingdon, the home of their 
 beloved Cromwell, or Wendover, of the still more hon- 
 oured Hampden, worthier of commemoration ? Why not 
 London itself, a name which John Smith had vainly 
 sought to fix on the old Bay of Dorchester ? It is the 
 first" of the records I have read that explains the second. 
 The college was to be at Newtown. The ancient Uni- 
 versity, where most of our pilgrim ancestors had tasted of 
 the sweets of learning which they desired to perpetuate, 
 was at Cambridge in England. It was from Cambridge 
 that John Harvard came to cast in his lot among us. In 
 filial and grateful remembrance of their own Alma Mater, 
 did our ancestors give the name of Cambridge to the 
 settlement of Newtown, the seat of their infant college. 
 
 I am sure, my honoured friends, I do not misinterpret 
 your feelings if I say that on no subject could the Ameri-
 
 On the Cam. 5 
 
 can passion for historical research be more eagerly and 
 delightedly exercised than the parentage of Harvard Col- 
 lege. It is from no common interest that for seven gene- 
 rations the wealth of Massachusetts has been lavished on 
 her, that the competition of her halls has stimulated the 
 noblest youth of our city and our country. No common 
 share of our heart's blood must be in that institution that 
 has sent out over four hundred children to fight in their 
 country's warfare, and the best of them to fall in siege and 
 battle and swamp and hospital. When Boston forgets 
 Harvard, may her right hand forget its cunning. When 
 she remembers not her ancient university, may her tongue 
 cleave to the roof of her mouth. 
 
 And since we delight in all that can illustrate her his- 
 tory, since it is our boast that we love to cut deeper, 
 year after year, the inscriptions on the graves of our an- 
 cestors, and trace with eagerness in English soil the roots 
 and stock which have put forth the branches of American 
 learning and civilization, since we Bostonians boast to 
 be liberal and cultivated men and women, enjoying the 
 study of any place where good and wise teachers of youth 
 have been wont to gather, I invite you to cross the water 
 with me to-night, and to pass six weeks at Cambridge in 
 England. We shall study its history, its character, its 
 prospects, its studies and its recreations, its fathers and 
 its sons, its precepts and its warnings. Like children 
 going back to their grandfather's mansion, we shall run 
 through the rooms where our fathers were born and bred ; 
 we shall stroll along the green turf and by the bright 
 streams where they grew up ; and we shall stumble upon 
 many queer nooks, winding passages, and dark closets, 
 some of them not a little musty, where they made their 
 resort for pleasure or punishment. And I hope that when 
 we meet some of our cousins there, you will take them 
 affectionately by the hand, remembering the relationship ; 
 for they have for four years been giving a hearty welcome 
 to their American kinsman ; taken him to school with them,
 
 6 On the Cam. 
 
 and shared with him their bed. and board ; though I admit 
 their hospitality did not prevent their charging him a good 
 price. And if you do not come back at the beginning of 
 spring with love to Old Cambridge in your hearts, it will 
 not be her fault, but mine. 
 
 I am surprised that on a subject so interesting and 
 important as the English Universities, scarcely anything 
 has been written from which an American can derive 
 correct ideas of them. Le Keux's magnificent volumes 
 on the " Architectural History and Memorials of Cam- 
 bridge," of which a new and enlarged edition has lately 
 appeared, seldom find their way into American libraries. 
 The learned works of Huber and Hayward are rather 
 scientific discussions than popular treatises. The meagre 
 notices of novelists and magazine-writers mislead on 
 exactly the points where they seek to instruct. I should 
 say, from what observations I have been able to make, 
 that the general opinion of Americans is as follows. 
 There is in England a college or university, the terms 
 being used interchangeably, situated at Oxford, to which 
 the name of Cambridge is occasionally applied ; of which 
 " The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green " is the guide- 
 book, published by official authority ; that the young men 
 wear a peculiar dress, of which the main part is generally 
 known as the Oxford hat ; that studies are pursued, 
 standing in the same relation to those of our colleges that 
 they do to those of our public schools ; that the under- 
 graduates are, on an average, six or eight years older than 
 our own ; that boating is practised, the least bit inferior to 
 ours ; that the Articles of the Church of England are 
 frequently signed by all the members of this college, 
 Oxford College, sometimes called Cambridge ; and that it 
 is infested by a swarm of things called Lords, who make 
 the necks of the other students their habitual promenade. 
 I have stated all this not as a caricature, but as what I 
 honestly believe to be a fair exposition of the opinion held 
 by a majority of Americans, as far as they have any
 
 On the Cam. 1 
 
 opinion at all, of the great fountains of English learning. 
 Xow, it is, in fact, hardly more correct than the statement 
 of a writer in "All the Year Round," that the horse-railroad 
 passed by the house of the poet Longfellow to the beautiful 
 rural cemetery on the banks of the Schuylkill. Cam- 
 bridge is not Oxford, and Oxford is not Cambridge. The 
 dress of the students at the two places is as different as 
 the uniforms of army and navy ; their head-dress is never 
 known as an Oxford hat, and the wearers are in. general 
 about a year and a-half older than our students. What 
 is the value of their studies and their exercises, as com- 
 pared with ours, I shall have occasion to state shortly ; 
 but any person can enter, and take his bachelor's, and at 
 Cambridge his master's degree, without any oath or sub- 
 scription whatsoever, whether connected with the Church 
 or State of England. " Verdant Green " was written by 
 a graduate of neither university, it is a very shallow, 
 imperfect picture of a certain style of Oxford life ; and a 
 lord, with the undergraduates, is a man. And all these 
 errors are the more unjustifiable, because there is one 
 book, giving, as far as Cambridge goes, a capital account 
 of the English university system, at once full, accurate, 
 and lively beyond any work I know. I allude to Mr. C. 
 A. Bristed's excellent work, " Five Years in an English 
 University." I shall doubtless have frequent occasion to 
 recur to the obligations I am under to this book. Its 
 plates were most unfortunately destroyed in the Harpers' 
 fire. Had it not been out of print, my occupation here 
 would be gone. 
 
 Perhaps the reason why we have had no good account, 
 except Bristed's, of an English university in comparison 
 with the flood of information about the German system, 
 though even that is very imperfectly understood, is, that 
 so few Americans have ever pursued their studies at one. 
 This has arisen from several causes. The expense of living 
 in England, various difficulties, great, but not insuperable, 
 in the way of a foreigner's residence at Oxford or Cam-
 
 8 On the Cam. 
 
 bridge, the desire to reside in some Continental town, to 
 learn the language, and a general persuasion that English 
 scholars are inferior to German, and English people inferior 
 to brutes, has deterred all but a very few Americans from 
 seeking the Alma Mater of their fathers, the fountain 
 from which their own streams of learning had flowed. I 
 cannot think there is any American who has encountered 
 the ordeal, but has been thankful he did so. And now 
 that all disabilities to the residence of foreigners at Ox- 
 ford or Cambridge are removed, I trusi an American 
 student will never again be a subject for Punch's celebrated 
 caricature, representing a tall and lanky youth dressed in 
 stars and stripes, accosted by a short and stout proctor 
 thus : 
 
 " Sir you are smoking a cigar in the High Street of 
 Oxford!!" 
 
 " Guess I could have told you that, old boss." 
 
 Since, then, I have the honour to be one of few who 
 have seen the old Lady in her best parlour, her dining-room, 
 her bed-chambers, and her school-room, let me lay the 
 foundations of her house correctly. I repeat Cambridge 
 is not Oxford, and Oxford is not Cambridge. To prevent 
 all further danger of confusion, I would call your attention 
 to the fact, that these two university towns are almost 
 exactly as far apart as our two university towns of Provi- 
 dence and Hartford, and that the generally travelled route 
 from Cambridge to London, and from London by Eeading 
 to Oxford, is not unlike a journey from Providence to ^ew 
 London or Stonington, and thence by New Haven to 
 Hartford. I hope in the course of these lectures to find 
 space for a few words concerning Oxford. Suffice it at 
 present to say that the two great universities of England 
 are generous rivals in wealth and learning, equally matched, 
 full of mutual respect, each convinced of its own superiority, 
 and each confident that the other is vastly superior to any 
 third place of learning in the world. 
 
 But if Cambridge claims to be the equal of Oxford, it
 
 On the Cam. 9 
 
 must be exclusively from its academic pretensions. The 
 two towns are far from being a match. Oxford is one of 
 the most picturesque of England's old cathedral cities, and 
 one of the most active of its modern county capitals, situated 
 too on the banks of its noblest river, in the bosom of a fine 
 range of hills, and in the immediate vicinity of some of the 
 most beautiful and famous localities in Britain. Sport 
 and love, politics and warfare, Little John and Fair 
 Rosamond, Charles the First and Maryborough, have left 
 their memorials at its very threshold. Cambridge, on the 
 contrary, is of all provincial English boroughs the most in- 
 significant, the dullest, and the ugliest.* It is at once the 
 last town on the chalk, and the first on the fen, a com- 
 bination admirable for raising wheat, but wholly at variance 
 with beauty of all kinds. An endless expanse of marsh, 
 cut up by long-drawn reaches of sluggish brooks, bordered 
 with pollard willows and unhappy poplars, forms the pros- 
 pect of the lowlands. On the south, a mixture of chalk 
 and flint rises into a slope of a few hundred feet high, 
 dignified by the title of the Gogmagog Hills, without a 
 tree or a tower, or indeed anything to break the outline 
 but some windmills and a lunatic asylum. Near the foot 
 of this molework, and through the melancholy of these 
 marshes, creeps what seems a forgotten canal, nowhere 
 over seventy feet wide, with a few locks and half a hundred 
 black barges ; and this you are informed is the river Cam, 
 
 * This surely is an exaggeration, leading one to suspect that Mr. 
 Everett's experience of " provincial English boroughs" has heen 
 both limited and happily selected. Cambridge, as well as Oxford, 
 is the capital of a county, and though of course it cannot enter into 
 comparison with that beautiful city, we do not think that many 
 strangers walking down Trumpington Street from Scroope Terrace 
 to Great St. Mary's, would endorse the opinion that it was an in- 
 significant, dull, or ugly town. Or even if we are to leave all the 
 colleges and public buildings connected with the university out of 
 our consideration, the hospital, the market-place, the houses around 
 Parker's Piece, and certain Terraces, are quite up to the average of 
 ordinary English county capitals. ED.
 
 10 On the Cam. 
 
 whence Cambridge. Here and there on its banks are 
 clustered the cottages of little hamlets, ugly towards the fen 
 side, prettier towards the chalk, and now and then cropping 
 out into groves and gardens, millpools, weirs affording pre- 
 sage of trout, and all of a cosy, household kind of beauty, 
 quite enrapturing in such a waste of dulness. The site of 
 one mill, otherwise as commonplace as its fellows, has 
 been immortalized, for, says Chaucer, 
 
 " At Trompington, not far from Cantabrigge 
 Ther goth a brook, and over it a brigge, 
 Upon the whiche brook ther stout a melle ; 
 (Xow this is very sothe that you I tell.)" 
 
 Though if very sothe were told, the mill is just over the 
 border in Grantchester, the next parish to Trumpington. 
 The chalk country of Cambridge is in no way remarkable. 
 It is the last out-cropping spur of the great calcareous 
 range that fills up the south-eastern corner of England, 
 abounding in those curious fossils called Coprolites, which 
 are very extensively worked as a fertilizer by the Cam- 
 bridge peasants. 
 
 But the fen or Isle of Ely, on whose extreme southern 
 limit stands Cambridge, is one of the most singular fea- 
 tures of Great Britain. It is the great estuary of the 
 Ouse and the Nen rivers, whose quaint Saxon names are 
 connected with the history of some of our most honoured 
 heroes, for it was by the banks of the Ouse that the gent- 
 lest of poets, William Cowper, took his daily walk, and 
 the Nen in its course through Northampton parts at equal 
 distances of a few miles the towns of Ecton and Sulgrave, 
 the ancestral seats of the families of Franklin and Wash- 
 ington. The Isle of Ely is the vast accumulation of mud 
 and peat brought down by these rivers, and deposited, like 
 the delta of the Nile, just at the point where the German 
 Ocean flings its fiercest tides on the east coast of England. 
 It is in fact perfectly described as a bit of Holland in the 
 centre of England, and the Saxon name of Holland, or
 
 On the Cam. 1 1 
 
 hollow land, is still retained by a similar tract in Lincoln- 
 shire. The primitive condition of the Isle of Ely is admi- 
 rably described by Lord Macaulay in the eleventh chapter 
 of his immortal history. One feature he there commemo- 
 rates must not be omitted here. On the largest of the 
 knolls of solid earth, originally islands, which here and 
 there stud the marsh, a few thousand souls are gathered 
 around the glorious cathedral of Ely, still one of the most 
 magnificent Gothic shrines in England, though a great 
 part of the west end appears to have been destroyed. Its 
 majestic towers are a landmark for miles, in spite of the 
 atmosphere of the fens, noted for its heaviness and mois- 
 ture even in England. In the course of the last two hun- 
 dred years, the enterprise of various great proprietors, 
 particularly the noble house of Russell, Dukes of Bedford, 
 has converted the fen of Ely into a field of inexhaustible 
 agricultural wealth. The sea is kept out by dikes, which, 
 however, are not always adequate. In the year 1862, one 
 of the sluiceways burst, and flooded the lower part of the 
 fen, so that people came from all the neighbouring coun- 
 ties to watch the devastations of the tide as a spectacle. 
 Sixteen miles south of Ely the fen terminates, almost at 
 the foot of another landmark, less lofty than the cathe- 
 drals, but contesting with all of them, in spite of Ruskin's 
 glittering paradoxes, the palm for perfection of proportion, 
 simplicity of design, and elegance of detail, the chapel of 
 King's College, (of which the library of Harvard is not, 
 as some persons suppose, an exact copy, but quite the 
 reverse,) whose pinnacles, 146 feet high, mark, for all the 
 fen, the site of Cambridge. 
 
 I have said that Cambridge is an insignificant and ugly 
 town. Its population is not far from that of our own 
 Cambridge, between twenty and twenty-five thousand, and 
 the space it covers is much less. Being the capital of an 
 entirely agricultural country, it wants the bustle of a min- 
 ing district and the enterprise and progress of a manufac- 
 turing one. It seems to have stagnated for three hundred
 
 12 On the Cam! 
 
 years, seeing new articles in the shops, and new faces in 
 the streets, and occasionally some new houses, only he- 
 cause the population was larger. Its streets are too 
 crooked to be convenient or imposing, and not crooked 
 enough to be picturesque. The buildings are mostly of 
 bricks baked of the local clay, which is of a dirty white, 
 relieved by occasional touches of dingy red, and all, to use 
 Dr. Holmes's admirable classification, of no particular 
 order of architecture but their own. Here and there a 
 building in the white freestone of the neighbourhood 
 would be really ornamental, were it not for the uniform 
 pall of coal-smoke that blackens everything in an English 
 market-town, and is in Cambridge rendered doubly swarthy 
 by the condensations of the marsh fog. Its churches, on 
 which English towns mainly depend to relieve their archi- 
 tectural sameness, are by no means unsightly, but on very 
 commonplace models, with one exception, the beautiful 
 little round church of the Holy Sepulchre, often known as 
 St. Sepulchre's. It is one of four in England which the 
 Knights Templar built in a circular form, to commemorate 
 the shape of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem. "When Brian 
 de Bois-Guilbert travelled northward, he undoubtedly first 
 paid his vows at the round Temple Church in London ; on 
 the first stage from London, he would arrive at the round 
 church in Essex ; the second would take him to this at 
 Cambridge ; the fourth would bring him to one in Nor- 
 thamptonshire, and for the rest of his journey to Kother- 
 wood he would have to content himself with a sanctuary 
 not on the Templar model. 
 
 Two monuments in Cambridge deserve further notice. 
 One is a mound of earth, about a hundred feet high, 
 known as the Castle Hill, and affording a capital view of 
 the town, and yet entirely artificial. It was, however, 
 sufficiently incorporated with the soil for Cromwell to put 
 some cannon on, as he did to almost every hill, natural or 
 artificial, in England. The other was formerly an orna- 
 mental stone conduit in the market-place, though now
 
 On the Cam. 13 
 
 removed to the court end of the town, and was the gift of 
 old Hobson, formerly carrier from London to Cambridge, 
 and the cause of the celebrated saying of Hobson's choice. 
 He has been commemorated by Milton in two capital jeux 
 d 'esprit, which I commend to your reperusal. 
 
 Cambridge has always been known as a queer town. It 
 stands half-way between the Eastern counties, viz. Nor- 
 folk, Suffolk, and Essex, and the shires, or central part of 
 England. It partakes of the traits of both, although, in 
 my experience, the brisk, enterprising character of the 
 shires was wholly sunk in the stolid, painstaking, loamy 
 nature of the Eastern counties, the part of England, I 
 would remind you, whence Massachusetts was chiefly colo- 
 nized. I suppose with their Puritan element was exiled 
 their wit. Boston will like Cambridge none the less for 
 having a great many notions. Of these I will only men- 
 tion one, that Cambridge butter is sold by the yard. Fur- 
 ther, for the information of travellers, the Bull is the best 
 hotel, and in all parts of the town the sausages are unex- 
 ceptionable. 
 
 So much for the town of Cambridge. If my descrip- 
 tion is dull, that proves its accuracy. But this sombre 
 setting does but heighten the exceeding lustre of the jewel 
 it enchases, the brilliant, the honoured, the glorious Uni- 
 versity. And as I have occupied so long time in showing 
 that Cambridge is Cambridge, and not Oxford, let me dis- 
 pel another error in American opinion. The institution at 
 Cambridge is a university, and not a college. There is no 
 such body as Cambridge College, or Oxford College. The 
 great corporation, comprising at present (1863) 7,922 per- 
 sons, who in some sort or other retain active connection with 
 it, of which 1,581 are undergraduates, familiarly known as 
 Cambridge, affectionately as Alma Mater, is officially de- 
 signated as the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the 
 University of Cambridge. It confers degrees, awards prizes, 
 holds examinations, and assigns rank in accordance with 
 their result ; elects members to Parliament ; by the mouths
 
 14 On the Cam. 
 
 of its professors and other officers delivers public lectures 
 and sermons, and by the authority of its proctors and others 
 pronounces judicial decisions in a court peculiarly its own. 
 It gives no personal instruction, appoints no hours of study, 
 conducts no religious exercises of a devotional character ;* 
 and, herein differing from Oxford, enforces no special' dress. 
 In general, it exercises no immediate authority over the 
 students who share its privileges.f Furthermore, it is 
 distinctly not a rich body, so much so that its professors' 
 salaries, not on special foundations, are very meagre, and 
 a material itemj in its income are the fines of about one 
 dollar and seventy-five cents reckoned in gold which 
 are levied for breaches of such discipline as it does enforce. 
 The wealth, the instruction, the personal authority, is all 
 in the hands of the colleges, bodies distinct from the 
 university, though constantly in America confounded with 
 it. To them let us now turn. 
 
 The colleges at Cambridge are seventeen in number ; 
 at Oxford, I think, twenty-four. They are, for all pur- 
 poses of internal organization, as distinct as Harvard and 
 Yale, or as two public schools in Boston. They differ in 
 wealth, in prestige, and in the number of their mem- 
 bers, the largest at Cambridge having more than twice as 
 many as the next largest ; at Oxford they are more on an 
 equality. They differ also in the date of their foundation, 
 and the University, that is the separate body of men pro- 
 fessing a literary life, is older than any of them. A uni- 
 versity, in fact, is not, as the wise modern Greeks at 
 Athens have translated it, a universal knowledge-shop ; it 
 is the whole body of men professing one trade in one place. 
 What we call guilds or companies of masons, shoemakers, 
 
 * The University Sermons at Great St. Mary's are an exception. 
 ED. 
 
 t The Proctors are University officers. ED. 
 
 J Were this the case the funds in the chest would indeed bo 
 low! ED.
 
 On the Cam. 15 
 
 lawyers, were in mediaeval phrase called Universities. All 
 similar bodies, who monopolized the instruction of youth 
 in their particular trade had two grades, the first -being 
 apprentices or students, who worked seven years, and then 
 were advanced to the second grade of master- workmen. 
 The Universities par excellence were those where learned 
 men studied and taught the seven liberal arts or sciences, 
 viz. grammar, rhetoric, logic, music, arithmetic, geometry, 
 and astronomy. After an apprentice to the Muses had 
 studied four years, he was advanced to the grade of Bach- 
 elor of Arts, a term of uncertain derivation. He could 
 then lecture on what he knew, but could ^iot leave his place 
 of education. After three years more he became a Master 
 of the liberal arts, and might profess them anywhere he 
 pleased. Still further, the degree of Bachelor in the arts 
 of Theology, Medicine, Law, and Music was specially 
 awarded, and after long standing a peculiar proficient 
 received the formal and eminently honourable title of 
 Doctor ; and his gown, black through all previous degrees, 
 became red or purple. These two learned guilds of work- 
 men and students in the liberal arts were established at 
 Cambridge and Oxford from a very early period. Oxford 
 says she was founded by King Alfred, Cambridge says 
 she was founded by Augustine. Each university there- 
 upon adduces its own series of distinguished men, among 
 whom St. Paul and Dionysius the Areopagite are the 
 most noted, carrying the period of foundation, first for one, 
 and then for the other into more and more remote antiquity, 
 till, finally, there is actually standing in Cambridge, but 
 on ground belonging to one of the colleges at Oxford, an 
 ancient house known as the school of Pythagoras, and 
 that settles the question. Be the date as it may, learned 
 men assembled to study at the two Universities long before 
 any colleges were founded for board, lodging, and private 
 instruction. Listen to the long line of illustrious founders 
 of colleges, kings and queens and prelates, as they roll 
 down the sonorous lines of England's most classic bard.
 
 16 On the Cam. 
 
 " But hark ! the portals sound, and pacing forth 
 
 With solemn steps and slow, 
 High potentates, and dames of royal birth, 
 
 And mitred fathers in long order go : 
 Great Edward, with the lilies on his brow 
 From haughty Gallia torn, 
 And sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn 
 That wept her bleeding love, and princely Clare, 
 
 And Anjou's heroine, and the paler Eose, 
 
 The rival of her crown and of her woes, 
 And either Henry there, 
 The murdered saint, and the majestic lord, 
 That broke the bonds of Rome." 
 
 The earliest existing college at Cambridge is St. Peter's, 
 generally called Peterhouse, historically founded A. D. 
 1257, in the reign of Henry III. The Universities are 
 known merely by their situation ; as Oxford, Cambridge, 
 Durham, St. Andrews' ; but each college has a name, 
 according to the taste of its founder or first members. 
 These names may be divided into two classes, those 
 named after the founder, as Pembroke, Clare, Gonville, 
 and Caius, (this had two founders, the restorer being Dr. 
 Kaye, who Latinized his name into Caius, always pro- 
 nounced Keys), King's (from King Henry VI,), Queens' 
 (from the queens both of Henry VI. and Edward IV.), 
 Sidney Sussex, and Downing; and those named after 
 beatified persons and objects of worship, St. Peter's, St. 
 John's, St. Catharine's, St. Mary Magdalene, Corpus 
 Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus, Christ's, Trinity, and Trinity 
 Hall. The apparent* impiety of these names, which in one 
 case of an ancient name now changed, was absolutely revolt- 
 ing, entirely passes oft" with a few days' use. St. Catharine's 
 soon becomes Cats, and St. Mary Magdalene is always 
 called Maudlin. You readily admit the superiority of 
 Trinity over Corpus ale ; go to see a friend who lives on 
 Christ's piece ; and hear with regret, that in the boat-races 
 Emmanuel has been bumped by Jesus; an epithet being 
 probably prefixed to the last name. These names of course 
 were given in monkish times, Trinity by Henry VIII.,
 
 On the Cam. 17 
 
 but all the colleges except one were founded before tbe reign 
 of James I. 
 
 "When our ancestors voted in 1636 to establish a college 
 in New England, there is every reason to believe that they 
 contemplated a seat of learning on the English plan. All 
 the earlier constitutions and laws speak to that effect. The 
 little ark of literature on the wild waves of our colonial 
 history, was constituted like an English college. John 
 Harvard, who "was a graduate of Cambridge University, 
 having generously given half his fortune, the college at 
 Xcwtown or Cambridge was called after him Harvard 
 College, just as Sidney Sussex and Pembroke Colleges had 
 been named after two noble ladies Sidney, Lady Sussex, 
 and the Countess of Pembroke, who had been their respec- 
 tive founders. Had subsequent benefactors, instead of 
 increasing Harvard's college, founded others of their own 
 in the same University, each would have had its own name, 
 and the University have embraced all. The State Con- 
 stitution speaks not of Harvard, but of the University at 
 Cambridge. But no other college having been set up at 
 Cambridge, and Harvard's foundation being enriched with 
 professors' chairs, and exercising University powers, the 
 affection for his memory has invented the monstrous and 
 incongruous name of Harvard University, an anomalous 
 designation, warranted by neither statute nor precedent, 
 English or American. In Germany there is some ex- 
 ample of such a designation. 
 
 The seventeen colleges, then, are distinct corporations. 
 Their foundations, resources, buildings, governing authori- 
 ties and students, are entirely separate from each other. 
 Nor has any one college the least control over any other. 
 The plan, however, is much the same in all. The presid- 
 ing authority is in most cases called the Master, or, speaking 
 more generally, the Head ; while the net proceeds of all 
 the college funds for the vast wealth supposed to belong 
 to the University is really in the hands of the separate 
 colleges are distributed among certain of the graduates, 
 c
 
 18 On the Cam. 
 
 called Fellows, who with the Head constitute the corpora- 
 tion. These corporations give board and lodging on 
 various terms to such students as choose to enter the col- 
 lege and comply with its rules, in order to receive its 
 assistance in obtaining the honours of the University ; and 
 each college offers its own peculiar inducements to students. 
 When the Prince of Wales came to pass a year or more at 
 Cambridge, and entered his name on the books of Trinity 
 College, the rush there was so great that the authorities 
 were at last obliged to decline to take any more ; whereby 
 less noted colleges reaped a rich harvest from the unac- 
 cepted overflow.* 
 
 To enforce discipline each college chooses officers called 
 deans, and for the general purposes of instruction and 
 management, tutors, i. e. persons clothed with extensive 
 discretionary power, through whose hands all the real un- 
 dergraduate business passes, and who occupy a much more 
 exalted position than our tutors, being in fact the guardians 
 appointed for the young men during their absence from 
 home. They appoint assistant tutors, not necessarily mem- 
 bers of the colleges, to give additional instruction. There is 
 moreover within the college precincts a perfect army of 
 butlers, stewards, cooks, bedmakers, porters, and other 
 servants innumerable. Each college holds lectures and 
 examinations, awards prizes, and at stated intervals elects 
 certain scholars, from the students of ability and industry, 
 but not necessarily of limited means, who thereupon 
 derive direct pecuniary advantages from the funds of the 
 college. Each college makes its own requirements of its 
 students, prescribes within certain limits the time of their 
 
 * It is said, though we do not vouch for the truth of the anec- 
 dote, that a certain college, which has long been deplorably short 
 of undergraduates, has lately received into its charitable bosom a 
 band of unruly youths dismissed by a more prosperous Foundation 
 as untameahle. Should this be a fact and prove a precedent, the 
 dean and tutors of the College of Refuge will have a nice time 
 of it, unless indeed they elect Mr. Rarey for their master. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 19 
 
 residence, fixes its own hours and its own peculiar variety 
 on the general type of academic dress. 
 
 I have said the colleges differ in prestige. This may 
 seeui singular, when they all have nearly, if not quite, an 
 equal share of the University privileges. It is not merely 
 dependent on their wealth and the proficiency of their gra- 
 duates. It is moreover constantly fluctuating. A college 
 that twenty years ago ranked as third in numbers and con- 
 sideration, is now eighth or ninth, notwithstanding some 
 men of very superior attainments have recently been con- 
 nected with it. Of late years Trinity and St. John's have 
 shot far ahead of all others, and Trinity far ahead of St. 
 John's, in the general opinion entertained by the public. 
 
 The whole body of the colleges, taken together, consti- 
 tutes the University. All those who after residing seven 
 years at some college, have taken the degree of Master of 
 Arts, or a higher one, and keep their name on the college 
 lists by a small payment, vote at the University elections 
 for members of Parliament and all other officers, and man,- 
 age its affairs ;* while all the undergraduates and bachelors 
 of arts residing at the colleges, together constitute the 
 persons in statu pvpilhtri of the University, have the right 
 to compete for its honours, and are amenable to its rules 
 of conduct. The colleges, at certain intervals, present 
 such students as comply with their conditions to University 
 authorities for matriculation, for certain examinations, and 
 for the reception of degrees ; and until one receives the 
 degree of Master of Arts, he must remain a member of 
 some college, not necessarily one and the same, to hold 
 any University privileges. After this stage, he may, under 
 certain conditions, break up all his college connections, 
 and yet remain in the University ; and so if the college 
 sees fit, he may, before taking a degree, or even before 
 
 * In order to retain the right of voting on all questions, it is 
 necessary that a Member of the Senate should reside at the Uni- 
 versity during a certain portion of the year. ED.
 
 20 On the Cam, 
 
 matriculation, remain at his college, enjoying many of its 
 advantages, and yet having nothing to do with the Uni- 
 versity. Still further : the prominent men at each college 
 are, as might be supposed, likely to he the prominent men 
 in the whole University; and the Vice-Chancellor, or 
 acting head of the University, is chosen in rotation from 
 the heads of the colleges. Once more : there are a great 
 many learned men living at Cambridge, to give instruction 
 to such pupils as seek it, in all departments, after severing 
 entirely all connection with both college and University,* 
 but preferring to remain in a place where their early asso- 
 ciations all gather, where their friends still reside, where 
 their publications will find intelligent readers and critics, 
 and where their services as teachers will be in the greatest 
 demand, and command the highest premium. 
 
 I almost despair of making plain this complicated 
 system, so different both from the pure University system 
 of Germany, and from the pure College system of America, 
 Tji England the individual relations of a young man are 
 all with his college, except perhaps his private instructor ; 
 there are his rooms, his commons hall, his chapel, his 
 daily lectures ; there are his friends, his societies, with 
 certain exceptions, his boat and cricket clubs. There 
 are his daily and weekly rewards and punishments ; there 
 his successes and failures, and his prospects for either 
 known and discussed ; there he looks for a fellowship or 
 scholarship, to stamp with solid advantage the comparatively 
 barren honour of a University triumph. Thither he comes 
 as a Freshman, thither he returns as a graybeard. 
 are the tutors and deans, the objects of his daily fear and 
 aversion, and there the junior and unofficial authorities, the 
 objects of his respect and confidence. In the University 
 societies, examinations, prizes, the competition is to a con- 
 
 * Not a "great many;" it is quite an exceptional thing for a 
 resident private tutor not to have his name on the boards of hia 
 college. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 21 
 
 siderable extent between colleges rather than individuals, 
 and the hospitalities between members of different colleges 
 are very apt to have a formal and courtly air, at variance 
 with the easy jollity common amongst fellow collegians. 
 The college rivalries and connections are to an English 
 University what the class system is to us, or the fraternities 
 to Germany : sixteen hundred undergraduates, divided 
 between seventeen colleges, large and small, make about 
 the same divisions as four hundred men among four classes. 
 At Cambridge, the college is nearly everything, the Uni- 
 versity very little, except as an " Arena for the exhibition 
 of champions," or as fixing a common standard of scholar- 
 ship, and diffusing a common tone of sentiment. 
 
 But shift the scene to England and the world, and all is 
 changed. It is Cambridge and Oxford, the two great 
 seats of learning, that make their voices heard throughout 
 the length and breadth of Britain and the world. No one 
 cares in Parliament, in society, on the continent, or in the 
 universal brotherhood of literature, if a man comes from 
 Trinity or Corpus, from Balliol or Christ Church, except 
 in a few cases of personal friendship. It is enough that 
 he belongs to the great Universities ; one the home of 
 Bacon and Newton and Pitt and Macaulay, the other of 
 Raleigh and Locke and Chatham and Peel. One of these 
 very great men tells us of the seventeenth century, and the 
 same is true to this day : " To be a chancellor of a Uni- 
 versity was a distinction eagerly sought by the magnates 
 of the realm. To represent a University in Parliament 
 was a favourite object of the ambition of statesmen. Nobles 
 and even princes were proud to receive from a University 
 the privilege of wearing the Doctoral scarlet." The last 
 chancellor of Cambridge was the husband of the sovereign. 
 The last lord steward, the graduate representing her 
 interests in the House of Lords, was the late learned and 
 venerable Lord Lyndhurst. One of her recent repre- 
 sentatives in Parliament was the astute and able Palmer- 
 ston, and one of her present members is the high-minded
 
 22 On the Cam. 
 
 and patriotic Walpole, the Secretary for the Home De- 
 partment, whenever the Conservatives rise to power. And 
 not only does the University influence rise thus high, but 
 it spreads wide, and strikes deep ; its graduates are dif- 
 fused throughout the length and breadth of the great 
 British Empire. The Universities are the bulwarks of the 
 Church, the mainstay of the government, the fountains of 
 learning. For these great objects, they draw on the 
 energy and resources of all the colleges alike, and when- 
 ever, either to hold fast or to reform, to originate or to 
 illustrate, the great University spirit arises, the whole 
 eight thousand graduates and undergraduates rise together 
 to maintain, in life and in death, the honour and glory of 
 dear old Oxford or Cambridge. 
 
 I said I despaired of exhibiting to you in its full nature, 
 this connection and separation of College and University ; 
 and yet the whole world is full of analogies. The college 
 is like the town, the University like the nation ; the college 
 is like the nation, the University like the world. The col- 
 lege is like the home, the University like the community. 
 Our principles, our work, our duties may be with the 
 whole ; our affections, our associations, our recreations are 
 with the part ; and yet, at the right time, our most anxious 
 cares are with the part, and our loftiest affections with the 
 whole. Each part has its own province, and each its own 
 share in the work of the whole. 
 
 And forgive me, my honoured friends, if, to make the 
 analogy more impressiA'e, I have delayed so long the exact 
 parallel which must ere now have forced itself upon you. 
 I need not tell you, I ought not to tell you, ladies and 
 gentlemen, how several corporate bodies, each with its in- 
 dividual wealth, its individual jurisdiction, its own peculiar 
 laws, ruling its own citizens, controlling its own affairs, 
 maintaining its own honour, may yet be associated under 
 one government, where each part shall have its own 
 co-ordinate share, '' for the common defence, the common 
 renown, and the common glory," in one indissoluble whole.
 
 On the Cam. 23 
 
 It is not new to you, nor is it a strange freak of the 
 English Universities, a curious phase in European institu- 
 tions, this principle of the many in one. Our ancestors, 
 the brave soldiers, the wise statesmen, the pious divines, 
 who founded the New England colonies, were many of 
 them sons of Oxford, many more of Cambridge. They 
 had learnt to respect and to love in their Universities the 
 principle of independent action in domestic affairs, com- 
 bined with mutual defence and support for the good of the 
 whole. They could have learnt it nowhere else ; neither in 
 the dissensions of Germany, the rebellions of France, nor 
 the endless feuds of the British Isles. They founded the 
 league of the New England colonies for mutual support ; 
 and their descendants declared the independence of the 
 United States of A.merica. 
 
 And must we not believe, ladies and gentlemen, that 
 such a perfect analogy as this will in time have its effect 
 upon our English brethren ? It is by this beautiful system 
 of federative union that their two great seats of learning 
 have for six hundred years concentrated in themselves the 
 affection of tens of thousands of the most intelligent and 
 noble-hearted men in England, have stood the beacon- 
 lights of learning and reason through the ages of darkness, 
 and have blazed like jewels of truth in the glory of the 
 noon-day sun of modern intelligence. To this connection 
 every son of Cambridge and Oxford clings with the utmost 
 tenacity of the English nature. The name so dear to us 
 is well known to them in the two great clubs, open to all 
 members of Oxford and Cambridge, and known as the 
 " Union Debating Society," or, more commonly, the 
 " Union " alone. Fond, devoted as they are, when college 
 interests are at stake, they are ready at any great crisis, 
 to rise as one man to defend the whole University. Let 
 us draw therefrom this augury of peace and goodwill to 
 come ; that when the cloud of misrepresentation and deceit, 
 raised by emissaries whose true natures are abhorrent to 
 the souls of Englishmen, has blown away, and the pure
 
 24 
 
 On the Cam. 
 
 azure of truth returns, their hearts and voices will unite in 
 paying to us the long deferred tribute of justice and 
 applause for that undying devotion to our cause which 
 they have hitherto regarded as misled fanaticism, as wild 
 thirst for empire, as senseless passion for military glory. 
 And let a still nobler and loftier union of England and 
 America in the cause of freedom be inaugurated when 
 they have learned to appreciate the impulse whereby the 
 inhabitants of different states, separated not by the walls 
 of a college, but by bi'oad rivers and lofty mountains, have 
 poured upon one altar their wealth and their blood, have 
 sent up in one acclaim their hearts' prayer, that the God 
 of our fathers, who has linked us by nature, by kindred, 
 by all the memories of the past, by all the hopes of the 
 future, will keep us, in the face of the whole world, one 
 unbroken, inseparable people.
 
 II. 
 
 HISTORY AND OBJECTS OF CAMBRIDGE 
 SCHOLARSHIP. 
 
 Mediaeval Scholarship confined to the Church. Its Character. 
 Revival of Greek Literature. Erasmzis. Bentley. The 
 Newtonian Mathematics. General Character of Cambridge 
 Scholarship. Advantages in a University Cotirse of Mathe- 
 matical Study, and of Classical. 
 
 X my last lecture I endeavoured to present 
 to you some of the local characteristics of 
 the town of Cambridge, and also some 
 description of the University, of its con- 
 nection with the colleges, and separation 
 from them. I propose in the present lecture, to go a 
 little more at length into the constitution of both these 
 corporations, and particularly the objects of their original 
 establishment, and of their present existence. 
 
 We conceive here of a college and University almost 
 entirely as a place for training young men. It may be 
 the simplest academy in the Western country, that calls its 
 head-master President and Professor in the Ancient and 
 Modern Languages and Physical Science, and itself 
 Fremontville or Felicity College, up to Harvard and Yale, 
 all purposes besides the instruction of youth are mado 
 strictly subordinate, if indeed they are allowed at all. But 
 such was not the case with the English Universities at
 
 26 On the Cam. 
 
 their foundation ; and such assuredly is not the case now. 
 I have already stated that the Universities in the Middle 
 Ages were guilds or companies of men studying the liberal 
 arts. It might be further added, that they were species of 
 monasteries, where the vows were not perpetual. We 
 commonly say that in the Middle Ages there was no 
 literature out of the Church. But this means a great deal 
 more than we at first suppose. K"ot only were the abodes 
 of the regular clergy the monasteries the only places 
 where learning was kept alive through the early barbarism, 
 but when the men of literature and learning began to 
 separate from the monastic order ; when colleges were 
 founded where scholars could study Aristotle and his com- 
 mentators without the hair-shirt and the cord, the alms- 
 giving and the eternal seclusion, still the ecclesiastical 
 spirit governed all their actions. Their dress, altered from 
 the monastic, still approached the clerical. In fact these 
 very words clerk, clerical, clergy, indicated equally a 
 minister of religion, and a man who could read and write. 
 As soon, however, as this first great step was taken, 
 getting learning out of the monasteries into bodies of its 
 own, learned men of all professions were irresistibly at- 
 tracted to these homes where they were sure to find con- 
 genial spirits with whom to converse, masters to instruct 
 them, pupils to consult them, and above all, books, then 
 indeed a rarity. The highest emoluments and honours of 
 the colleges and Universities were not then, nor are they 
 now, accorded equally to cleric and laymen. Still the 
 great principle was established, which gives the first cha- 
 racter to an English University. The home of students 
 in all stages of their literary pursuits gathered to discuss 
 congenial questions, and consult those helps and authori- 
 ties that only such associations can bring together. 
 
 The objects of study at the time the Universities were 
 established were few, but not simple. In Aristotle, an author 
 in very truth of most transcendent eminence, but still hardly 
 the sum and substance of knowledge, is summed up the
 
 On the Cam. 27 
 
 whole object of monastic study. He had collected, they 
 thought, all the facts that needed collection. He had put 
 in a convenient and indeed inevitable form the methods of 
 reasoning, and all they had got to do was to argue ad in- 
 finitum on his facts and about his principles. They very 
 soon perceived that the natural history of Aristotle was not 
 a subject of argument ; he had classified all the beasts and 
 birds he knew ; that classification could not be corrected or 
 extended ; those beasts and birds, or others, could not be 
 better known,\vithout going out into the highways and fields, 
 and observing facts ; and to observe facts was alike beneath 
 the dignity of a philosopher, and alien to the habits of an 
 ascetic. Accordingly they seized at once upon the other 
 half of the great Grecian's wisdom, the ethical arid me- 
 taphysical questions. What a splendid field was there for 
 suppositions and assertions, for enthymemes and predicables, 
 for undistributed middles and illicit processes of the minor. 
 Into these most barren investigations they plunged, shut 
 up there by themselves, knowing nobody, seeing nobody, 
 yet discussing with the most perfect confidence the great 
 problems of human nature ; writing large volumes full of 
 the subtlest wiredrawn distinctions, but not adding an iota, 
 it would seem, to the real sum of human knowledge. Nor 
 did they seek to. The sum of human knowledge for all 
 they cared, might perish for ever. Laymen, like King 
 Alphonso, infidels, like the Arabs, might collect facts in 
 astronomy and natural history, vagabonds, like Marco 
 Polo, might perform marvellous voyages, hei'etics, like 
 Dante, might agitate the world with strains of verse ; such 
 was not for them. For the pious ecclesiastic merely whetted 
 his brains over Aristotle, or copied the ^Eneid and the 
 Agamemnon as a recreation after his devotions. He could 
 not see that knowledge and intellectual skill were God's 
 good gifts to the world ; he supposed that in fasting and 
 almsgiving and telling of beads, the full destiny of man 
 could be accomplished. And was it for the other class, the 
 crafty and designing ecclesiastic, to make science a pro-
 
 28 On the Cam. 
 
 gressive business or a useful art ? Xo indeed, he felt that 
 his intellectual powers were not misplaced in drawing subtle 
 distinctions from Aquinas, in classifying the first and second 
 logical figures, in converting an argument from Celarent 
 into Felapton. The subtlety so acquired he would use on 
 a wider field, and for a loftier end ; but that field was not 
 science, and that end was not the extension of knowledge. 
 From his Aristotle and his Boethius, from his second in- 
 tentions and his quidditive relations, he turned to the court 
 and the camp, the chancery and the parliament. Then 
 mail-clad nobles and bronzed warriors stood abashed and 
 speechless in the royal councils before the smooth church- 
 man, that wheedled the king out of his grants by logic, 
 and sent his old companions in arms dumbfouudered 
 from the room by monastic thunders. Then the plain 
 common lawyers stood aghast to see lands and tenements 
 carried 08 in the very teeth of acts of parliament, and 
 decisions of the King's Bench by the neat tricks of some 
 ecclesiastic, whose doctrine of uses set Glanvil and the 
 " Mirror" at naught. As long as war was the trade of the 
 great, and tilling the soil the trade of the low, the church- 
 men continued first in their monasteries, and afterwards in 
 their Universities, to reproduce what had been done over 
 and over again, to transcribe and criticise a few ancient 
 authors, especially Aristotle, and to bring their intellects, 
 sharpened thus to the last degree of subtlety, to bear upon 
 the most important relations of daily life and the civil 
 government. 
 
 And barren as these studies may appear of all true 
 knowledge, mere gymnastics of the intellect, which could 
 have found more normal and honourable exercise else- 
 where ; yet they had the softening influence that all study 
 will have in all time ; and when practised in a loving spirit 
 and a real faith, though they failed to make a truly learned 
 character, might give a truly lovely one. The great ob- 
 server of human nature in the fourteenth century has 
 given us a picture of the University man of his time so
 
 On the Cam. 29 
 
 captivating, that I must relieve my halting prose with 
 Chaucers's sweet verse : 
 
 " A clerk thcr was of Oxenforcle also, 
 That unto logike hackle long ago ; 
 As lene was his hors as is a rake, 
 And he was not right fat, I undertake; 
 But looked hoi we, and thereto soberly. 
 Ful thredbare was his overest courtepy, 
 For he had geten him yet no benefice, 
 He was nought worldly to have an office. 
 For him was lever han at his beddes bed 
 A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red 
 Of Aristote and his philosophic, 
 Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie. 
 But all be that he was a philosophre, 
 Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre, 
 But all that he might of his frendes hente, 
 On bokes and on learning he it spente, 
 And busily gan for the sonles praie 
 Of hem, that gave him wherwith to pcolaie. 
 Of studie toke he moste care and hede, 
 Not a word spake he more than was nede; 
 And that was said in forme and reverence, 
 And short and quike, and ful of high sentence; 
 Souning in moral virtue was his speche, 
 And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche." 
 
 Nor were these studies wholly confined to these barren 
 disquisitions. To develope the theology of the Roman 
 Catholic Church against doubters and heretics was one 
 great part of their business, and to the Universities the 
 Church always looked for her polemical defenders as well as 
 her temporal assistants. The proper study of Latin litera- 
 ture had never entirely disappeared, and the manuscripts, 
 which were copied in the monasteries, were studied at the 
 Universities ; and not only studied but imitated. The 
 opinion of the mediaeval scholars was, that you couldn't 
 have too much of a good thing, and that if the Latin poets 
 and prose writers were models of style and diction, they 
 ought to be repeated again and again.* True, they lost 
 
 * Admiration, especially in the early stages of civilization as of
 
 30 On the Cam. 
 
 the entire spirit of the ancient writers. Conceits of letters 
 and words, torturing Yirgil and Homer into anthems to 
 the Virgin Mary, and biographies of Constantine, were the 
 occupations of a scholarship that considered anything dif- 
 ferent from what they had already as impious, and with all 
 their logical subtlety, could not see the really true part of 
 the Caliph Omar's dilemma, that what was like their pre- 
 vious possessions was unnecessary. 
 
 But the first of the great literary movements of Europe 
 arose, just as the Universities of England had reached the 
 last stage of barren repetitions, to shake them, with the 
 rest of the world, and throw the atoms of their effete 
 scholarship into a new and vigorous life. The same 
 Chaucer who gives such a description of the Oxford Aris- 
 totelian takes the theme of most of his stories from Petrarch 
 and Boccaccio. In Italy the true study of Latin literature, 
 not merely to reproduce the words of Latin authors ad 
 infinitum, but to recast in new moulds what was truly 
 immortal in them, the burning rhetoric of Cicero, the 
 playful sarcasm of Horace, the celestial sweetness and 
 grandeur of Virgil, that there might come forth from the 
 crucible the new Tuscan literature, old at once and young, 
 was proceeding with giant steps. All over Europe, the 
 great Universities, while retaining on their formal public 
 occasions much of their old schoolmen's stiffness, which 
 they could not break up, still felt the new blood coursing 
 through their veins, and accepted the new era of Latin 
 literature so magnificently inaugurated across the Alps. 
 The legitimate study of the Latin classics, not as un- 
 changed and unchangeable wholes, but as susceptible of 
 divers interpretations, and liable to errors of transcribing, 
 
 life, naturally leads to imitation. The clever boy writes unwitting 
 parodies upon his favourite poet. We have often thought that it 
 must have been some insane admirer of monkish hexameters and 
 pentameters, who, failing to reach even that humble standard, in- 
 vented " Xonsense verses." ED.
 
 On the Cam. 31 
 
 assisted the general course of the human mind to the 
 criticism of the Scriptures. The Latin version was felt to 
 be inadequate and incorrect ; the superstition which had 
 accepted the Vulgate as inspired fell before the advancing 
 scholarship of the age. The thoughts of men began to 
 turn eastward, to those wonderful countries where Cicero 
 and Virgil had studied, and where, in other days, the 
 original languages of the Scriptures had been spoken. 
 And just as the flower was ready to burst, even in the 
 pent-up, stifling air of the mediaeval schools, the fall of 
 Constantinople and the invention of printing broke down 
 the last barriers, and let in the free air of heaven to play 
 around the wondrous plant that had been nursed and shut 
 up so long. The East filled the West with its men of 
 learning. The press began to circulate their works, and 
 among all the splendours of that wonderful age the dis- 
 covery of America, the voyages to India, the Reformation 
 of the Church, the downfall of the aristocracies there 
 burst into being no more glorious flower than the gorgeous 
 blossom of Greek literature. 
 
 Yes, my friends, it may be that I am misled by the 
 passion for ancient learning which literally from my very 
 earliest youth has held me with a chain I could not sever 
 if I would ; but I want Avords to picture adequately the 
 glory of that new land which the revival of Greek litera- 
 ture laid bare to the eyes of the fifteenth century. Vasco 
 de Gama had discovered a new way to the treasures of the 
 East, without the intervention of Persia and Venice ; but 
 Erasmus and Keuchlin showed the way to a more mystical 
 Indus, and a more resplendent Ganges, whose treasures 
 men had been content for centuries to receive, sifted 
 through meagre epitomists and nerveless commentators. 
 Columbus and Cabot had raised from the depths of the sea 
 the sunken Atalantis of Plato ; but More and Politian did 
 a greater work ; for they raised Plato himself, with all his 
 glorious brethren, from out the ooze of superstition and 
 barbarism, to inaugurate a new era of human intelligence.
 
 32 On the Cam. 
 
 without which America might as well have remained lost 
 for ever. To me the revival of Greek literature, after the 
 dreary subtleties of the Middle Ages, is like the fate of a 
 traveller who for many weary hours has wandered over 
 long wastes of barren sand, or lost his track among tangled 
 thickets and miry swamps, or hewn out a course with 
 infinite labour athwart the matted branches of some wood 
 of ancient error. And, as he bursts through the last 
 obstacle, lo, a new paradise opens on his view ! Stately 
 trunks of cedar and palm are grouped around him in 
 glades and vistas, they are the masters of Attic history 
 and science ; the soil beneath him is gemmed with a thou- 
 sand tender flowers of poetry; he hears the warblings 
 from birds of celestial plumage that dart to and fro among 
 the branches, they are the notes of Hesiod and So- 
 phocles, of Aristophanes and Theocritus ; rills of sparkling 
 water rush by him to the sea, their banks gleaming with 
 infinite blossoms and fragrant with countless odours, they 
 are the limpid floods of eloquence, the gushing torrents of 
 philosophy from Demosthenes and Plato. .As he stands 
 rapt in amazement, new sights and new sounds arise to 
 greet him, till, dazzled and giddy with excitement, he falls 
 powerless on the strand to which his steps have led him, 
 as he hears rattling from the heavens the resistless thun- 
 ders of JEschylus and Pindar. And there, tenderly, 
 softly, the waters rise higher and higher, gently embracing 
 and toying with their unresisting prey, till he floats far off 
 to sea, lulled to dreams of everlasting glory by the melo- 
 dious ripple that murmurs evermore along the Titanic 
 waves of Homer. 
 
 From the moment that Greek literature arose in Eng- 
 land, the English Universities claimed it for their own. 
 Erasmus, the greatest scholar north of the Alps, passed at 
 one or other of them the greater part of his scholastic life. 
 He was surrounded by an illustrious body of coadjutors, 
 such as Cheke, Ascham, and Aylmer. From that time 
 forward, Oxford, his early residence, and Cambridge, the
 
 On the Cam. 33 
 
 choice of his maturer years, have never wanted a line of 
 illustrious scholars. In the seventeenth century, the fame 
 of all Europe was eclipsed by the appearance at Cambridge 
 of Richard Bentley, the greatest Greek scholar of modern 
 Europe. A hundred years later, and that hundred years 
 full of brilliant names, Porson Richard II. startled the 
 whole learned world by his unexceptionable taste, his pro- 
 found erudition, and his fearless criticism. The lives and 
 genius of such men, if they come only once a century, are 
 enough to give a character to the place of their education 
 and residence. Cambridge is proud of her sons. She is 
 proud to have caught so soon the light of Greek literature, 
 as it threatened to be extinguished in the fall of Constan- 
 tinople, or languish in the midst of the dark ages, and she 
 still pursues the study of the classics in a spirit of love, of 
 philosophy, and of progress, which the names of Erasmus, 
 of Bentley, of Porson, of Paley, show from age to age is 
 not in vain. 
 
 But the learning of the mediaeval Universities, such as 
 it was, was not only literary but scientific. It was impos- 
 sible that the general enlightenment on all points of hu- 
 man knowledge, should not disclose some mysteries of 
 science also. Trinity College at Cambridge was founded 
 just three years after Copernicus demonstrated the true 
 solar system. The new philosophy of the heavens, de- 
 veloped by the great minds of the continent in the next 
 hundred years, and accompanied by a host of discoveries 
 in mathematical science, seized upon England early in the 
 seventeenth century. They found there a set of men fully 
 able to compare Eratosthenes and Archimedes with Kepler 
 and Galileo, Euclid and Apollonius with Regiomontanus 
 and Commandine. The Cambridge School of Mathematics 
 and Natural Philosophy soon became even more renowned 
 than its School of Classical Literature, the more so as 
 Oxford never manifested an equal interest in scientific 
 branches. Wallis and Barrow strained the old geometry 
 to its utmost perfection ; and the latter did more, for to 
 D
 
 34 On the Cam. 
 
 his fostering care does Cambridge owe her greatest son, 
 and the world her greatest natural philosopher ; for at the 
 very time when in Bentley Cambridge was vindicating her 
 claim to lead the classical studies of the world, she asserted 
 in trumpet tones her supremacy over the science of the 
 universe, in the person of Isaac Newton. 
 
 It is not for me here to enlarge upon the transcendent 
 abilities of this great son of Cambridge. But even you, 
 who hear allusions every day to the magnitude of his dis- 
 coveries, can have no conception of the idolatry with which 
 his name is revered at the University which trained him. 
 From that time forward, a system of mathematics and 
 natural philosophy, founded upon his discoveries, has been 
 the basis of all the studies pursued at Cambridge. She 
 has been hailed for a hundred and eighty years as the 
 school of mathematics for England, the great headquarters 
 of the true philosophy of the universe ; and to her gather, 
 from her proceed, all* in England who love to study those 
 mighty rules of form which bind together the stars and the 
 earth and all her tribes in one harmonious whole of perfect 
 proportion, declaring for ever the eternity in the Creator's 
 mind of order and beauty and law. 
 
 In these two great channels, the mathematical sciences 
 and the ancient literature, the studies of Cambridge Uni- 
 versity have run ; like the course of the river Cam itself, f 
 numerous mill-streams and branches diverge from them, 
 but still the main force of the fountain-head is bestowed 
 on them. It is there that' the learned men of Cam- 
 bridge chiefly embark the ventures of their intellect, 
 their craft sometimes riding smoothly side by side, some- 
 times jostling in eager controversy, sometimes stranded 
 on a barren shallow or swamped in a treacherous water- 
 
 * It must constantly be borne in mind that these are lectures, 
 not essays, though it must be confessed that this is a somewhat 
 strong assertion even for a rhetorical flourish. ED. 
 
 f We object, at least on the part of Pure Mathematics, to this 
 simile. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 35 
 
 hole, but still, let us believe, aiming at the same great 
 ocean of truth of which their mighty admiral Newton 
 loved to talk. And they are, good men, somewhat im- 
 patient if it is hinted that there are other streams as bright 
 and flowing, leading equally to the same sea, ay, or that 
 the rivers of classics or mathematics flow by other towers 
 than these of King's and Trinity, or that barks bearing 
 other names than Elmsley or Barrow can navigate their 
 water safely. They are too apt to brand as pirates all who 
 do not bear the four lions surrounding the volume at their 
 mast-head. But bear with them, my friends ; they have 
 achieved, in the interpretation of the ancient writers, and 
 the tracing of the world's harmonies, results of which any 
 body of men might be proud, they have soothed an hun- 
 dred aching brows,* and poured light on a thousand dim 
 eyes, and while the world shall stand, the reverent students 
 of ancient wisdom and of modern science shall delight to 
 turn their pious steps to the ancient halls where so many 
 great and good have laboured so faithfully, and drink from 
 the fountain of the kind mother, who bears for her motto 
 the unfailing promise, " Hence cometh light and the holy 
 draughts."! 
 
 I 'have said that classical studies and mathematics are 
 not exclusively the pursuits which attract the learned to 
 Cambridge. The various branches of natural science, 
 whether organic or inorganic, are pursued with some 
 vigour ; there are always some votaries of them, scattered 
 among the scholars and geometers, of great proficiency. 
 The study of medicine has numerous professors, and liberal 
 foundations for its pursuit, although the great metropolis, 
 
 * It is delightful to learn that there are students who experi- 
 ence such pleasing effects in the lecture and pupil rooms of Cam- 
 bridge, and we hope that no American student who may be in- 
 duced by his countryman's brilliant oratory to come over and submit 
 himself to the ordeal, will find it necessary, on the contrary, to have 
 recourse to wet towels round the head, and spectacles. ED. 
 
 t " Hinc lucem et pocula sacra."
 
 36 On the Cam. 
 
 with its world-renowned practitioners and crowded hospi- 
 tals, must always present a more favourable field for acquir- 
 ing the healing art. A much more important branch of 
 study at Cambridge is metaphysical and ethical science, 
 pursued chiefly on the basis of Greek philosophy, but still 
 by the light of some of the best thinkers of modern times, 
 of whom no small proportion have come from Cambridge. 
 In connection with this, the study of ancient and modern 
 history, and of constitutional law, has never wholly lan- 
 guished, and of late has received much greater attention. 
 All those branches naturally derive great help from the 
 magnificent library of the University, one of the finest in 
 the world, and entitled, in common with two or three others 
 in Great Britain, to a copy of every printed book published 
 in Her Majesty's dominions. This privilege, which, if the 
 library strictly availed itself of it, would soon become like 
 the gift of an elephant, is chiefly exercised in procuring 
 all the new novels, at the instance of the professors' wives 
 and other ladies connected with the University.* 
 
 All these miscellaneous branches have received much 
 stimulus in the last few years. They are, however, still 
 very subordinate to the old favourites. But there are two 
 courses of study pursued at Cambridge, one entirely ex- 
 traneous to the general course, the other knit in with it, 
 which deserve a peculiar and separate mention. The first 
 is the study of the civil law, the second of theology. I 
 propose to take up a separate lecture with the whole sub- 
 ject of theological studies at Cambridge, and the connec- 
 tion of the University with the Church of England. Suffice 
 it now to say, that such was the hold which the ecclesi- 
 
 * This assertion must be taken cum grano salis. An out of the 
 way room is set apart for works of fiction, which are accumulatec 
 perhaps too indiscriminately ; but works of more intrinsic value ai 
 lasting interest are applied for with greater regularity and sooner 
 after publication than the novels, which are often not supplied unti 
 the demand for them at the lending libraries has well nigh passe 
 away. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 37 
 
 astics obtained over learning in the Middle Ages, that the 
 study of divinity in all its branches was inwrought into the 
 very marrow and life of the English Universities. Per- 
 haps it has clung more tenaciously to Oxford than to 
 Cambridge ; but of this I am by no means certain. At 
 all events, if Cambridge were to adopt a motto from Har- 
 vard, she would at once cast aside the fictitious one, " Veri- 
 tas," for the actual one, " Christo et Ecclesice," with a 
 special preference for the " Ecclesice" 
 
 The study of the civil law was for a long time a favour- 
 ite one among the ecclesiastics of England. I need not 
 enter into the causes of this, well known to all those who 
 are interested in the history either of the mediaeval Church 
 or the laws of England. The ecclesiastical courts in Lon- 
 don adopted its rules in their decisions almost universally; 
 and, in order that there might be a constant supply of its 
 professors, the study of it was greatly encouraged at the 
 Universities, where, indeed, the Doctorate of the Civil and 
 Canon Laws was to a layman the most honourable title he 
 could obtain. All parts of both Universities encouraged 
 this study. But at Cambridge, Bishop Bateman's college, 
 bearing the name of Trinity Hall, and interesting to all 
 American readers of English books as the academic home 
 of Sir E. L. Bulwer, was wholly devoted to the study of 
 civil law, pursued entirely apart from all other University 
 studies, and considerably despised by the proficients in 
 them. As, however, the career of an advocate at Doctors 
 Commons, the abode of civil law in London, is very pro- 
 fitable, the students of Trinity Hall pursued their way, 
 entirely incurious of the small gains and still smaller hon- 
 ours attached to residence in Bishop Bateman's halls and 
 the pursuit of civil law. 
 
 I have thus gone through the catalogue of exceptional 
 studies, apart from the ancient languages and mathe- 
 matics, whose votaries gather, to some degree, in the 
 ancient halls by the no-means pellucid Cam. They make 
 a formidable list; but they are exceptions for all that.
 
 38 On the Cam. 
 
 Apart from that I last named of civil law, and that has 
 been of late altered, very few avail themselves of the 
 opportunity to study even these exceptional branches with- 
 out distinction previously obtained in classics or mathe- 
 matics. And thus I am brought to the second great 
 object with which all the wealth and learning and energy 
 of six hundred years has been gathered at Cambridge, 
 the training of young men in the liberal arts. The Eng- 
 lish Universities, as the name imports to an American ear, 
 are not alone the home of learned men, who, as it were, 
 have already attained, they are the training-schools for 
 life : first, of those who would be learned, and, second, 
 nor this unimportant, of those who have not the remotest 
 intention of being learned in anything but the world's 
 ways. 
 
 In England, ever since the young were trained at all in 
 the liberal arts, they have been trained by ecclesiastics. 
 From the days when the old feudal baron kept a priest at 
 the castle to teach their letters to his feebler sons who 
 were unable to bear the weight of arms, to these modern 
 times, when a noble lady, to my' certain knowledge, 
 refused to send her son to Rugby because Dr. Temple, 
 the head-master, had written one of the " Essays and 
 Reviews," which she had not read, the education of the 
 youth of England has been, is, and, according to present 
 indications, will continue to be, in the vast majority of 
 cases, intrusted to the divines of the dominant religion. 
 The great lord, indeed, took his son to Cressy and Poitiers, 
 to win his spurs under Edward the Black Prince ; and in 
 the same age, the son of the Cheapside bowyer, who had 
 equipped that gallant army, slept beneath his father's 
 counter to learn the art of manufacture and traffic. And 
 these two pursuits, war for the son of the mighty, trade 
 and handiwork for the son of the lowly, divided England 
 for many centuries. But the passion for learning, that 
 had burned in King Alfred's breast, burned also in those 
 of his people. The first impulse for learning was to the
 
 On the Cam. 39 
 
 Church, that haven of dignity and honour, which, in 
 spite of Mr. Wopsle's lamentations, is thrown open, ay, 
 and with no narrow portal, to every man in England. The 
 baron's hall, and the merchant's board, in many cases the 
 mechanic's forge or the peasant's hut, sent their quota, 
 year after year, to the two great seats of learning, where 
 learned men, those who Tcnew themselves, were ever ready 
 to impart their knowledge, in order to enter that profes- 
 sion, which might, as in the case of Wolsey, rank the 
 butcher's sou above the proudest peers in the land, without 
 drawing steel from the sheath or gold from the purse. 
 
 The experience of this remarkable man shows what the 
 English Universities were in his time. The son of an 
 Ipswich butcher, he made his way to Magdalen College, 
 Oxford, at the age of twelve, and took his bachelor's 
 degree in due course, though in that extreme youth. 
 Such early proficiency has been seen in other countries 
 and in later years ; but it cannot have been the ordinary 
 age of academic training at that time, for the English 
 Universities were then all that public school and University 
 together are now. It is stated that in the Middle Ages 
 fifty thousand persons at once were carrying on their 
 studies at Oxford. This is inexplicable, unless the Uni- 
 versity was frequented by much younger persons than 
 1 now, and the ancient enactments prove the same. No 
 undergraduate was then allowed to wander in the streets 
 of Cambridge without the companionship of a Master of 
 Arts, a rule which Freshmen at Harvard are taught still 
 applies to the last horse-car from Boston at night ; and 
 the highest penalties were fulmined against any pupil who 
 should presume to play marbles on the steps of the Uni- 
 versity buildings. Down to a still later period, a yet 
 darker tradition preserves that corporal punishment was 
 inflicted at Cambridge by the hands of the authorities, and 
 on no less a person than the poet Milton. Certainly, the 
 laws of Harvard, modelled by the Puritans on the existing 
 English colleges, contained directions for its exercise by
 
 40 On the Cam. 
 
 the President. The foundation of many large public 
 schools in the middle of the fifteenth century raised the 
 Universities, as far as their younger members went, to a 
 character something above mere academies. At the same 
 time other professions besides those of arms and the church 
 began to assert themselves as liberal. The Inns of Court 
 awarded special privileges for the study of the law to those 
 who had been apprentices in the two great guilds of learn- 
 ing. The great revival of letters, which I attempted to 
 describe, created in the minds of all people a desire for 
 some cultivation above and beyond the mere study of the 
 particular calling which was to occupy a man's life. The 
 new philosophy, introduced by Bacon, himself a Cambridge 
 man, was every day adding to the brilliancy of its disco- 
 veries, and felt to be a mighty engine for training the 
 mind ; and all these causes attracted to the University, 
 every year, greater and greater crowds of young men, past 
 the age of boyhood, to pursue the studies which the reverend 
 priests there gathered offered to them. For gradually, as 
 years went on, there was shaping itself a great system of 
 instruction, partly founded on monastic or even heathen 
 traditions, partly on recent discoveries, which by the time 
 of Newton and Bentley, if not a hundred years earlier, 
 commanded the universal respect of the people of England 
 as the selection, out of all the world knew of what was 
 best fitted to render the minds of the young broad enough 
 and yet hard enough to grapple, to the best possible 
 advantage, with the great problem of life and their own 
 special destinies. This system of English University edu- 
 cation, intended for those who wish to learn, and sur- 
 rounded by a hundred glittering prizes to stimulate such 
 a wish, has, in its general fundamental character, re- 
 mained unchanged for at least two hundred and fifty 
 years. I must endeavour to give you an idea of it, in its 
 full bearing: on the youno; men with whom for three years 
 
 t/ O v 
 
 and a half I have been intimately associated, and yet I 
 almost despair of doing so to our mutual satisfaction.
 
 On the Cam. 41 
 
 And, first, of the branches of learning studied by the 
 young men at Cambridge. Plato placed over the door of 
 his school, " No one untaught in geometry can enter." 
 Cambridge might put over hers, " No one untaught in 
 geometry can go through." For the best part of two 
 hundred years, the basis of all the Cambridge education, 
 the curriculum whereby the aspirants for University hon- 
 ours kicked up Olympic dust, was Euclid's Elements of 
 Geometry ; whereon was raised the superstructure of the 
 Newtonian mathematics. Dear, indeed, to a Cambridge 
 man is Euclid. His faith in it is truly sublime. It is to 
 him not an author, but a system of demonstration, a sci- 
 ence, a philosophy. There may have been an old Greek 
 EAE/3)}$, what of him ? He is a Greek, like the rest ; 
 and, as he didn't write first-rate Greek, why, " Non ra- 
 gioniam di lui, ma guarda e ^jss." But Euclid, 
 Nature's laws are built on it. The fundamental propo- 
 sitions of geometry never have been, never could be, bet- 
 ter put than by the old sage of two hundred and fifty 
 years before Christ, of whom so many editors make such 
 a controversial medley. A Cambridge man doesn't know 
 why a certain science is called Euclid, any more than 
 why another is called Algebra ; one name may be Greek, 
 another Arabic, and both may be the same word as 
 Gibberish. It is not his concern. When I entered Cam- 
 bridge, I was given, in a formal preliminary examination, 
 a proposition of geometry, which can be demonstrated in 
 three or four ways, all coming to the same point. I 
 happened to select a way not given in Euclid. My ex- 
 aminer not a great light in mathematics, though a fine 
 scholar and an admirable man looked at my work for 
 some time. " Well," said he at length, " I'm satisfied 
 with your demonstration. But you must get up Euclid, 
 you must get up Euclid." When Dr. Whewell, who under- 
 stands the whole history of mathematics perfectly, brought 
 out a new work on Mechanics, he called it the Mechanical 
 Euclid, because the propositions were discussed by ge-
 
 42 On the Cam. 
 
 ometry ; thus showing plainly that he regarded Euclid as 
 the name, not of a man, but a science. From the dark 
 realm of this mystic enchanter, which all must enter, at 
 Cambridge, sooner or later, there was, till forty years ago, 
 but one steep and rugged pathway hewn out for obtaining 
 an honourable exit, namely, the Newtonian system of 
 mathematics. It was relieved by no physical studies, 
 except astronomy, through the medium of very superior 
 instruments ; and by no linguistic studies, except that all 
 public examinations, essays, theses, &c, were conducted 
 in villanous Latin. For by a strange relic of the logical 
 and disputatory studies of the Middle Ages, the candidates 
 for University honours maintained in public some mathe- 
 matical thesis, about which they disputed in Latin, never, 
 as it may be supposed, of the best. To keep up the illu- 
 sion of the monkish time, and the seven liberal arts, a little 
 metaphysics and a good deal of theology was thrown in at 
 the time of the examinations ; but the real business of the 
 " schools" at Cambridge was mathematics. The disput- 
 ing, however, was so important a part of the performances 
 that the first division of those to whom were awarded 
 honours were called by distinction, the wranglers; and the 
 head man the proud recipient of all the glory which at 
 the end of a four years' course the ancient University show- 
 ered on the son she possessed most distinguished in her 
 favourite studies was called the senior wrangler. In 
 process of time, the disputations and Latin were all done 
 away with. An examination from printed papers was made 
 the test. Yet, still, every year, at the end of the arduous 
 eight days' trial, the undergraduate who takes his bache- 
 lor's degree in virtue of passing the best examination in 
 mathematics, is called the senior wrangler; and attains 
 the proudest position that Cambridge has to bestow. 
 
 And, certainly though unattractive to many, there might 
 be devised many a worse training for a young man than a 
 thorough course of mathematical study. There is a com- 
 mon belief that Cambridge scholarship owes much of its
 
 On the Cam. 43 
 
 accuracy to its mathematics. This I do not believe. 
 Doubtless the error has sprung from the fact that arith- 
 metic the form iu which mathematics generally presents 
 itself to the public is all accuracy, and nothing else. 
 But the study of the great relations of form as developed 
 by Euclid and Newton calls for very different mental 
 powers. Breadth of reasoning, readiness to generalize, 
 great perception of analogy in forms and formulae appa- 
 rently the 1 most dissimilar, quickness in transforming one 
 set of ideas to another, a keen perception of order and 
 beauty, and, above all, inventive power of the highest 
 kind, these are the qualities required and developed by 
 the Cambridge mathematics. Accuracy is required, but 
 it is accuracy to establish confidence in past work, that the 
 next step may be taken in perfect faith, for more than 
 any other pursuit does mathematics require faith, implicit 
 faith, and English mathematics most of all. Englishmen 
 hate going back to first principles, and mathematics allows 
 them to accept a few axiomatic statements laid down by 
 their two gods, Euclid and Newton, and then go on and on, 
 very seldom reverting to them. This system of mathe- 
 matics developed in England, is exceedingly different from 
 that either of the Germans or the French, and though at 
 different times it has borrowed much from both these coun- 
 tries, it has redistilled it through its own alembic, till it is 
 all English of the English. This was the study in which, 
 for two hundred years, all, and now more than half, of the 
 Cambridge candidates for honours exercise themselves. 
 
 But here comes in the distinction of University and 
 College to which I have already called your attention. 
 While for two hundred years the University of Cambridge 
 awarded its honours wholly for mathematical proficiency, 
 the separate colleges, in many cases, gave theirs for other 
 studies. Trinity College, in particular, albeit the college 
 of Newton and Barrow, was early distinguished for its 
 study of classical, especially Greek, literature. The great 
 classical scholar, Bentley, to whom allusion has been made,
 
 44 On the Cam. 
 
 was a member of St. John's College, famous for its devo- 
 tion to mathematics. He was appointed by the Crown to 
 be master of Trinity College ; and it is, perhaps, to his 
 headship that we are to refer the great estimation in which 
 classical studies have always been held in the college of 
 his adoption. Be that as it may, the taste for classical 
 studies kept such firm hold on the Cambridge mind, and 
 produced such splendid scholars, that in the year 1824, a 
 new final University examination for honours was estab- 
 lished, for proficiency in the ancient languages. Origi- 
 nally, and for nearly thirty years, competitors for these 
 classical honours were obliged to take a certain stand in 
 the mathematical department, before they could even pre- 
 sent themselves in classics, but that restriction is entirely 
 removed, and proficiency in the Latin and Greek languages 
 is now tested by as searching an examination, and rewarded 
 by similar honours to the Mathematics. The highest on 
 the list is called the Senior Classic. 
 
 Here, then, is the second great branch of study to which 
 the attention of young men is called at Cambridge. Ori- 
 ginally ignored by the University, subsequently rewarded 
 by a few prizes, then raised to an equality in the examina- 
 tions, there has always flourished in the colleges at Cam- 
 bridge, from the time of Erasmus and Cheke, the study of 
 the languages of Greece and Rome as an appropriate 
 training for young men. 
 
 I need not, my friends, enter into an apology here for 
 these chosen studies of my University. I know very well 
 that there are those at this day, and particularly in this 
 country, who despise, or affect to despise, the study of 
 Latin and Greek as antediluvian, unpractical, useless. 
 How sincere their objections are may be shown from their 
 readiness to interlard their so-called essays and reviews 
 with a flood of badly-quoted and inappropriate Latin and 
 Greek. But I challenge all such, when they have ex- 
 hausted the last insult on languages they cannot read, 
 and studies they never pursued, when they have made
 
 On the Cam. 45 
 
 the last misrepresentation, ignored the last issue, begged 
 the last question, when the last bull has fulmined from 
 the Vatican of Progress and Utilitarianism, to the full 
 as bat-eyed and bigoted as the Vatican of Conserva- 
 tism, 
 
 " When the satirist has at last, 
 Strutting and vapouring in un empty school, 
 Spent all his force, and made no proselyte," 
 
 I challenge them to find any effective substitute, in a sys- 
 tem of education, out of all their vaunted practical pursuits, 
 for the poor, threadbare, Old World Latin and Greek. I 
 know time may be wasted on them, and I know very few 
 things on which it may not be wasted ; I know their pro- 
 fessors become sometimes insensible to all other pursuits, 
 and I have yet to learn that men of one idea are found only 
 among classical scholars. But I believe that classical 
 studies are still the best mental training for the young in 
 spite of the errors of which their professors may have been 
 guilty. And first, I believe them to be so, because they 
 teach us the actual life of two great peoples, the most bril- 
 liant, the most powerful, the most famous that the world 
 has yet seen. They teach us, from the lips of the actors 
 and eyewitnesses themselves, the early history of liberty, 
 the establishment of free governments, their struggle with 
 despotisms and aristocracies, their downfall, and if Gre- 
 cian literature taught notliing else, Americans and Eng- 
 lishmen might study it all their lives to good purpose, 
 the downfall of the free republics of Greece for want of a 
 federative union, the mysteries of early natural philoso- 
 phers, the rise of early moral philosophy, the gradual 
 development of the fine arts, painting, architecture, ora- 
 tory, poetry, the transactions of the most quick-witted 
 and acute merchants, lawyers, and politicians the world 
 has ever seen, the successive expansion of the art of 
 war, the conquests of the barbarians, the westward 
 transfer of civilization, the magnificent, the portentous 
 growth of Rome, the contest of military and commercial
 
 46 On the Cam. 
 
 states, the establishment of a system of jurisprudence and 
 provincial rule, whose hold on the world is far from extinct 
 at the present day, the vicissitudes of democracy, oli- 
 garchy, and despotism, the substitution of external for 
 moral graces in a great people, the gradual decline of 
 the Old World before the new nationalities, the gradual 
 paling of ancient splendours in the glory of the new dis- 
 pensation. And all these inestimable lessons, that must 
 be learnt, sooner or later, by nations as well as men, all 
 these are taught, not merely in dry catalogues of chro- 
 nicles, but in ten thousand ways, by historians, by gene- 
 rals, by statesmen, by orators, by savans, by artists, by 
 letter-writers, by bards, clothed in a hundred mantles of 
 rhetoric, crowned with a thousand flowers of poetry, and all 
 made living, burning truth to us by the story of the lives 
 and deaths of countless brave men and noble women who 
 toiled and suffered, and prevailed through it all. And 
 then, as if all these treasures of learning and beauty were 
 not an inestimable fund for research, the casket in which 
 they are enshrined is, I believe, indeed worthy to be a 
 primary object of study. Do we, year after year, strain 
 our Yankee throats to catch from some ex-barber or 
 sausage-maker the exact twist of the French or German 
 , and shall we neglect the two finest languages the world 
 ever spoke, nervous, flexible, melodious, admitting of 
 every expression of humour or passion beyond any tongue 
 now spoken on earth, the root, too, of half the languages 
 of modern Europe, the key whereby the mysteries of mo- 
 dern tongues are unlocked as by " Open Sesame ?" Can 
 the world present a study better calculated to strengthen 
 the memory, the accuracy, the taste, the observation, the 
 forethought, the comparison of the human mind than in 
 tracing out the intricacies of language, in comparing the 
 idioms of ancient and modern tongues, in transferring the 
 masterpieces of one language into the expressions of the 
 other? Can the wit of the young find a nobler scope than 
 the field of two great literatures, confessedly the most
 
 On the Cam. 47 
 
 complete, the most varied, the most suggestive, the most 
 comprehensive the world has seen ? Can there be a better 
 practice for the lawyer, the statesman, the divine, the his- 
 torian, the poet, than analyzing the most unexceptional 
 models of style ever written ? Where should the embryo 
 general turn but to Csesar and Xenophon, the lawyer and 
 orator but to ^Eschines and Demosthenes, the satirist but 
 to Juvenal and Aristophanes? Where can the divine 
 find, apart from the Scriptures, holier lessons of truth and 
 goodness than in Plato ? Where can the warm-hearted 
 friend, the keen observer of human nature, revel with 
 greater luxury than in Cicero and Pliny ? Where can 
 the lover of nature find sweeter pictures, the patriot warm 
 to nobler aspirations, the moralist gaze on sublimer cha- 
 racters than in the matchless strains of Homer and Virgil?* 
 Yes, my friends, I am not afraid before you to vindi- 
 cate my favourite pursuits, I am not afraid to extol the 
 value of classical studies for the training of the young. 
 We need not apologize for their pursuit at Cambridge. 
 We defend, we approve, we applaud her faithful and suc- 
 cessful exertions to keep alive the lamp of classic fire. I 
 shall have occasion to show you that her devotion to them 
 is not bigoted, exclusive, or undiscerning ; I will close to- 
 night by recalling to you the panegyric which the great 
 son of Cambridge has hestowed on the home of Greek 
 literature, and which by a thousand services Cambridge 
 merits to have transferred to her, with almost equal 
 honour. 
 
 * We think that many an English reader of this magnificent 
 peroration, and how much it loses by being read, not heard, we 
 know who have listened to Mr. Everett's impassioned periods, 
 spoken by an American orator to an American audience, and pub- 
 lished for American perusal, will be surprised. What ! the Man- 
 chester school then only partially reflects American feelings and 
 sentiments? Our cousins are not all vulgar superficial utilitarians? 
 The worship of the almighty dollar is not the only religion on the 
 other side of tho Atlantic ? ED.
 
 48 On the Cam. 
 
 " All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice 
 and power, in every country, and in every age, have been 
 the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds 
 have made a stand against violence and fraud in the cause 
 of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the 
 midst of them ; inspiring, encouraging, consoling : by the 
 lonely lamp of Erasmus ; on the restless bed of Pascal ; 
 on the tribune of Mirabeau ; in the cell of Galileo ; on the 
 scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence 
 upon private happiness? who shall say how many thou- 
 sands have been made wiser, happier, better, by those 
 pursuits in which she taught mankind to engage ? to how 
 many the studies which took their rise from her have been 
 wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, 
 society in solitude ? Her power is indeed manifested at 
 the bar, in the senate, on the field of battle, in the schools 
 of philosophy, but these are not her glory. Wherever 
 literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain; wherever it 
 brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and 
 tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, 
 there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influ- 
 ence of Athens."* 
 
 * Macaulay, " Essay on Mitford's Greece."
 
 III. 
 
 METHODS OF INSTRUCTION AND STUDY. 
 
 Competitive Examinations. The final one described. University 
 and College Lectures, College and Private Tutors. Vindi- 
 cation of the Competitive System, and of the Pursuit of Col- 
 lege Studies Generally. " The Wanderers." 
 
 N my last lecture I brought before your no- 
 tice the two great objects which have for 
 six hundred years been pursued at the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge. First, to furnish a 
 home where learned men might congregate 
 to pursue their studies, especially those which have for a 
 long time been peculiarly honoured in England, mathe- 
 matical science and classical literature. Secondly, I called 
 your attention to the fact that this great guild of scholars 
 had stood forth as a training-school for young men, that 
 the people of England had found the studies pursued there 
 a useful and elegant field wherein young men might ex- 
 tend and sharpen their mental powers and fit themselves 
 for their special professions, and for the general calls of 
 life. Unquestionably the original attraction of University 
 studies to youthful students was that they were what they 
 set up to be, the whole range of human knowledge outside 
 of the pursuits of war, commerce, and the mechanic arts. 
 Now, they can no longer arrogate for themselves so high 
 a distinction, but as I endeavoured to point out in my last 
 lecture, we still find, after running through all branches of 
 human knowledge, that memory, accuracy, correctness of
 
 50 On the Cam. 
 
 taste, acuteness in tracing analogies and differences, are 
 more completely given by the study of classical literature, 
 than any other subject, while concise and correct reason- 
 ing, aptness in applying discoveries, the perception of 
 natural order and harmony, are most thoroughly inculcated 
 by an extensive and close acquaintance with mathematics. 
 In exploring the vast treasures of classical literature, as in 
 a book already finished and placed on its appropriate shelf, 
 the student is instructed as to the channels in which the 
 infinitely flowing minds of the Greeks and Eomans actually 
 chose to run. It is the whole philosophy of established 
 form, of the actual, of the past, of history. In the mathe- 
 matics, on the other hand, he observes how a very few 
 principles of thought, which are forced upon the acceptance 
 of every mind by their simplicity and truth, may give rise 
 to a thousand various, and to the untaught, inconsistent 
 results, to which every day is adding anew, and to which 
 there is apparently no end. It is the philosophy of change 
 of the ideal, of the future, of progress. The first opens to 
 us the pleasures, objects, and advantages of literature, of 
 taste, of rhetoric, the second unlocks, as with a master- 
 key, the whole range of the useful arts, of science, and of 
 logic. 
 
 And do not mistake me. In thus extending the range 
 of classical and mathematical studies beyond what the two 
 expressions commonly indicate to us, I am going no farther 
 than is really contemplated by their eager votaries at Cam- 
 bridge. Studied as they are there, in a constant course of 
 three years and a-half, and with the full intention after 
 youthful emulation has been rewarded, and the announce- 
 ment of well-earned honours proclaims that the taskmaster 
 is dismissed, of continuing within the same honoured Avails, 
 to plunge yet deeper into the sacred mysteries ;* they are 
 
 * We suspect such an intention is somewhat rare; shallower 
 " plunges " taken hand in hand with less experienced divers, are 
 what the majority of wranglers who intend to remain at college 
 propose to themselves. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 51 
 
 pursued with a zeal, a thoroughness, a devotion, which 
 does permit their worshippers to expect the highest attain- 
 ments, and makes the picture I have drawn of their effect 
 on the human mind something more than rhetorical rhap- 
 sody. Add to this that they have been the favourite studies 
 for three hundred years, a length of time in which any 
 system, however doubtful its first principles, must have 
 fallen into a practical shape, and you will, I think, be 
 ready to allow that such interesting studies, so long ho- 
 noured, and so faithfully carried out, must form a useful 
 system for training young men. So much for the theory. 
 In a future pai't of this course I shall invite your attention 
 to some of the practical results, in the lives of Cambridge 
 graduates. 
 
 I propose in the present lecture to call your attention to the 
 methods of study and instruction adopted in the University 
 and the separate colleges. In this point Cambridge has long 
 been remarkable, differing from all other institutions of 
 learning. Some few other colleges have partially adopted 
 her system, but none in the entire thoroughness and per- 
 fection of its details. Yet such are its advantages, the 
 facility of its practical operation, the general correctness of 
 its results, that, although beyond a doubt the Universities 
 are of less importance in England than they once were, 
 yet this Cambridge system has taken a hold on the consent 
 of the English people which seems unshakable, and is em- 
 ployed for a thousand purposes and among a thousand 
 bodies, the most alien apparently to the University in spirit. 
 
 The system in brief is, to subject all candidates for 
 all University and college distinctions to the test of com- 
 petitive written examinations, held at distinct and not fre- 
 quent occasions, and to allow the preparation and study 
 for these examinations to be held whenever and in whatever 
 way each individual thinks proper. 
 
 Hence we have no class system, no daily recitations, no 
 course of study, no list of rank, no lessons, no text-books, 
 none of the paraphernalia of an American college, at least
 
 52 On the Cam. 
 
 as officially recognized. Some of these things exist, but 
 they exist as tradition, or choice, or convenience have dic- 
 tated them, they are not part of the regular machinery 
 of the University. The theory in the minds of the autho- 
 rities, as far as they would consent to admit any theory, is 
 this : " Let us propose to examine our undergraduates 
 in certain branches, at certain intervals. Let us assemble 
 in Cambridge all manner of instructors, lecturers, and 
 other helps to prepare for these examinations, and then let 
 us leave our young men to select for themselves. If they 
 really wish to study, if they really seek to come up to the 
 standard of the examinations, each will select his own 
 course and his own instructor better than we can select for 
 him. If they do not wish to study, if they care nothing 
 about competition, if they can bring no heart to their 
 work, it will be entirely useless on our part to attempt by 
 any compulsion or prescription to make them work under 
 any course or instructors we may choose." I do not pro- 
 pose now to investigate the logic of this theory, the whole 
 consideration of that will come more appropriately here- 
 after ; let us now take the fact, and see how this theory is 
 practically worked out. 
 
 A youth then comes up, as the phrase is, to Cambridge 
 University, to compete for its scholastic honours. He is 
 offered at the termination of three years and a-half, or 
 rather ten terms from the time of entrance, five examina- 
 tions, for either or all of which he can enter. All who 
 answer the questions there set, satisfactorily, are entitled 
 to receive the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The subjects 
 of the five examinations are : First, Mathematical Science. 
 Second, Classic Literature and Ancient History. Third, 
 Natural Science. Fourth, Moral Science. Fifth, Law. 
 But the last three, as you will have already understood, 
 are of recent introduction, of minor importance, and have 
 never thoroughly taken root at Cambridge. 
 
 The examinations in the two great subjects of classics 
 and mathematics being much the most important of all in
 
 On the Cam. 53 
 
 Cambridge, and being the goal of nearly all the aspirants 
 for distinction, a full description of what they actually are 
 will not be out of place. In all essential forms, the others 
 are but copies of them. The candidates are drawn from 
 all the colleges alike. They assemble, on a Tuesday 
 morning, at nine o'clock, soon after New Year's Day, in 
 front of the Senate-House. All are in their academic 
 dress of cap and gown. A few sympathizing friends who 
 have already passed the trial, a few expectant friends who 
 have not, see them to the door. A list of their names has 
 been previously suspended in all public places some time 
 before. The Senate-House is the building where all the 
 public exercises other than religious of the University 
 are held. Outside it is a sufficiently respectable Palladian 
 building ; inside, a mere mockery. It has a plaster ceil- 
 ing ornamented with very doubtful reliefs ; statues of 
 William Pitt and two or three Georges, and some solid, 
 substantial wood-work in the wainscoting and gallery. I 
 mention all these apparently trivial circumstances, because 
 the Senate-House is really a disgrace to Cambridge. On 
 one occasion, Mr. Gladstone was addressing a vast 
 audience there, and as he is a member of the sister Uni- 
 versity, he thought Oxford politeness required him to com- 
 pliment " the beautifully decorated building where we were 
 assembled ;" whereat Cambridge politeness was sorely put 
 to it to keep from laughing. Into this pen of learning 
 the candidates for mathematical honours pour, and seat 
 themselves at solid tables on solid benches, thinking of 
 very little in the Senate-House besides the floor ; which 
 is of stone, and very chilling to the feet in January.* As 
 
 * And yet we hear that in these degenerate days the Senate- 
 House is warmed with hot water; what would Mr. Everett have 
 said if he had gathered his experiences in our time, when all the 
 warmth we had we took in with us, when we had to contend with 
 paralysed fingers as well as deficient memories, and when Frost 
 and the Examiners were equally searching? His reminiscences of 
 the cold would not have been confined to the feet. ED.
 
 54 On the Cam. 
 
 the hands of the great University clock on the church out- 
 side are seen to approach nine, an examiner, or some Uni- 
 versity official, takes his station at the head of each of 
 eight lines of tables, with a pile of the printed examina- 
 tion papers, damp from the press. The instant the first 
 stroke is heard, a rapid race down the tables begins, a 
 paper being dropped at every man. Sometimes an ex- 
 perienced distributor will get through his line, and begin 
 in going up the next to meet some slower dignitary coming 
 down. These papers, and plenty of writing-paper, pens, 
 and ink, supplied gratuitously hear, O Harvard faculty ! 
 to all the examined, are all the means at the disposal of 
 the candidates. They contain, on this first day, questions 
 on the elements of mathematics, the divine Euclid, and 
 other easy geometrical subjects, all such as can be found 
 in approved treatises, or easily deducible therefrom. They 
 are set by four gentlemen, of whom two are called mode- 
 rators, because anciently it was their business to moderate 
 in the mathematical disputes of which the examination in 
 part consisted. They are chosen from the colleges in 
 rotation, from the graduates of most distinguished attain- 
 ments. 
 
 Over this paper of questions the candidates are allowed 
 three hours, but may go out as much sooner as they wish, 
 not of course to come in again ; for it is a maxim running 
 through the whole of Cambridge instruction, that a man 
 is not to be put to do more than he wants to. If his de- 
 clining to work on a paper subjects him to failure and 
 loss, that is his lookout. At twelve, then, they must stop. 
 At one, another three hours' paper. The next day, the 
 same, and the next. Then a pause of ten days, while the 
 work of the previous three, all on the easier departments 
 of mathematics, is looked over. All those who have passed 
 the minimum asked by the examinei'S, are now announced 
 as " having acquitted themselves so as to deserve mathe- 
 matical honours." The rest, O dreadful word, and thrice 
 dreadful fate, have their names published no more, and
 
 On the Cam. 55 
 
 are " plucked." The degree of Bachelor of Arts is not 
 for them as far as mathematics goes. With these three 
 days, the ambition of most stops ; it does require a good 
 deal of knowledge to pass them with distinction; a knowledge 
 of all the principles, and ten times the detail involved in the 
 mathematical course in the first two years at an American 
 college. On the tenth day after they end, begins the five 
 days' examination, on real tough mathematics, beginning 
 with the differential calculus, and going up to the highest 
 calculation of astronomy and optics. "Few are the stragglers, 
 following far," who stay in after the prescribed half hour in 
 the last few papers of these dreadful five days, three hours 
 morning and afternoon. O, many are the luncheons, 
 mighty the dinners consumed in these eight days. Science 
 must be fed. The most uncompromising appetites I ever 
 saw were among my most learned and successful friends in 
 England. 
 
 After the five days, everybody takes a rest. On the last 
 Friday in January, or thereabouts, the result of their ex- 
 amination is announced. Again the candidates assemble 
 in the Senate-House a few minutes before nine, or rather 
 their friends, for the candidates themselves don't like to 
 go much. A proctor appears in the gallery with a list. 
 Five hundred upturned faces below listen eagerly for his 
 first words. The clock strikes nine. " Senior Wrangler, 
 Homer of Trinity Hall." A tumultuous, furious, insane 
 shout bursts forth, caps fly up into the air, the dust rises 
 immeasurable, and it takes many minutes to restore the 
 order that greets the announcement of the greatest honour 
 the University can bestow for that year. " Second Wran- 
 gler, Leeke of Trinity." Another burst of cheering that 
 would be called terrific, had the other not preceded it. 
 " Third," and so on down through the Wranglers, or first 
 class. Now look out. The proctors in the gallery, each 
 armed with his file of printed lists, proceed to scatter them 
 to the multitude below. Talk of Italian beggars, beasts 
 at a menagerie ; why, the rush, the scuffle, the trampling,
 
 56 On the Cam. 
 
 the crushing of caps and cap-bearers in a shapeless mass, 
 the tearing of gowns, coats, and the very papers that come 
 slowly floating down, hardly ever to reach the floor, beats 
 any tumult I ever saw, except the contention for coppers 
 of the Irish beggars on the wharf at Queenstown, before 
 the tug-boat leaves for the Cunard steamer. At length 
 all are distributed, and the successful retire with the failing 
 to talk over the list of mathematical honours for a day. 
 
 Each competitor is marked by the examiners according 
 to the questions he has wholly or partially answered. His 
 marks being added together, his individual place is de- 
 termined according to the aggregate. Then lines are drawn, 
 so as to divide the whole number, generally about a hundred, 
 into three classes of about thirty-three or four each ; but 
 often the division is very unequal : for the preference is to 
 draw the class lines where there is a great gap between 
 the marks of successive individuals. The relics of the old 
 disputes are seen in the names of the classes ; the second 
 and third are called senior and junior optimes, because of old 
 when a candidate had ended his dispute the examiner said 
 to him, " optime disputasti" " very well fought, sir." 
 And those in the first class are called emphatically wrang- 
 lers, the head being called the senior. Observe, this whole 
 system, with its technicalities, is peculiar to Cambridge. In 
 Oxford, the examinations are on a different plan altogether. 
 Some Americans think they show their wisdom by talking 
 about persons who were senior wranglers at Oxford. This 
 is like the well-meaning, but ignorant people, who will 
 allude to a public day at Harvard, when half the parts are 
 taken by seniors, as the "Junior Exhibition." 
 
 In about three weeks from the announcement of the 
 mathematical honours, comes the examination for the classi- 
 cal. This lasts five days and a-half, and is conducted in 
 other respects precisely like the former. In the morning 
 papers of the first four days, the competitors have passages 
 given them out of the best English authors, prose and 
 verse, to translate into Latin and Greek prose and verse,
 
 On the Cam. 57 
 
 without any assistance but writing materials, at the rate 
 of say twenty-one lines of Byron to put into Greek tragic 
 verse in three hours. In the afternoons of the same days, 
 and the whole of the fifth, passages to translate from Latin 
 and Greek into English ; the last half day, questions in 
 history. The result is announced as before, and the head 
 man is called Senior Classic. 
 
 And that is all. I mean that all that a student does to 
 obtain University honours, to appear before the world as 
 standing in the list of those whom Cambridge pronounces 
 her faithful sous, is told, as far as the University is con- 
 cerned. In these two examinations, which are called by 
 the curious old name of Tripos, the student only knows 
 that, Socratically, he knows nothing about it ; that is, any 
 problem or principle may be set in mathematics from adding 
 two and two to calculating a planet's orbit : and any pas- 
 sage set for translation into or out of Latin or Greek, from 
 Homer to Quintilian, and from Sir John Mandeville to 
 Jean Ingelow. In fact, the taste of examiners does run 
 principally on the very oldest and very newest English 
 writers as suitable to turn into Latin and Greek. The 
 range of questions, then, is absolutely infinite and unpre- 
 scribed ; to be sure it has fallen into a traditionary rut, 
 but a pretty wide one. You see, therefore, how immense 
 must be the labour to prepare for them, or else how very 
 judiciously applied, in order that, it being manifestly im- 
 possible to study in three years, even when the former work 
 of school-life is added, all that is possible to be asked, the 
 competitors may select the probable questions, and those 
 which will in any case be useful. Think how immeasurably 
 superior a knowledge of this kind is to the sorry business 
 of getting twenty problems or one hundred lines as a lesson, 
 to say off one day and forget the next. It is manifest that 
 very careful and judicious instruction is required, that 
 students may know exactly what and how much to read out 
 of this vast range, that they may be prepared for the worst. 
 
 Who gives this instruction ? Not the University. Not
 
 58 On the Cam. 
 
 one word of instruction does the great body of all the 
 colleges offer, except some lectures, semi-occasionally, from 
 the professors of Greek and Mathematics. For the trials 
 proposed by her, training must not be sought from her. 
 Is it from the colleges, then, that this instruction is to be 
 obtained? Yes, to a certain extent. Each college, ac- 
 cording to its wealth, the number of its students, or what 
 generally is the great moving cause, the activity or lazi- 
 ness* of its authorities, has a provision for the instruction 
 of those residing within its walls. It has its own examina- 
 tions, generally once a year, or, as we should say, for the 
 members of each class ; and these are progressive, on 
 some specified easy ancient authors and the first branches 
 of Mathematics, the first year; more difficult the second 
 year ; and in the third, ranging as high as Aristotle and 
 the integral calculus. Each college adopts its own system 
 of classifying those who pass these examinations, which are, 
 I believe, in all cases compulsory, and awards prizes to 
 those who stand highest. But to get through, just to do 
 the minimum, is very easy, and a great many of the best 
 do nothing more ; saying that the preparation interferes 
 with their regular work. They generally comprehend 
 something more than just the three old standbys ; e. g. 
 moral philosophy, ancient history, and in particular very 
 great attention is paid at college examinations to the study 
 of the Greek Testament. To prepare for these special 
 examinations, of which the subjects are always announced 
 beforehand, there is a great system of College Lectures. 
 And in connection with the College Lectures and lecturers, 
 I beg to introduce to you that ubiquitous and very impor- 
 tant personage, the College Tutor. Under this name 
 pray do not conceive of a young man just out of college, 
 whose circumstances make it convenient for him to take a 
 share in college teaching. No ; the tutor is generally one 
 of the older graduates of the college, and always the best 
 
 * May we not add, "or proficiency?" ED.
 
 On the Cam. 59 
 
 man, the most important, the one whom of all others they 
 would pick out to represent themselves. He is almost 
 always a clergyman. To him, or them for in a very 
 large college there will be two, three, or even more is 
 intrusted the whole care of the undergraduates. As fast 
 as the young men enter college, they are told off to one or 
 the other of the tutors are said to be " on his side" 
 and under his control they remain to the end of their under- 
 graduate course. He has the assignment of rooms, the 
 charge of bills, the appointment and dismissal of lecturers 
 to teach, and of college servants to cheat. He administers 
 not the ordinary, but the extraordinary blowings-up.* 
 With the head of the college, a very awful being, who in 
 most colleges has the title of Master, the student has very 
 little to do ; all his real college affairs, petitions, remon- 
 strances, <fec. of every kind, going through the tutor. It 
 is evident, then, that where each tutor has some hundred 
 and fifty young men's individualities to look after, and a 
 principal share in the general operation of the college to 
 look after, he has not much time for instruction. Still, 
 each tutor generally contrives to give a course of lectures 
 every term, of which there are three in a year, and they 
 do find time to squeeze out a great deal of private in- 
 struction, in the most generous manner. Many a poor 
 young man would have failed entirely to prepare himself 
 for his great trials, on the success of which hinges his life's 
 support, but for the unfailing, liberal, fatherly attention of 
 his tutor, by his own instructions, and those he obtains for 
 him. Let me bear my testimony here to the admirable 
 
 * The very mildest of tutorial wiggings we ever knew was ad- 
 ministered to a friend who was a very good classic but a very bad 
 chapel-goer. The dean, after repeated and ineffectual remon- 
 strances, appealed to the tutor, who rather sympathized with his 
 favourite student of the year than with his co-authority ; however, 
 he sent for the delinquent, as in duty bound, chatted with him for 
 half an hour about his family, his prospects, and other matters, 
 and as he was leaving called after him " By-the-bye, Mr. B., the 
 dean wants you to keep chapels." ED.
 
 60 On the Cam. 
 
 manner in which these few score of men for there are not 
 more tutors in all the seventeen colleges manage the in- 
 terests of sixteen hundred undergraduates who scarcely know 
 to whom they are indebted for their countless advantages. 
 
 The tutor appoints assistants, whom he pays out of the 
 annual payments of the undergraduates, which all go 
 through his hands, to lecture for him. There are gene- 
 rally six or eight lectures delivered in a large college like 
 Trinity every day, mostly on the subjects of the college- 
 examinations at the end of the year, but some on other 
 branches of classical and mathematical study, applicable in 
 the last great trial. There are also lectures suited to the 
 students not candidates for these arduous honours, of whom 
 more hereafter. The members of the college are required, 
 as a matter of discipline, to attend some of these lectures, 
 but by no means to attend to them.* Once in a while, 
 when a very stirring lecturer conies along, such as the 
 present learned and witty bursar of Trinity College, every- 
 body wakes up and takes notes ; but in general, there is 
 much more grumbling about having to attend these lec- 
 tures, where you can learn a great deal, and need not 
 learn anything, than at our recitations, where you have to be 
 more or less up to the mark all the time. The lectures are 
 exceedingly learned, the lecturer doing pretty much what 
 tutor and student between them do in an American college. 
 
 But this instruction, elaborate as it is, does not suit the 
 best of the English students. It does not work in well to 
 their system. And that system is, that every one, on 
 entrance, sketches out for himself a general plan of what 
 
 * Strange expedients are sometimes bad recourse to for beguiling 
 tbe hour devoted to the lecture. On one occasion a watch handi- 
 cap was got up ; there were five entries, who all passed their 
 watches, together with one shilling each, to the starter and judge, 
 who set them all correctly by his own, and so started them fairly. 
 The winner, however, had taken the precaution of secretly slipping 
 the regulator as far as it would go to the fast side, a trick worthy 
 of the Turf. ED.
 
 On the Com. 61 
 
 he ought to do and can do, what examinations he will enter 
 for, what stand he will take, and then prepares himself in 
 his own way. And this he does by means of his private 
 tutor. 
 
 The nature and history, or, I might say, the natural 
 history of these private tutors is among the most curious 
 developments of Cambridge. They are not in the least 
 what the name imports to us, a private guardian, engaged 
 by the parents to superintend the whole course of a young 
 man's life, and require as well as arrange his studies. 
 No, even the richest nobleman very seldom brings such a 
 domestic animal to Cambridge with him. The only 
 instance, except that of the Prince of Wales, that I was 
 aware of, was the son of a rich foreign merchant. The 
 principal event recorded of his tuition was, that this 
 guardian feared his pupil's morals would be injured by 
 going to Xewmarket races, which are indeed a fruitful 
 source of temptation, being only sixteen miles from Cam- 
 bridge, and, to prevent any surreptitious visit, himself rode 
 to the races on his pupil's horse. The regular private 
 tutor is generally known, even by authorities, as a 
 "coach;" but neither under this name, however, or any 
 other, is he recognized in any official way. A student 
 may change his tutor ten times in his course, now coach- 
 ing, as we say, with this man, now with that ; he may fail 
 or succeed in a dozen examinations, owing to the good or 
 bad instruction he receives ; he may, above all, pay his 
 tutor many a ten-pound note, and yet no official recogni- 
 tion whatever is made of a class of men whose position is 
 certainly the most important and nearly the most lucrative 
 in the University. There is no injustice in all this ; it is 
 only a working out of the general principle of the institu- 
 tion, to find out, at stated seasons, in the most thorough 
 manner possible, what a young man knows, without seek- 
 ing to inquire how he knows it. 
 
 The private tutors are of all ages and positions in 
 scholarship. The most celebrated instructor in classics
 
 62 On the Cam. 
 
 now resident in Cambridge took the second honours of his 
 own year thirty years ago. The most renowned mathe- 
 matical coach, on the other hand, not more than ten years 
 ago. The first thing generally done by a young man who 
 has taken his own degree with distinction, is to look about 
 for pupils among the undergraduates of his own and other 
 colleges, for it is by no means necessary that a student 
 should confine himself to his own college for private 
 instruction. Almost all the tuition I received at Cam- 
 bridge was by members of St. John's College, being 
 myself resident at Trinity. Of course, the young in- 
 structor who has only just finished his own undergraduate 
 course, must put up with such pupils as he can get, and 
 they will not be very brilliant or advanced ones, but either 
 young men just entered, with their powers and intentions 
 hardly determined, or men far advanced in residence but 
 not in knowledge, who are determined by dint of constant 
 tuition to scrape through for one of the last places. As 
 he grows older in instruction, his pupils will improve. If 
 his efforts have been successful with the poor ones, he will 
 attract to himself the better ones, till he is sought out by 
 those who are now in their last year in college, and work- 
 ing for the highest places in the lists of rank. Such men 
 it is a pleasure rather than a task to instruct. Many a 
 tutor at Cambridge has felt his heart glow to think that 
 his beloved pupil will soon attain a place in these lists of 
 honours higher than was his own, and delights to point to 
 him in the course of a triumphant career at the bar, in the 
 pulpit, or the senate, as one of his boys. The competition 
 to obtain a place with a favourite coach is immense, appli- 
 cation often being made a year beforehand, and the special 
 pleading of the college tutor or some other distinguished 
 friend invoked to secure the place. 
 
 " What," you will say, " are these tutors so limited in 
 their numbers ?" Yes, indeed, when like the distin- 
 guished classical scholar I alluded to a little while ago, 
 they give an hour every other day to each pupil by him-
 
 On the Cam. 63 
 
 self. Ten hours' hard work a day has been thought 
 enough for mechanics and tradesmen, how much more 
 for the head work of classical instruction. So that to 
 have twenty pupils at once is what the hardiest instructors 
 must make their extreme limit. Those who are enticing 
 the youth of England over the gorgeous mosaic that paves 
 the sweet meanderings of the labyrinth of conic sections, 
 or fitting wings whereby youthful shoulders may be raised 
 to the salient points of the differential calculus, I mean 
 mathematical instructors, are beginning to take an in- 
 definite number of pupils, and collect them in large classes, 
 but still this is rather for competition than instruction ; 
 and you may be sure, that the better a student is, the 
 more strictly he takes his own way for study, and eschews 
 all idea of a course. 
 
 A few words here on the general line of study pursued 
 by ah 1 instructors for all pupils in the two great depart- 
 ments. It is, perhaps, not so much higher as is commonly 
 supposed than our own ; but it is very different. The 
 mathematical treatises are all based on the forms of Euclid 
 and Xewton. The course of mathematical study ranges 
 from simple arithmetic to the most difficult problems of 
 optics and astronomy. It is, however, put in a very con- 
 cise and conventional form, very different from the ex- 
 pansiveness of French mathematics ; and many who attain 
 extreme proficiency in it, have never paid any attention to 
 more than the most fundamental principles on coming to 
 Cambridge. The case of classical studies, of Latin and 
 Greek, is very different. The training in the Greek and 
 Latin languages acquired at the great English public 
 schools, like Eton, Harrow, and Rugby, is certainly very 
 much superior to any acquired at our colleges by the required 
 course of instruction. I do not think, however, that the 
 Latin and Greek literature, antiquities, and history, are 
 understood by many very good graduates of Cambridge 
 and Oxford any better than by the best from Harvard 
 or Yale ; and far less in bulk, though probably rather
 
 64 On the Cam. 
 
 better arranged, than the flood of collateral knowledge 
 acquired at the great seats of German erudition. The great 
 work, as I have indicated in my account of the examina- 
 tions, is to put Latin and Greek prose and verse into 
 accurate and idiomatic English ; for bad English will con- 
 demn a translation quite as soon as incorrect rendering. 
 There is none of that timidity which in all our schools and 
 colleges accepts a piece of dog-English, containing neither 
 sound, sense, nor idiom, under the name of a " literal 
 translation," and gives it a maximum mark. And again : 
 the second half of a classical scholar's work is not to put 
 into doubtful Latin or Greek prose a passage of English 
 already adapted from an ancient author, but to produce a 
 first-rate idiomatic version in prose or verse of the best 
 passages of the best English authors, Burke, Addison, 
 Shakespeare, Goldsmith. The high standard of excellence 
 herein attained is shown by such publications as Lord Lyt- 
 tleton's translation of Comus into the style of the Greek 
 tragedians, and the beautiful Yirgilian reproduction of 
 Keats's Hyperion by that most accomplished son of Cam- 
 bridge, the historian Merivale, whose admirable chronicle 
 of the Early Empire seems destined to become a standard 
 English classic, as the first portion of a solid causeway 
 which is needed to connect the adamantine structure of 
 the mighty Gibbon, and the graceful arches of the la- 
 mented Arnold. 
 
 It is evident, then, that the work of the private tutor is 
 merely supplementary and ancillary to that of the student 
 himself. The tutor sees his pupil generally for three hours 
 in the course of a week. The rest of the time devoted to 
 study, and this space amounts with a vast number to six, 
 with many to eight, and sometimes to ten hours a day, 
 the student is alone, acting indeed on the advice, and by 
 the direction of his tutor, but still pursuing his chosen 
 course by and for himself. For the great trials, where 
 nearly two hundred of the noblest youth of the world ap- 
 pear every year to grapple in an intellectual struggle to
 
 On the Cam. 65 
 
 which the physical efforts accompanying the fiendish bar- 
 barities of the prize-ring are as child's play, each one 
 has with fear and trembling sought to work out his own 
 destiny. 
 
 Here, then, ladies and gentlemen, you have the prin- 
 ciples of the Cambridge system of instruction, and, as far 
 as there is any, the Cambridge course of study, Compe- 
 tition and emulation in the final trials ; private study and 
 individual selection of work for the means. It is by the 
 combination of these two principles, to their fullest extent, 
 that Cambridge sustains the high standard of literary and 
 scientific excellence, the high reputation for judicious 
 training, and the honoured name of the mother of great 
 men, which she has borne so long throughout England 
 and the world. 
 
 And first of the competition. You will have seen by 
 my previous account, how thoroughly and deeply this en- 
 ters into the very soul of the Cambridge system. There 
 is no honour to be attained, no prize to be won, no position 
 to be secured, without a competitive examination, where 
 the work of each combatant has its value assigned by an 
 established standard, and his final place in accordance with 
 this scrutiny announced in the most public manner. From 
 the moment a boy enters college, a thousand eager eyes 
 are on him, a thousand channels of information are drained 
 to know what position he will take ; and long before he 
 has officially entered the University, it has been pretty 
 well settled in the minds of a great many, with what dis- 
 tinction he is to leave it. The comparative merits of all 
 the students, the probable results of all the examinations, 
 major and minor, form a never-failing subject of discussion 
 in all circles, and at all times. Whether Battie is to be 
 
 the next University scholar, whether "W or S 
 
 will stand first in classics, whether L has not stolen 
 
 a march over R , by a more judicious selection of a 
 
 mathematical coach, all these are questions which never 
 
 fail to enliven a weary walk, or a stupid dinner, long after 
 
 F
 
 66 On the Cam. 
 
 the boats, the cricket-field, the rifle-ground, the news- 
 papers, or the studies themselves have fallen flat. Pro- 
 spective success in competition secures a man notice among 
 his compeers and superiors, and actual success, besides the 
 immediate advantages for which the contest was held, is 
 sure to put a man in that position, that countless other 
 advantages securing intelligent and promising pupils for 
 instance are morally sure to follow. In one word, the 
 life of a Cambridge student is a fight, and to the victors 
 belong spoils, though not of the vanquished. 
 
 And now, my friends, what is this that I hear, that 
 emulation is only another name for envy, that competi- 
 tion in study produces the worst possible results, that 
 University rank is an unworthy object for a generous young 
 man to pursue ? Would you could all go to Cambridge for 
 yourselves, and see there how completely untrue all this is. 
 The whole history of Cambridge disproves it. If I had 
 only my own experience to rely upon, I should feel proud 
 to name to you all the dear friends I have across the 
 water; all the dearer to me, because I engaged with them 
 in all these glorious, bloodless contests, where, like Scott's 
 Cavalier, 
 
 "Our watchword was honour, our pay was renown." 
 
 But the whole idea is monstrous. What, that all the asso- 
 ciations, the friendships, the mutual joys which must arise 
 where generous youths have lived together for three years, 
 sharing the same meals, listening to the same instruction, 
 partaking the same sports, worshipping at the same altar ; 
 where they have been engaged in working weeks and 
 months and years on the same immortal truths of science, 
 the same refined beauties of literature, comparing their 
 progress day after day, and hearing it compared, confiding 
 their daily trials and successes to each other as no other 
 class of men can, that all these should be broken up be- 
 cause the value of these very attainments, their very pro- 
 gress is to be subjected to the test that they have had in view
 
 On the Cam. 67 
 
 throughout their course ? N"o. Emulation and envy can- 
 not co-exist, the very fact that we can, that we do emu- 
 late, shows that it is beneath us to envy. If it were not 
 so, if all these tender associations, these golden chains 
 that college life binds round us were void, what does the 
 very fact of equal competition tell us ? How thought the 
 Celtic chieftain, who saw before him the man with whom 
 he must grapple in the death-struggle for the realm of 
 Scotland ? 
 
 " Sir Roderick marked, and in his eyes 
 Respect was mingled with surprise, 
 And that stern joy that warriors feel 
 In foemen worthy of their steel." 
 
 I know there are those, in whom deep-seated envy is the 
 ruling passion of life. Emulous or not they must hate ; 
 with such I have not to do. But I know by the joyful 
 contests, the happy encounters of four years, the mornings 
 and afternoons of hard strife, succeeded by the noon recess 
 of hasty comparisons, and the long, merry evening of con- 
 viviality, that the dearest friends are the closest rivals, and 
 the happiest hours are in the snatches of competition. 
 
 But competition is unworthy ; competition is degrading; 
 rank is a low object. Then what did St. Paul mean by 
 holding up the Greek races as a bright example to Chris- 
 tian energy ? Look round on the world and tell me how 
 you are to exclude from school and college that stimulus 
 which is urging men to madness in every pursuit of life. 
 Is the exchange no field of competition, and is the army 
 no field of competition ? At the bar, in the senate, in the 
 pulpit, are there no rivals, no contests, no prizes ? Is the 
 3 r oung man whose athletic sports, whose sedentary sports, 
 whose literary recreations are all filled with competition, to 
 be kept from it all the hours of education, in order to fit 
 him for a world where it is pre-eminently the ruling prin- 
 ciple ? Studying for rank is degrading, is it ? And in 
 heaven's name, when there are five hundred students all 
 working together on the noblest intellectual exercises, is
 
 68 On the Cam. 
 
 patient industry to have no reward, is idleness to have no 
 stigma, is genius to lose its palm-branch, and devotion its 
 crown of olive ? Shall the voice of the authorities declare 
 all on a dead level, when it is notorious that all are not on 
 a dead level? Is the whole energy of thirty or forty 
 learned and wise men to be bent on making young men 
 study, and shall they not show by any sign or reward who 
 has complied with their entreaties ? And, my dear young 
 friends at college, whose motives are so high, whose con- 
 tempt for the world's prizes is so sincere, whose objects of 
 pursuit are all so ennobling, is it not a legitimate or 
 worthy object for any man, to seek the proper position in 
 his society to which his merits and labours entitle him, 
 and to strive for the appropriate honour and reward at the 
 hands of the rightful authorities ? 
 
 No, competition in itself is honourable and lawful, pro- 
 vided only the means employed to succeed are honourable 
 and the arts wherein it is exercised. And what is the art 
 wherein the noblest youths of England annually compete 
 at Cambridge ? Study ; study of literature and science, 
 study of language and of law, study of whatsoever things 
 are true, just, honest, pure, lovely, and of good report. 
 I have endeavoured to enlarge on the array of learned 
 men that has in all ages been assembled at Cambridge; 
 but it needs not. The very air of the place declares that 
 it is the home of learning, of book-learning, to employ 
 the term which, intended to be contemptuous, is in truth 
 the height of panegyric. The quiet old streets, where all 
 the bustle so common to an English town has been toned 
 into a sort of dignity by the authority of the University, 
 the calm, wide, sunny court-yards, of no ambitious design, 
 but just built and added to as the necessities and taste of 
 age after age prompted for the admission of. the new 
 students, the cool arched cloisters, that still echo to the 
 tread of Macaulay and Byron and Chesterfield and New- 
 ton and Bacon, and back into the dark ages, which were 
 illumined only from the two Universities, the quaint, cle-
 
 On the Cam. 69 
 
 rical-looking dress of the chance passer-by, the square cap 
 and light gown, that seems to say scholar in every fold, 
 the libraries, the museums, the Senate-House, the daily 
 conversation, the technical terms, the habits, all breathe 
 one word, Study, Study. 
 
 There are those who see in this picture nothing attrac- 
 tive. A student, a man of books, is to them a shell-fish 
 sort of being, on whose flesh others may feed with delight 
 after his death, provided you add pepper and salt in abund- 
 ance, but whose life is the acme of dryness and stupidity. 
 To such I neither have nor wish to have an answer. I 
 can no more argue with such men than Mr. Agassiz can 
 argue with a gorilla, or than General Grant can argue 
 with Mr. Davis. But to those who, even if they have not 
 led themselves a scholastic life, can yet value the labours, 
 appreciate the pleasures, court the friendship of scholars, 
 it is a delight to dwell a little on the true joys of a life of 
 study. Tell me not of the experience of life to an active 
 man. I will bring you in history the experience of forty 
 centuries of men. Do not dwell on the popular preacher, 
 the exciting article, the scathing political satire. I will 
 find you in ancient literature philosophical speculations 
 from a heathen that shall put your pulpit-actor to silence ; 
 I will read you discussions of war and peace that shall be 
 more true as applied to this very hour than all your quid- 
 nuncs ever hatched ; I will at the same moment make 
 your sides shake with laughter, and your nerves quiver 
 with dread at sarcasm, every line of which would wither 
 up whole columns of the Saturday Review. Talk to me 
 of the excitement of interesting investigations, of acute 
 analysis, of refined calculations and building up of facts ; 
 I will show you scholars at Cambridge who have traced 
 out the mysteries of the ancient tongues, have transfused 
 Burke into ^Eschines, and Scott into Ovid, who have raised 
 a pyramid of mathematical synthesis as solid, and to the 
 unlearned as mystical, as those of Egypt, and all from 
 their books alone, their ever faithful, beloved books. Yes,
 
 70 On the Cam. 
 
 beloved ; it is the friendship we form for all the grand old 
 writers that we would not exchange for the loudest con- 
 viviality or the most unflinching partisanship of all the 
 world. We live in the eloquence of Demosthenes till we 
 leap from our seats, and shout in ecstasy at his prophecies 
 of glory. We hang on the lips of Aristotle till he has 
 bound us and all the world in a net-work of irrefragable 
 reason and rich, nervous language. We walk through 
 the boxen bowers of Cicero till we catch the inspiration 
 from that most genial of souls, and feel as if we too might 
 save our country from a Catilinarian conspiracy. We 
 fall enchanted into the arms of the sweetest and purest of 
 mortals, and are ready to barter all the glories of the 
 world for one hour on the breast of Virgil. We make a 
 third in that wondrous company that tracked the mysteries 
 of the eternal prison. We sit in the darkened chamber 
 of Milton till his blindness becomes our light, and his 
 misery our paradise. We stroll with Newton, picking up 
 the sparkling pearls thrown up by the ocean of truth. We 
 gaze reverently into the face of Butler, as he leads us from 
 the plains of earth up to the very gate of heaven. These are 
 the friends that never deceive, that never falter, that never 
 forget, that never forsake ; " they delight at home, they 
 speed on the way, in the loneliness of the night they watch 
 with us, in exile and in solitude they are ever with us."* 
 
 My friends, we live in a stirring time. It seems as if 
 ah 1 the pursuits of sedentary life must be discontinued, 
 that we may rush to carry on the active work that is press- 
 ing on us from every side. Yet, in the midst of all this 
 horror and misery, a truly loyal citizen, who knows 
 that in the war his life would be a speedy and useless sacri- 
 fice, who in the conduct of affairs places and intends to 
 
 We hope that the desires and tastes rather than the inten- 
 tions of the speaker are here expressed. It will he a thousand 
 pities if this brilliant orator and scholar should, like so manv of 
 the most intellectual of his countrymen, shrink from the insults and 
 scurrility which attend political life in America. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 71 
 
 place implicit confidence in the courage and conduct of the 
 generals, the fidelity and prudence of the Chief Magis- 
 trate, such a one, I say, is grateful to Almighty God, 
 for the ever-growing pleasure, the undisturbed labour, the 
 spotless prizes, the untainted occupation of scholastic life. 
 And, when the hour calls, has the scholar ever shown that 
 his retirement unfits him for his country's service? To- 
 day* we welcome back the glorious heroes of a score of 
 fights. To-day our streets are ringing with shouts for the 
 warriors that never turned their backs on the foe. To-day 
 we are pressing eagerly the hard-worn hands, and weep- 
 ing on sun-burnt cheeks of the loved ones who have come 
 back only to go forth again ; and we are straining our eyes 
 in the hope that we may catch, by a miracle, a single 
 glimpse of one of those dear forms that have been reft 
 for ever. My friends, were there none in the Second 
 Massachusetts who exchanged the students' chamber for 
 the battle-field, the volume for the musket, the pen for the 
 bayonet? Did not the tyrant quiver in his stronghold 
 when he heard that the manly rustic hearts that had 
 poured out to drive him muttering back were inspired by 
 those whose souls were kindled by the flame of ancient 
 and modern wisdom ? It is because the scholar has de- 
 nied himself the low prizes of every-day encounter that 
 he can lay down his life for his country. It is because 
 he takes no part in meaner warfare that he is ready for 
 the noblest. Such thoughts have often passed through 
 my mind, as I contemplated the crowds of my fellow- 
 citizens, who seemed to delight, at this time, to waste all 
 their energies in the idlest frivolities, the maddest enter- 
 prises, the meanest trickeries of public life. And, com- 
 paring their objects with those of my dear University, I 
 shaped these thoughts into the lines which follow ; which, 
 believe me, express the very spirit of the students of Cam- 
 bridge. I call them 
 
 * January 19, 1864.
 
 72 On the Cam. 
 
 THE WANDERERS. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? Over the plains, 
 Gathering flowers all bright with dew ; 
 
 Round the porch of my rustic home, 
 
 I'll twine each blossom of pink and blue. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? Over the hills, 
 Gathering berries, black and red ; 
 
 Wine shall sparkle and mirth shall ring, 
 
 When their crimson life-blood at eve is shed. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? Over the sea, 
 Gathering pearls which mermaids weep ; 
 
 To-night the sheen of their orbs shall blaze, 
 In my lady's ringlets dark and deep. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? Over the town, 
 Gathering heaps of wealth untold ; 
 
 Sweeter than organ, or lute, or harp, 
 Are the tinkling drops of hoarded gold. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? In stately halls, 
 Gathering titles, and power, and fame; 
 
 Prouder each day my heart shall swell, 
 As nations bow to my mighty name. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? Over the field, 
 Gathering laurels with blood-stained sword ; 
 
 Soon shall I die ; but glory's star 
 Shines for ever as my reward. 
 
 Where hast thou wandered ? In volumes old ; 
 
 Gathering wisdom, line on line ; 
 Flowers and fruit, and gems and gold, 
 
 Honour and glory, they all are mine.
 
 IV. 
 
 INCENTIVES TO STUDY, AND NON- 
 STUDENTS. 
 
 College Examinations. Prizes of Various Kinds. Commemora- 
 tion. Scholars/tips and Fellowships. The "Poll" Degree. 
 Professors' Lectures. Shifts to avoid Study. Generosity be- 
 tween Students and N on- Students. General Discussion of the 
 Cambridge System. 
 
 N my last lecture I endeavoured to illustrate 
 the methods of study and instruction as 
 given at Cambridge, and showed that the 
 basis of the system is competitive examina- 
 tions of the most rigorous character; and 
 that the preparation for these is left to the student himself 
 to make in his own way, there being, properly speaking, 
 no course of study at all ; that abundant assistance is offered 
 by college lecturers, who, however, attract, on the whole, 
 little interest ; and that the mass of the instruction is given 
 by private tutors, exercising as far as possible a personal 
 and individual supervision over the line of study selected 
 by each student. Lastly, I have failed signally to explain 
 the real state of the case, if you did not understand that 
 all these arduous examinations and profound studies were 
 strictly at the option of each student, no one being required
 
 74 On the Cam. 
 
 to enter for a degree " in honours" as it is called, or to do 
 more than just scrape through the college examinations. 
 
 But though no requirement is made of the undergra- 
 duate to enter on this severe course of study, abundant 
 incentives are offered to stimulate the most sluggish. No- 
 where is a system of prizes and rewards more generously 
 established, more fairly earned out, or more actively com- 
 peted for, than at Cambridge. They may be divided into 
 three classes, those for proficiency in the regular and all 
 but required exercises of college, those for success in spe- 
 cial efforts, which are entirely optional, and those which 
 enroll the successful candidate as one of a privileged class. 
 We will consider each of these in some detail. 
 
 At nearly all the colleges, the undergraduates are re- 
 quired every year to pass an examination in the classical 
 and mathematical subjects on which lectures have been 
 delivered during the past year. The members of each 
 year, or as we should say each class, are examined by 
 themselves ; and this is one of the few cases, where there 
 is anything like our class system adopted in England. 
 There are added generally some subjects on which no 
 lectures have been given, such as ancient history and 
 moral philosophy, particularly as given in our esteemed 
 friend Whewell's Elements and Butler's Analogy. And 
 let those who accuse the English collegiate system of 
 wasting too much time on ancient literature and old-world 
 learning, hear the last addition made by Trinity College 
 to her subjects for examination. Among the subjects for 
 the second year, or as we should say the Sophomores, 
 every year are the literature, criticism, and history of four 
 selected plays of Shakespeare. I will venture to say no 
 college or University in the world is ahead of Edward 
 III.'s old foundation in this incorporation of modern lite- 
 rature into its subjects for examination. 
 
 At Trinity College, the largest, and in some respects the 
 model, these examinations are held in the first week in 
 June, for which reason, I suppose, they are called the
 
 On the Cam. 75 
 
 May examinations, and generally last about a week. The 
 scholarship involved in them is by no means so verbal as in 
 the great final trials, and everybody, whatever his speci- 
 alty, has a chance to succeed.* According to the result 
 the students are divided into nine classes, of ever-varying 
 proportions, and the names in each class printed alpha- 
 betically. Printed, I say ; for lists of the result are ex- 
 tensively circulated by the undergraduates among their 
 friends. The last class is printed emphatically last class, 
 
 * A Trinity friend of ours once owed an ephemeral success to 
 chance indeed. He was sadly ignorant and idle in his undergra- 
 duate days, and would have been quite contented at finding him- 
 self in the seventh or eighth class in the May examination, had fate 
 not thrust him several classes higher. The day before the exami- 
 nation he came late into hall, and had to take what seat he could 
 get, far from his own set, and facing two complete strangers to 
 him, reading men, who flavoured their dinner with mathematical 
 conversation. 
 
 " Well, now," said one, " what illustration would you give of a 
 parabola '? " 
 
 Our friend had never heard of such an article, and being of a 
 curious temperament, he listened. 
 
 " Why," replied the other, " if a bird was passing me in full 
 flight, and I shot him stone dead, in his fall he would describe a 
 parabola." 
 
 The next day our friend went up to a viva voce examination with 
 about twenty other undergraduates, who sat on benches in a long 
 line, in the order in which their names were written on a slip of 
 paper held by the examiner, who put questions on several branches 
 to each, more with a view of ascertaining what subjects he was read- 
 ing, than his proficiency in them, and appended marks to each 
 name in accordance with the answers he received, coining in every 
 instance last to our friend, who sat on the extreme left of the row. 
 At length he put the query to A, "What is a parabola?" "I 
 don't know, sir." "Do you know, sir?" " Xo, sir," and so on, 
 down the line, meeting with a running fire of negatives till he came 
 to our friend, who replied, much to the astonishment of the others, 
 who knew him : " If a bird was passing me in full flight, and I shot 
 him dead, in his fall he would describe a parabola." " Ah,'' said 
 the examiner, "I see _you are the only one who is reading dyna- 
 mics, so I will not ask you any more questions. That will do, 
 gentlemen." And our friend was in the fifth class. ED.
 
 76 On the Cam. 
 
 and not ninth ; that their estimation by the college autho- 
 rities may be known. But even here, 
 
 " In the lowest deep, a lower deep 
 Still opens." 
 
 There are two official lists, written and not printed, one 
 framed inside the great college hall, and one posted out- 
 side ; and on these, even after the last class, appear the 
 names of those stated as " not worthy to be classed." 
 About these there goes round the word " posted," and the 
 malignant will go about breathing the still more dreadful 
 epithet " plucked," which properly belongs only to those 
 failing of a degree. These unlucky beings, who cannot 
 pass the very slight minimum, 70 marks, when the pos- 
 sible maximum is 1800, are generally requested to sub- 
 mit to another examination, and if they still continue in 
 inability to pass this, are reminded that there are other 
 colleges in Cambridge where the air is less close and 
 constraining, and where they would be joyfully received as 
 inmates. 
 
 But, oh, what glories await the first class men. For 
 them are indeed golden joys, and curiously to state, the 
 fewer the merrier. A fixed sum of money is appropriated 
 from the college funds, to be divided equally among those 
 who are placed in the first class in each year, and expended 
 in books, which are stamped with the college arms. As 
 the gross sum is the same, a large first class gives small 
 prizes and vice versa. The books are really valuable, and 
 the undergraduate is at liberty to make them as much 
 more so as he likes, out of his own funds ! The size of 
 the first class at Trinity is for Freshmen between twenty 
 and thirty, for second year men about two-thirds as large, 
 for the third year between ten and fifteen. Almost every- 
 body of real merit in the college tries to be in the first 
 class the first year, but after that their attention is con- 
 centrated on the examination for the degree, and the in- 
 terest in college examinations falls off.
 
 Oil the Cam. 77 
 
 Throughout Cambridge groat attention is paid to the 
 study of the New Testament in the original Greek. It is 
 incorporated, I believe, into all college examinations, and 
 not only does proficiency therein advance one in the gene- 
 ral scale, but special prizes and very valuable ones are 
 awarded for it. It is considered a particularly honourable 
 and desirable specialty to excel in this study of the Greek 
 Testament, even, as in some cases, to the exclusion of all 
 other branches of learning. 
 
 At several of the colleges, Trinity and St. John's espe- 
 cially, every undergraduate is required at a certain part of 
 his course, to write an English and a Latin Essay or De- 
 clamation. This may be, and by the majority is made as 
 short and perfunctory as possible, but those who do take 
 pains generally have the privilege to an Englishman the 
 condemnation of reciting their productions, and after the 
 recitation prizes of very great value are awarded to the 
 best two or three. 
 
 These I believe are about all the prizes which the col- 
 leges give for excellence in the regular exercises. Next 
 we have a great variety of special opportunities and volun- 
 tary competition. Of these the number is immense ; not 
 only does each college offer many rewards for essays and 
 poems in English, Latin, or Greek, but the University 
 offers to all its members several very valuable medals, and 
 other prizes for Greek, Latin, and English verse, Latin 
 essays, and also for English prose composition. But all 
 the University prizes for English prose, which are nume- 
 rous and very valuable, are reserved for Bachelors of Arts, 
 it being generally considered at Cambridge, that an under- 
 graduate has neither time nor maturity to compose a well- 
 reasoned English prose essay ; nor are facts wanting to 
 sustain this judgment. There are four other University 
 prizes, two, the chancellor's gold medals for those Bache- 
 lors of Arts in each year who best pass a special exami- 
 nation in classics, and two, the Smith's prizes, of like 
 conditions for mathematics. But about the chancellor's
 
 78 On the Cam. 
 
 medals is a singular restriction ; so great was the prefer- 
 ence given to mathematics, that no one was or is allowed 
 to compete for the chancellor's classical medal, without 
 previously having taken a certain rank in the list of mathe- 
 matical honours, which is like refusing to let a man 
 stand for Congress till he has taken a ship round Cape 
 Horn.* 
 
 The University appoints a day in every year when its 
 prizes shall be distributed, and the successful poems in 
 English, Latin, and Greek recited. At Oxford, this is the 
 most brilliant occasion of the year. It is called the Com- 
 memoration, and is very well described in " Tom Brown 
 at Oxford," and Miss Yonge's " Daisy Chain." But at 
 Cambridge it is not made much of. It is generally ap- 
 pointed in the dead time of year, when the undergraduates 
 are all away, so that even the prize-bearers often have their 
 poems recited by proxy. Not that that makes much dif- 
 ference, for few and far between are the Englishmen who 
 can read or recite poetry well. Occasionally, when some 
 great magnate is at Cambridge, as the Prince of Wales, 
 or when a new chancellor is inaugurated, other exercises 
 are added, and the day is made brilliant and interesting. 
 The day is called, as here, Commencement. 
 
 The ceremony of giving out prizes at a college I 
 speak of Trinity is amusing. It is called Commemora- 
 tion, and is in fact a solemn commemoration of all the 
 benefactors to the college. A special service is held in 
 the chapel, where the names of all the benefactors, from 
 Edward III. down, are read at length, a sermon is 
 preached, and a special anthem sung. The meeting is 
 then adjourned to the hall, where the Master, dignitaries, 
 and ladies take their seats at the upper end, and the few 
 undergraduates present, for nobody is required to go, 
 and the day itself is the last of term, assemble below. 
 
 * 'A proposition to tlo away with this restriction was recently 
 agitated, and has possibly been adopted.
 
 Gn the Cam. 79 
 
 Just in the place where there is most draught, between 
 two windows one way and two doors the other, is placed 
 a species of pulpit, not unlike the desk I now stand at, on 
 four high steps. Concerning this pulpit it is told, that, 
 hefore it came into the possession of the college, a bet was 
 made that you couldn't ask at a certain variety-store in 
 Cambridge for anything they hadn't got. A second-hand 
 pulpit was asked for over the counter, and this one pro- 
 duced immediately from the store-room. To this rostrum 
 ascend successively the winners of the first prizes for the 
 Latin and English essays or declamations, who, as it were 
 to pay for their success, have to write and speak another 
 of the same sort on this day. These performances are 
 almost the only ones in Cambridge where the student can 
 select his own subject, and it is an old tradition, zealously 
 adhered to, that the speaker may say just what he pleases, 
 no matter how offensive to authority it is likely to be. It 
 was from this stand, about a year ago, that I nearly 
 caught my death of cold, endeavouring to give John Bull 
 an idea of Mr. Webster.* The speeches ended, the 
 various inferior officials proceeded to distribute the prizes, 
 the old chapel clerk a college servant calling out the 
 names of the prize-bearers. This hoary villain who is 
 the image of Eetzsch's Mephistopheles, and always so 
 called actually claims seventy-five cents from every 
 student who gets a prize, under the pretence that he 
 brings it to your room, which you generally do yourself. 
 In long order march up the declaimers, the Latin verse- 
 writers, the English essayist, and the Greek Testament 
 sages. To each, the senior dean or the head-lecturer 
 makes some appropriate remarks, except when he has 
 taken too hasty a look at the list, and assures the first 
 Greek Testament prize-man, a devoted son of Mother 
 Church, that he did not hesitate to give him the prize, 
 
 * The author's fine speech on this occasion created quite a sen- 
 sation, and has by no means been forgotten in the college. ED.
 
 80 On the Cam. 
 
 notwithstanding the sarcastic and radical tone of his decla- 
 mation. Last of all, the first-class men of each year are 
 summoned, and are thanked for their faithful performance 
 of the regular exercises of the college. Now attend. The 
 mighty head of the college, the great and awful William 
 Whewell, D.D., " Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non 
 tetigit, nullum quod tetigit, non ornavit," delivers himself 
 of a few remarks, few, but weighty. I have once heard 
 them myself; I have had them reported to me three 
 times, and their uniform tenor is this : " That your suc- 
 cess in these examinations will always be interpreted in 
 your favour by your instructors, and that the present 
 period is the most important of your college course," the 
 last remark being successively made to members of the 
 third, second, and first years. 
 
 So much for prizes, properly so called, the whole 
 amount distributed in them throughout the University and 
 in the colleges is over .2,000 a year ! But the most 
 important rewards and incentives for students yet remain 
 to be noticed. 
 
 The colleges are corporations. The income of the 
 wealth which has been bestowed on them at various times 
 and accumulated during centuries, is held by fellows, the 
 number of whom varies from sixty at the largest colleges, 
 to five at the smallest. These corporations are self-con- 
 tinued, each fellowship, as it falls vacant, being filled by 
 election at the hands of the other fellows, or a portion of 
 them. The emoluments and rights of fellows vary at 
 different colleges ; but, as a general rule, each fellow is 
 entitled to a very superior set of rooms in college, to his 
 meals at the high table, to a certain sum every week he 
 resides at Cambridge, and to his equal share of the net 
 income of the college, after all expenses are paid. The 
 income of the fellows is thus several hundred pounds a 
 year, more at some colleges, less at others ; but, in all, 
 a very generous provision for a single man, just out of 
 college himself. The fellows have their share in the
 
 On the Cam. 81 
 
 college government, though the statutes generally dele- 
 gate this to the oldest eight or ten among them. From 
 them are appointed, in most cases, the tutors, lecturers, 
 and other instructors ; and also the officers of discipline, 
 but not the chaplains or librarian. The position of a 
 fellow is eminently honourable and desirable. There are 
 two drawbacks : removed very recently in some colleges, 
 and strongly relucted* against in others. First, a fellow 
 must, after a certain length of tenure, become a priest of 
 the Church of England. Secondly, a still more lively 
 reminder of monastic times, he must be content to live 
 in single blessedness. 
 
 A portion of the income of the colleges is reserved for 
 scholarships. Of these, Trinity College has seventy-two, 
 and other colleges different numbers ; some of the smaller 
 only six or eight. They are offered for competition among 
 the undergraduates, according to the result of a very liberal 
 examination, so contrived as to give every scope for general 
 ability. The competition is open to members of the second 
 and third years together; the papers being designedly 
 rather hard for the second year, and rather easy for the 
 third. So that from the second year, the best are chosen, 
 and, a year after, their somewhat inferior classmates, pre- 
 ference being given to those who have not another chance. 
 A scholar has generally a set of rooms, rent free, his meals 
 under certain conditions, and a share of the college fund. 
 He is like the fellows on the foundation, a real member of 
 the college, the mass of the undergraduates being merely 
 outsiders residing there. The scholarships are tenable 
 till three years after graduation. A similar examination, 
 a good deal harder, is held for the fellowships, open to 
 those who are of one, two, or three years' standing after 
 graduation. In some colleges no one can be superannuated 
 as a candidate.f 
 
 * Americanism, signifying "submitted to with reluctance?" ED. 
 t Some of the scholarships, as the author explains in a chapter 
 further on, are only open to men coming from certain places. ED. 
 G
 
 82 On the Cam. 
 
 Now to these two positions, scholars and fellows, no idea 
 of a beneficiary, or of degradation, is attached. They are 
 singularly honourable ; they attract immense competition ; 
 those who turn up their noses at a first class in a college 
 examination, or a silver cup for an English essay, rush to 
 the scholarship trial without the ghost of a chance. And 
 the reason is that all can get them. They are not a pre- 
 mium on poverty, no man is passed over because he does 
 not need assistance. It is held, and in my opinion rightly, 
 that a superior scholar deserves a share in the college 
 funds, whether he needs it or not. A student who is poor 
 in intellect is no better because he is also poor in purse. 
 Some of the richest men of England have sons who hold 
 scholarships at college, and it is hailed as a good omen 
 that the sons of the wealthy feel a pride at gaining some- 
 thing tangible by their own exertions. 
 
 Thus at Cambridge is the instinct of ability for study 
 fostered and excited into active exertion by general prizes, 
 by special rewards, and finally by incorporation into the 
 very life of the colleges, and a more or less liberal pecu- 
 niary support ; and all of these prizes have a most honourable 
 character. For those whose circumstances are really low, 
 there are very ample beneficiai-y funds at all the colleges. 
 The holders of these are called sizars, from an old barba- 
 rous Latin word signifying portion. It will be remembered 
 that poor Goldsmith was a sizar at Dublin University. In 
 his time, and long after, there were several very degrading 
 necessities of a servile character imposed on these bene- 
 ficiaries. All these are done away with, but the sizars 
 are still restricted to inferior rooms, and cannot avail them- 
 selves of college luxuries as fully as other students. They 
 are also required to earn their share of the college fund by 
 a certain amount of scholarship. It is perfectly true that 
 the sizars, or as they are called at Oxford, servitors, are 
 not on an equality of social relations with the others ; I do 
 not think, however, this arises from any superciliousness 
 on the part of the more wealthy, but from what may be
 
 On the Cam. 83 
 
 called the agrarian ism of the poor, particularly the poor 
 student that fancies a slight when none is intended.* 
 Some of the most distinguished Cambridge scholars and 
 scientific men have been sizars. 
 
 The University has also a few very valuable scholarships, 
 mostly for classical proficiency, awarded at an annual 
 examination, open every year to all undergraduates in the 
 first three years. The University Scholarship is the most 
 honourable distinction next to the head of the Tripos. 
 
 So far for the students at Cambridge, for their studies, 
 their instructors, their rewards. The remainder of the 
 lecture belongs to those young men at Cambridge who 
 are sent there to live, as being one of the best places 
 where a young man can learn to live, those who do not 
 intend to study, and whom neither parents nor instructors 
 expect to study. The system pursued with them is to an 
 American one of the most curious incidents of an English 
 University. It is to require nothing of them. I believe 
 seriously a young man can reside at Cambridge ten years, 
 if he will, without passing a single examination, or giving 
 any sign of his existence as far as books, instructors, 
 science, or literature is concerned. At the large colleges, 
 where much attention is paid to study, there is some ex- 
 amination required for admission, and at various stages in 
 the undergraduate career. These are easier to pass than 
 not, as there are always plenty of questions that the stupidest 
 and most wilful must answer in spite of himself. The 
 University, again, will not give him a degree without ex- 
 amination. But how if he does not want a degree ? How 
 if he is content to live a member of some college three, 
 five, eight years, and never become a Bachelor of Arts at 
 all ? Yet this is perfectly possible, and constant!}' done. 
 
 * A remark of peculiar liberality, coming from the mouth of a 
 Republican addressing- Eepublicans, and safe to raise any amount 
 of applause by taking another view of the matter; but throughout 
 Mr. Everett never condescends to court popularity by disguising 
 bis real sentiments, which are wonderfully free from prejudice. 
 " Agrarianism," we suppose, here means rusticity. ED.
 
 84 On the Cam. 
 
 Let us suppose, however, one grade above this depth 
 of illiteracy. A scion of aristocracy is graciously pleased 
 to honour Cambridge with his residence for a few years in 
 order to obtain this degree. Not in honours, mind, like 
 the classic or mathematician. His aim is the ordinary, 
 the " poll " degree, a name from the Greek ol 7roM.oi, the 
 multitude. In order to obtain this, he must pass through 
 two ordeals. The first occurs in the second year. It is 
 called by a very few and stiff authorities, and on official 
 papers, the previous examination, but in ninety-nine cases 
 out of a hundred the Little-Go. It is the most crowded 
 examination in Cambridge, everybody who is in his second 
 year being required to pass it before he can get any sort 
 of a degree. Those who propose to compete for honours 
 have a somewhat harder Little-Go than the average. 
 What, then, is the minimum required of every one, 
 not to pass which is a bar on all further University 
 progress ? He is examined in one Greek author, one 
 Latin author, and one of the gospels in the original 
 Greek. The particular gospel and authors are appointed 
 a year in advance. Besides this, he must be prepared on 
 the first three books of Euclid, on easy Algebra, on Arith- 
 metic, and on Paley's Evidences of Christianity. This 
 last is the terrible stumbling-block. In order to pass the 
 candidate has to do pretty well on all the papers. If he 
 do very badly on one, or rather badly on two, he is plucked, 
 and must wait for the next trial. For the Little-Go and 
 the ordinary degree can be tried again and again.* I 
 
 * To middle-aged men who have married, and wish to leave the 
 army or some other profession and take orders, the Little-Go is a 
 terrible bugbear; that once passed they can^ cram up enough 
 mathematics for the degree examination, but having left school so 
 long, the small amount of classics required for the Little-Go is suf- 
 ficient to puzzle them sadly. Those manage best whose wives are 
 clever enough to "coach " them. One stalwart ex-captain, who was 
 particularly desirous of becoming a rushlight of the church, but 
 who was plucked whenever he presented himself, is popularly sup- 
 posed to have received corporal chastisement at the hands of his 
 better-half on each successive failure. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 85 
 
 know a student, I believe still a member of the University, 
 who has tried six times to pass this examination, and every 
 year, as he comes out of the last paper, be begins his studies 
 for it over again, without waiting to know if he has passed 
 or not, so sure is he of the fatal result. Those who intend 
 to compete for honours have a little more mathematics 
 added to the Little- Go. Suppose this examination suc- 
 cessfully past. At the end of the third year comes the 
 ordinary-degree examination. This is on the same prin- 
 ciple as the Little-Go. There is a Greek and a Latin 
 author, the Acts of the Apostles in Greek, the History of 
 the Eeformation, and the Mathematical Theory of Me- 
 chanics, and Hydrostatics. The successful competitors for 
 this are arranged in four classes, and in each class alpha- 
 betically. This is the final examination, in virtue of 
 which the greater number of students take their degree. 
 It can be postponed to any time, and any candidate who 
 actually has entered it and failed can try twice more, at 
 two additional examinations commonly called the "post 
 mortem." 
 
 Of late, one addition has been made to the require- 
 ments of the ordinary degree. It is attendance on pro- 
 fessors' lectures. 
 
 You will have wondered that I have as yet said nothing 
 of the professors. There is a large body of very learned 
 men who hold the professorships at Cambridge, in a great 
 variety of departments. They have been founded at 
 various times from 1503 downwards. They are called by 
 the names of their founders, like ours, but in rather a 
 different form. The five professorships founded by King 
 Henry are the Regius professorships, Mr. Lucas's is the 
 Lucasian, Mr. Lowndes's the Lowndean, and so on ; the 
 only ones not habitually altered being the Lady Margaret, 
 for an Englishman wouldn't for the world give up a 
 Lord or Lady before a name, and a few stubborn names, 
 like Downing, Knightbridge, &c. The professorships are 
 University offices, but some have a connection with indi- 
 vidual colleges. Thus the two Downing professors are
 
 86 On the Cam. 
 
 ipso facto part of Downing College. The Eegius Pro- 
 fessor of Greek is a Fellow of Trinity, and so a few others. 
 These professors have always delivered lectures in their 
 respective departments to voluntary classes, hut the 
 audience depended entirely on the personal attractions of 
 the lecturer ; and except with the attendance of prospec- 
 tive clergymen and physicians on the theological and 
 medical lectures, and of a few ardent classical students on 
 the Greek lectures, the scanty salaries of the professors, 
 for the University cannot afford to pay its officers well, 
 was but poorly eked out by lecture fees. Accordingly it 
 was agreed, that, in order to get a little more study out of 
 the lazy, all candidates for the ordinary degree must 
 attend a course of professors' lectures, and bring a certifi- 
 cate from him of such attendance. Of course he will not 
 grant such certificate without a little examination on the 
 matter of his lectures. This system has certainly done 
 the professors' pockets good, but not their reputation in 
 the University, for by making attendance on their lectures 
 a distinguishing mark of the jroXAc/, it has sunk them still 
 lower in the estimation of fine scholars ! 
 
 This, then, is all asked of the ordinary student ; and 
 how long preparation does it require to pass this? I 
 suppose that two months' faithful study on the Little-Go, 
 and three on the final examination, with close attention to 
 the professors' lectures, would easily do the work. But 
 these gay young men have such a rooted aversion to 
 study, that they will not do even this. No, they will 
 put off the Little-Go preparation till one month before, 
 and the degree till two, and then such working, such 
 sweat and shiver, such prayers and curses ! If it were not 
 for the real misery involved, it would be the most ludicrous 
 sight in the world, the shifts and dodges that are tried to 
 pass these examinations without resorting to the sine qua 
 non, the dreaded hard work. One student has faith in a 
 particular tutor. " Big Smith " such is the respectful 
 name by which one of the most successful teachers is
 
 On the Cam. 87 
 
 habitually spoken of lias got more men through in the 
 last ten years than anybody else. Accordingly, if you go 
 to Big Smith, enough, ^the work is done. Day after day, 
 hour after hour, some fast young men at Magdalen will 
 tramp down to Big Smith, the entire length of the town, 
 not having prepared any work, not intending to hear or 
 retain any instruction, but merely listening in blank faith 
 to what his tutor says, thinking that now he may go off 
 and play, for ho has been to Big Smith, and that must 
 get him through. Another believes getting up early is 
 sure to accomplish the task, so morning after morning 
 he gives his servants enormous fees to pull him out of bed 
 at seven o'clock. He may have been up till three or four 
 last night, he may go riding or shooting, or anything, 
 but still, Jones got through last year by getting up early, 
 and so he is sure to. Then, when they do consent to 
 study a little, instead of taking the actual books and find- 
 ing out what they contain, they try to cheat the author out 
 of his meaning by cards, analyses, abstracts, translations, 
 and dodges innumerable ; the use of which takes longer to 
 learn than it would to get up the original properly. And 
 thus in the same way that the stern, conscientious study 
 of the honour men brings out a solidity and a brilliancy 
 that the world never saw surpassed, so this shilly-shally, 
 inefficient study of the poll men is apt to engender the 
 most absurd blunders. The number of those related of 
 the Little-Go and poll degree is immense, and daily 
 increasing. Some of the old stories, however, may not be 
 familiar to you. 
 
 Paley's definition of virtue was given, "Man acts 
 more from habit than reflection." Another youth, who 
 had read the Evidences of Christianity for his Little-Go, 
 and the ISTatural Theology for another examination, gave 
 up all attempts, after bringing out, as an answer to Hume's 
 theory of miracles, this condition, minus a consequence : 
 " If twelve men, of known probity, find a watch." On 
 another occasion, a candidate for his degree is said to have
 
 88 On the Cam. 
 
 stated the substance of St. Paul's sermon at Athens to be, 
 " Crying out for the space of two hours, Great is Diana 
 of the Ephesians." His neighbour traced a connection 
 between the Old and New Testaments in the circumstance 
 that Peter with his sword cut off the ear of the prophet 
 Malachi.* 
 
 It would, however, be unjust to these men to omit that 
 many of the ordinary degree men begin at the right time, 
 work hard, and pass a much better examination than those 
 who, on the strength of a little knowledge picked up at 
 school, live a lazy life for three years, and just scrape 
 through at the bottom of the list of honours. 
 
 And now, what do these men do the rest of their time ? 
 They need not study ; are they allowed to play ? Yes ; 
 to the full extent. They are not allowed to pass a night 
 away from Cambridge without special permission ; and 
 most efficient measures are taken to prevent the possible 
 evasion of this law. But while in Cambridge, they can 
 have every luxury and every indulgence of the best kind. 
 Their literary associates, students, instructors, authorities, 
 do not pronounce them reprobates and profligates because 
 they live the life that every young man naturally will lead 
 who has no capacity nor taste for work. And so they do 
 not force them into a mode of life which they never could 
 
 * The blunders of the idle are rivalled by those of industrious 
 dulness. A friend, who had really studied hard for his degree, 
 came to our rooms one morning triumphantly waving a paper on 
 hydrostatics. "Well," we asked, "how have you done ?" " Floored 
 the paper !" " That is all right. What were the questions ? Let 
 me see ; ' Describe a common pump.' How did you do that ? " 
 
 " Oh, all right, I think ; look here." And taking up a pen he 
 drew a very neat pump, with valves and everything complete. 
 
 " Well, but the explanation ?" 
 
 " Oh, I wrote ; ' let the piston be at its highest point, and 
 both valves open ; it is evident that as the piston descends the 
 water, W, will rise up the pipe, P, and flow out of the spout, S.' " 
 Taking advantage of the valves being opened, we suppose. He 
 was plucked. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 89 
 
 appreciate, and seldom could endure. They are not pro- 
 nounced a public scandal for having wine freely in their 
 rooms. On the contrary ; a student's initiatory experi- 
 ence is very apt to be as follows : His father brings him, 
 on entering college, to the tutor ; this worthy, who has no 
 time to waste on Freshmen, hands him over to a fellow- 
 student, " to assist him," as he says, " in making his pur- 
 chases ;" and as they are going out, the tutor whispers in 
 the parent's ear " A very steady, religious young man : 
 you may trust your son's expenditure to him implicitly." 
 They cross the street, to a glass and crockery shop, im- 
 mediately in front of the gate ; the steady, religious friend 
 turns and says " We'll go in here first. You'd better 
 get your decanters and wine-glasses, <fec, at once ; al- 
 though I suppose you've hardly got your wine down yet ;" 
 and so on. If the student is disposed to conviviality, all 
 these same studious friends will crack their joke and take 
 their glass at his dinners or suppers, laugh till their sides 
 ache at his theatricals, gaze " with parting lips and strain- 
 ing eyes" at his cricket matches ; and not, as was once 
 done at a Yankee college, confiscate his boat, under the 
 statute which forbade keeping a horse, dog, or other do- 
 mestic animal. And this is, in a great measure, because 
 he is not a drag and a dead-weight on their studies ; he 
 is not a bird of ill-omen at their lessons, constantly lower- 
 ing their standard of scholarship without raising his own ; 
 they are not hampered by him as an unwilling coadjutor, 
 but treat him as a man, a gentleman, and a friend ; glad 
 of his company on Parnassus, if he desires to worship 
 Apollo"; but not forcing him up that ascent, when his 
 heart is with the Bacchanals on Cithseron. 
 
 And, on the other hand, the manner in which the 
 scholars are treated by those who have no taste for study 
 is equally generous and honourable. They do not stig- 
 matize them by the exquisitely refined and classical names 
 of digs or prigs ; they do not take every opportunity to 
 deride and condemn literary competition; they do not,
 
 90 On the Cam. 
 
 finally, descend to that last and most contemptible pitch 
 of working up th'eir own little, crude, uncultivated talent 
 to a sort of tinsel brilliancy in the effort to prove, by false 
 argument and false rhetoric, in debating societies, in 
 speeches, in college magazines, that it is beneath a man 
 of refined tastes and lofty motives to show attention and 
 reverence to the instructors of his University, and to pur- 
 sue those studies which the world has for ages agreed to 
 admit as profitable, as improving, as enchanting. On the 
 contrary, they canvass his prospects in college and Uni- 
 versity honours with as much eagerness and even more 
 uncliscriminating heartiness than their own games and 
 races. They raise a glad hurrah in the galleiy when he 
 takes his degree, and they hail it as an honour received, 
 not a concession gained over strictness, if they can secure 
 his presence at their meetings. 
 
 It is this spirit, fellow-citizens, which I wish to see in- 
 troduced at our colleges. Heaven forbid that I should be 
 unjust or ungrateful to dear Harvard. Heaven forbid 
 that I should speak harshly or disparagingly of those asso- 
 ciates I loved and honoured, or detract from that reputa- 
 tion for good feeling and generosity so nobly earned by 
 the class to which I was proud to belong ; there have been 
 too many brought back in glory to the sepulchres of their 
 fathers, too many, perchance, forgotten on Southern fields, 
 for me to visit sternly the faults of my brethren, or draw 
 odious comparisons between the countries. But I appeal 
 to my younger friends here to-night ; I appeal to all who 
 have wandered in our classic groves ; Is there among us 
 this noble generosity of feeling, so universal in England, 
 which trusts each college-associate to choose that course 
 which is to himself most useful and most honourable ? 
 How often have I seen the timid scholar driven to conceal 
 or deny his labours by the supercilious verdict that con- 
 demned as unmanly and sycophantic all faithful performance 
 of college lessons because they were such. How often has 
 an ardent, honest love for the treasures of ancient learning
 
 On the Cam. 91 
 
 or science been sneered and hooted down by dilettante 
 geniuses, who, forsooth, must select a course of literature 
 for themselves, and fill their rooms with books they never 
 read. And how often have I seen the very name of duty 
 and religion made hateful by the bigotry of its professors, 
 who, in their loud condemnation of the victims of tempta- 
 tions to which they never were exposed, and difficulties 
 tenfold greater than their own, force merriment into an 
 accursed and unnatural concubinage with vice, by expelling 
 it from its legitimate partner, innocence. 
 
 In England the divisions into sets and cliques is much 
 sharper among young men than here, but the jealousy 
 and ill-feeling far less. Every man is honoured, pitied, 
 or despised according to the character of his success or 
 failure in his chosen occupation. The oarsman is not the 
 scholar, the man of pleasure is not the mathematician, but 
 each of the four and a hundred other trades honours the 
 others as fellow-men, as fellow-students, as fellow-Chris- 
 tians. From the highest to the lowest, there is a hearty 
 recognition of the sacred truth, " that we are many mem- 
 bers in one body, and all members have not the same 
 office. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need 
 of thee, neither the head to the feet, I have no need of 
 you." For my own thoughts of Cambridge, I value my 
 successes, I regret my failures in the competitions of 
 scholarship. I remember with never-dying affection the 
 days and nights passed with the associates of study. I 
 wear every clay the gay badge of our ancient boat-club. 
 But I never let myself be separated from another jewel, 
 that recalls to me the dear friend Death will never show 
 to me again, that perfectly sweet and unselfish soul, en- 
 deared to me by a hundred hours of enjoyment, whose 
 generosity excused all his failings, and whose countless 
 frailties and errors are now reposing in trembling hope, 
 together with his perfect love to God and man. 
 
 This, then, ladies and gentlemen, is the Cambridge 
 system. For those who will study, the highest induce-
 
 92 On the Cam. 
 
 ments, for those who do not care to, a certain slight re- 
 quirement, as a condition for University rank, and even 
 this dispensed with for those to whom that rank is a nullity. 
 I do not propose to go into the countless questions that 
 will arise to all of you. Some of the details will appear in 
 the course of these lectures, and the others are either un- 
 important to the general comprehension of the system, or 
 of too technical a character to be understood in a descrip- 
 tion like this. I therefore propose to go no farther into 
 the account of Cambridge studies, except as far as they 
 may react on Cambridge life, which will form the next 
 division of my course ; but to ask your attention for the 
 rest of the evening to the general effects of the whole 
 system of instruction and acquirement on its subjects. 
 
 And, in the first place, the life of a Cambridge student 
 is a hard one. It is no path of flowers ; still less a bed of 
 roses. The scholars at Cambridge are hard-working men, 
 labouring for dear life to obtain prizes and honours offered, 
 perhaps, in the ratio of one to every five competitors. Among 
 these men there is no place for dabblers or dilettanti. 
 With many of them their livelihood as schoolmasters, or 
 clergymen, depends on their success in scholarship ; with 
 others, their early introduction into law or Parliament ; 
 and with all of them, that is, all the good ones, it is a real 
 paramount business. For, of all things, an Englishman, 
 and especially a Cantab, detests a Jack-of-all-trades, 
 a student who does a little classics and a little mathematics, 
 a little rowing or a little debating.* If such a man, if 
 any man, after taking up the regular studies in the place, 
 begins to flag or fail, his private tutor will unhesitatingly 
 inform him some day that their connection will terminate 
 with that term. The tutors have no time to attend to 
 
 * This is right enough in the main, but we have known such a 
 man taken for a Crichton, and made a hero of, by a large body of 
 undergraduates, more than once. The authorities never like 
 him. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 93 
 
 men who play at studying ; they want those who work at 
 it. You may work up to as high or low a standard as you 
 please ; but there must be no falling off. Your little ac- 
 complishments, athletics, poetry, music, all done pretty well, 
 with which you hope to set off your feeble scholarship, will 
 only be despised, and you will be recommended to confine 
 yourself wholly to them, and give up all idea of scholarship, 
 or else drop them. " Will Perkins get his scholarship ?" 
 " Perkins ; oh dear, no ; he sets up to be a musical tip, 
 you know. Then, he's always speaking at the Union ; 
 he's no chance to get a scholarship, even if he were clever 
 enough." So far is this dislike to a variety of pursuits 
 carried, so universal is the opinion that every man ought 
 to have his specialty, that the prizes for essays, poems, 
 orations, &c. are seldom objects of competition to the best 
 scholars, and have fallen almost entirely into the hands of 
 second-rate men, who devote their whole life at college to 
 writing for them. It is considered no disgrace for the 
 great men to miss them, nor an honour for the inferiors to 
 get them. It is held that one man may take to prize-get- 
 ting as a business, as well as another to prize-fighting. 
 Another drawback to scholarship is, that your associates 
 have no notion of your being at all sensitive about your 
 successes or failures. Your prospects and history are 
 habitually canvassed in the most open manner. You will 
 find yourself dropped down or put up the latter very sel- 
 dom two or three places from where you expect to be ; 
 your habits of wasting time, or injudicious exertion, freely 
 talked of ; and, if you have failed, your unsuccessful shots 
 talked over and dilated on most unpleasantly. Scholar- 
 ship is such a business, that a student must no more wonder 
 at being told, he deserved to lose his first class, or that he 
 can't begin to do Algebra, than a merchant to hear of his 
 house being burnt uninsured, or his mortgage being fore- 
 closed. 
 
 In this way the life of the scholar at Cambridge is, on 
 the outside, void of all ease or poetry. It is a hard, up-
 
 94 On the Cam. 
 
 hill labour, a hand-to-hand fight though the prospect 
 from the mountain is extensive, and the conqueror's laurel 
 a true evergreen. And one word let me say in mitigation. 
 All that is wanted is, in spite of all this, that the prospec- 
 tive senior wrangler, or chancellor's medallist, should take 
 a firm, manly stand at once. If he boldly announces what 
 he can and will do, and then goes to work and does it, 
 be the standard ever so high or so low, he will have every 
 facility offered on the way, hearty congratulation if he 
 succeeds, and kind condolence if he fails. If he have some 
 little taste for music or debating, <fcc. if he stick to it, and 
 do it well, he will be praised and shown off to his heart's 
 content. And, finally, if he is a man of great general 
 ability, if he can distinguish himself in sevei-al lines, he will 
 be applauded to the skies, and his name handed down in 
 the Freshman's Iliad for ever. 
 
 The same remarks that I have made about scholarship 
 being a specialty and a business, apply equally to all the 
 other pursuits of the University, to the rowing, the cricket- 
 ing, and the other amusements. They are all taken up 
 as by professionals and connoisseurs, are all worked on with 
 might and main. The result of this is a tremendous de- 
 velopment of activity among all the young men at Cam- 
 bridge. I can truly say, that all the time I was there, I 
 never knew but one English student whom I could really 
 call lazy. There were plenty who did nothing but their 
 own pleasure, but they worked at that pleasure so hard, 
 that to call them lazy was cruel injustice. This one in- 
 dividual would indeed be a model of laziness to any nation ; 
 but even he, after putting off the preparation for his degree 
 far too long, took hold at the very last with an energy and 
 concentration truly marvellous, and came to a very satis- 
 factory result. 
 
 There are various disadvantages in this system which 
 would be serious objections to its introduction into our 
 American University ; but they are disadvantages arising 
 from the English character and habits, not recognized, and
 
 On the Cam. 95 
 
 perhaps not acting as disadvantages in England, and not 
 peculiar to Cambridge. I shall, therefore, reserve the 
 consideration of them till I speak in a subsequent lecture 
 of the relations in which Cambridge stands to England. 
 
 O 
 
 In closing to-night my account of Cambridge studies, and 
 the first division of my lectures, I desire to end with words 
 of commendation. The task is not difficult ; it is rather 
 difficult to know where to stop commending. But I believe 
 I shall leave you with the most correct idea of what a 
 mighty power Cambridge is, by pointing out three great 
 advantages she has derived from her system of study. 
 
 From the subjects of study pursued in her halls have 
 been moulded all her forms of thought and her tone of mind 
 for many centuries. I have already endeavoured to bring 
 out the admirable adaptation of Cambridge studies to 
 strengthen and train the mind. But they are perhaps 
 stih 1 more valuable as a means of directing the mind in its 
 subsequent pursuits to a lofty tone of thought. The minds 
 of men differ as their bodies, marvellous genius, like 
 dazzling beauty, may spring up in the rudest spots, and all 
 the floods of study and sound learning may in vain beat on 
 the rock of brutishness. But taking man as he is, it is 
 impossible that any one of ordinary powers, brought up in 
 a classic atmosphere, contemplating classic models, and 
 taught in classic literature, should fail in refinement and 
 purity of thought, in conciseness and elegance of diction, 
 or that he should be habitually the victim of the crudities 
 and shallowness that so infest our untrained modern students. 
 And on the other hand, no one can have truly devoted 
 himself to the immutable foundations, and the ever-rising 
 structure of mathematics, without having his mind imbued 
 to the end of his life with these two all-conquering princi- 
 ples, stability and progress. Such has been the history 
 of Cambridge. Firm in her basis, convenient and elegant 
 in her design, she has been broad and high in her expan- 
 sion ; or, to change the metaphor, in order to plant her 
 pickets close, to dig her trenches deep, she has not dis-
 
 96 On the Cam. 
 
 dained the humble axe and spade ; the armour on her 
 Amazonian limbs is bright with gold and jewels and sheeny 
 steel, and plays and glances with every movement of her 
 frame ; but when the day of battle comes, and she un- 
 sheathes her maiden sword, the lightning flash of its blade 
 dazzles and blinds the trembling eyes of sin, and the 
 trenchant edge deals wounds and death like hail among 
 the alien hosts of Falsehood. 
 
 Again : the system of competition in all her studies has 
 thrown into the men of Cambridge a common spirit and 
 energy rarely seen even among young men. All the work 
 is done in the eyes of a great cloud of witnesses by whom 
 the scholar is encompassed ; they are marking every step 
 of progress, and comparing it with their own. He is not 
 studying alone and unnoticed ; he has a thousand lion- 
 hearted youths to encourage, to sympathize, to assist, to 
 conquer ; their work is his ; their recreation is his ; their 
 cares are his ; their warfare is his. And thus when Cam- 
 bridge men act in the world, it is not as scattered indi- 
 viduals, not as divided factionists, miscalled confederations, 
 but as one great band of brothers. They know each 
 others' power, they have measured each others' strength, 
 they have felt each others' blows ; each knows where his 
 brother can assist him, or where he must assist his 
 brother. And thus this great principle of rivalry, so in- 
 rooted in all the great crafts where man is wont to exer- 
 cise himself, not only stimulates and energizes the student, 
 but unites and vivifies the great body of graduates, who, 
 when their warfare is over, unite to carry through the 
 world the honour and glory of their Alma Mater. 
 
 But it is from the last element in her system of study, 
 the element of individual action, that each student shall 
 choose his own course for himself, and carry it out by 
 himself, that Cambridge derives her peculiar strength 
 and power. It is by this that her student obtains a sense 
 of personal duty in his work that nothing else can give. 
 There is no compulsion on him ; no task-work. Silently
 
 On the Cam. 97 
 
 arc the doors of the mother's temple thrown open ; if he 
 will, he may enter, and take his place with the initiated. 
 If, therefore, he choose to enter, rather than remain with 
 the jesting throng without, it is for his honour and his 
 conscience to carry out the noble work he has undertaken. 
 If he fail aright to gain the mystic secret, if, when the 
 heavens are about to open, and the revelation of the tender 
 goddess to descend, he mar the ceremony with words or 
 acts of ill-omen, when the minister thrusts him from 
 the temple, he will see the sad faces of the worshippers 
 turned to him, saying plainer than words, " Thou thyself 
 would'st have it so." It is this spirit of individual obliga- 
 tion that has carried the men of Cambridge to such glory. 
 Whether it be Bacon, selecting all knowledge for his 
 province ; or Cromwell, standing alone against the bigotry 
 of the Commons, the plots of the Cavaliers, and the 
 hatred of Europe ; or Milton, seeing in blindness, in 
 poverty, in obloquy, the visions which none other saw, and 
 making it his chosen work to justify the ways of God to 
 men ; or Newton, dashing at a blow all the nice systems 
 of the world concocted by French subtlety ; or Paley, 
 alone daring to strike at the towering spires of serpentine 
 infidelity ; or Pitt, holding to the supreme power, when 
 yet a boy, against the incensed senate ; or Macaulay, 
 fighting for truth and justice, against the entire fanaticism 
 and malice of Scotland ; still throughout the earth are 
 sounding the mighty footsteps of the sons of Cambridge, 
 treading fearlessly in their chosen course, like the hero of 
 old, for the star of their mother points the way.
 
 V. 
 LIFE OF AN UNDERGRADUATE REGULAR. 
 
 Trinity College selected as the Type. Dinner in Hall. College 
 Kitchen and Courtyard. Union Society. Vespers on a 
 Saint's Day. A Student's Evening. A Breakfast Party. 
 Treatment of Younger by Older Classes. Private Tutor. A 
 Walk. 
 
 N my lectures hitherto I have brought to 
 your notice the objects, methods, and in- 
 centives to study at the University of Cam- 
 bridge, and considered how far these were 
 compulsory on the undergraduate, and to 
 a certain extent what was their effect upon him. In short, 
 I have tried to give the University from the point of view 
 of the authorities. I propose in the five following lectures to 
 take it up from the student's point of view, and consider 
 what is the life of the young men at Cambridge, and what 
 position they have taken in the world after leaving it ; in 
 other words, what manner of men are there now, and what 
 manner of men have been there in years past. 
 
 If I were to attempt a theoretical description of student- 
 life at Cambridge, laying down accurately wherein it 
 resembles and wherein it contradicts the system of Ameri- 
 can or German Universities, I should be at a loss where to 
 begin or end. The simplest method will be to take up the 
 life of the student practically, to pass a day with an
 
 On the Cam. 99 
 
 undergraduate. Let us, then, to-night see what a Cam- 
 bridge man does in the course of an ordinary day's expe- 
 rience, and on Friday we will go with him to some of his 
 more exceptional duties and pleasures, which, when they 
 occur, rather conflict with the ordinary passage of events. 
 In the course of this little friendly visit, the explanations 
 of various technical points will occur more naturally than 
 if we attempted to reduce them to a philosophical system. 
 Our new acquaintance, then, is a pensioner of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, in his second year. Pensioner is the 
 name given to the great mass of students who pay for 
 their board and lodging, and are in no way on the foun- 
 dation of the College. I have chosen Trinity as the typical 
 college for several reasons. In the first place it is the 
 largest, having more than twice as many residents as the 
 next largest. In the second place, it contains undergra- 
 duates of all tastes ; science and literature are almost 
 equally pursued there, and, in almost all cases, it stands 
 at the head of all the athletic and sporting interests. 
 Furthermore, it was my college. The first thing every 
 Englishman, and particularly every Cambridge man, does 
 after you are introduced to him is to ask you to dinner. 
 We will, therefore, take a plain dinner with our friend in 
 the hall of Trinity at four o'clock, p. M. The hall is an 
 immense structure, of the age of James I, a hundred feet 
 long, forty wide, and fifty high. Its high -peaked roof 
 shows exposed the quaintly-ornamental rafters of massive 
 oak, and the open lantern at the top allows the pigeons to 
 fly in and out at all hours. The floor is of solid stone, 
 though raised many feet above the ground. The walls are 
 wainscoted up to their full height, and covered with por- 
 traits of the great men and benefactors of Trinity. The 
 lofty Tudor windows, especially where, at the upper end, 
 a species of transept opens right and left into two gor- 
 geous oriels, are decorated with coats-of-arms of the peers 
 and bishops that Trinity has nurtured. Conspicuous at 
 the upper end is blazoned, in gilded wood, the arms of
 
 100 On the Cam. 
 
 England, France, and Ireland, and beneath the motto of 
 the Virgin Queen, the triumphant " Semper Eadem." 
 Eight beneath this protecting ensign is raised a double 
 dais, whereon athwart the hall are spread the tables for the 
 high and mighty. Below, five ranges of tables extend the 
 whole length of the hall, of oak, solid as the stone floor 
 itself, with benches' to correspond, while in the centre is 
 the quaint apparatus for warming, an ancient open pan or 
 brazier, piled up from November till May with live coals, 
 and expelling the colder air from the whole vast apart- 
 ment. Our friend is seated with his compeers at one of 
 the benches in the centre of the hall. You observe that 
 they have all placed their square caps beneath their seats, 
 not a very good place, it must be confessed, for an 
 article easily bent and broken, and, indeed, the academic 
 dress is seldom in good preservation. They all retain 
 their gown, which here is made of serge, and of a deep 
 blue colour, by which Trinity is distinguished, each college 
 adopting its own form of the general type. At Oxford 
 there is no such distinction. The gown is a graceful and 
 light affair. A Bachelor of Arts in every college has a 
 black one of a little fuller pattern, with two black ribbons 
 in front. A Master of Arts has a gown more ample still, 
 while a Doctor of Divinity or Law rustles in full-blown 
 splendour like the head of the Church. 
 
 Our friend remains standing for a few moments while 
 two of the authorities read alternately a Latin grace, 
 and then the work of destruction begins. The dinner 
 this day is rather better than usual, for it happens to be 
 dedicated to one of the great saints in the English calen- 
 dar, and on the saints' days poultry and ducks are irnme- 
 morially added to the ordinary masses of beef and mutton. 
 The carving, or rather the hacking, is very rough. Every- 
 body is in a tremendous heat and steam, particularly the 
 waiters, who are on the look out that too much shall not be 
 eaten. For observe here one of the exquisite abuses and 
 vested rights by which the English Universities are eaten
 
 On the Cam. 101 
 
 up ; the ample dinner in hall is not provided by the col- 
 lege authorities. The army of servants, gyps, bed-makers, 
 <fcc, contract to supply so much meat to the college cook ; * 
 he sends it up to table, and all that is left, which, pro- 
 perly husbanded by an intelligent artiste, would furnish 
 half the next day's meal, goes back as perquisites to the 
 original proprietors. So day after day you see on the 
 table nothing but vast joints of beef, mutton, and pork, 
 except when a blessed saint's day brings poultry. A few 
 luxuries like soup can be had by paying extra. 
 
 The college is so immense, five hundred and twenty- 
 five undergraduates, that even this monstrous hall will not 
 contain them all. There is, therefore, two-thirds of the 
 year, a second dinner for the Freshmen, equally hot and 
 good, but at the less convenient hour of five. But even 
 with this, the pushing, fighting, hacking over joints, in a 
 scene where the attendance is of the roughest, the eating 
 of the plainest, no regular seats are assigned, and such 
 little niceties as napkins are unknown, make the college 
 hall of Trinity pretty dismal, except for a very hungry 
 man. If eight or ten friends, however, agree to be punc- 
 tual, and always get the same places, they can do very 
 well. On one side of the room is a table where the fare 
 is a good deal neater, if not better, and the attendance 
 more abundant and quiet. It is that of the foundation 
 scholars, the best students of their year, who receive this 
 dinner gratis on condition of extra regularity at chapel. 
 Still further up on the same side is the table for the 
 Bachelors of Arts. Here the fare and attendance are 
 
 * There is abundance, but served with savage roughness; and 
 there can be no doubt that the whole system of the Trinity dinners 
 is disgraceful, and demands a thorough reform. Consider the num- 
 bers who pay for their dinner every day whether they dine or not, 
 and what Epicurean banquets a club or regimental messman would 
 provide with such funds at his disposal ! Not that an undergraduate 
 requires luxury, but he really ought to dine like a gentleman, not 
 be fed like a pig. ED.
 
 102 On the Cam. 
 
 very decidedly improved ; wine is provided, and certain 
 rules are adopted to secure order and quiet. And above, 
 on the dais, at those tables athwart the hall, contemplate 
 with me, if you please, the magnificence of that dinner. It 
 is the Fellows' table that you see ; the table where those 
 who are no longer undergraduates, no longer bachelors, 
 but are resting in the unequalled glory of Masters of Arts 
 and fellows of the college, in the plenitude of their full- 
 sleeved gowns, are enjoying one of the very best dinners 
 ever put on a table. On the festival of a saint, when it is 
 known that the fare will be something quite surpassing, 
 each fellow generally asks one or two guests, and happy 
 are those who get such invitation. In sober earnest 
 since the fellows are a good deal shut out from the world 
 and female society, and are living a regular monastic life, 
 they are determined to have the very best dinner they can 
 for their money. Notice those five or six young men in 
 blue cloth gowns, ornamented with a profusion of silver 
 lace, who are sitting with the fellows. They are under- 
 graduates called fellow-commoners, who have the privilege 
 of sitting in hall and chapel with the fellows on condition 
 of wearing this very conspicuous gown, of paying nomi- 
 nally twice, and really three times as much for all college 
 expenses, and of renouncing all claim to scholarships and 
 fellowships. At the other colleges, the position of fellow- 
 commoner is chiefly reserved for elderly men, who study 
 for the Church late in life, who would not enjoy mixing 
 with undergraduates, and who are very often married men. 
 At Trinity, however, the fellow-commoners are generally 
 young men of rank and fortune, who want to get the most 
 for their money. You will notice also a couple of young 
 men near the head of the table, evidently undergraduates, 
 but still in the full master's gown. They are noblemen, 
 or the eldest sons of noblemen, and have literally to pay 
 four times as much for all regular college expenses, and 
 are fleeced in a hundred other ways. 
 
 But your attention is attracted to the lower part of the
 
 On the Cam. 103 
 
 hall, what is that large silver vessel going from hand to 
 hand ? It is an immense drinking cup, filled with a pecu- 
 liar brand of strong ale, brewed by the college, and known 
 as Audit, because every year a new tap is broached on the 
 day when the accounts are audited. It is only produced on 
 these few special days in the hall, and is greatly sought after. 
 A slight scrimmage you will observe arises between our 
 friend and his neighbour, founded on an accusation that our 
 acquaintance had both the last draught of the exhausted cup 
 and its first when replenished. The joints of meat and 
 poultry are now cleared away, except where a few stragglers 
 who have come in very late are endeavouring to extract some 
 comfort out of a sadly torn and plundered leg of mutton. 
 They are succeeded by atolcrable stock of plain puddings and 
 pies, the scholars having the glorious privilege of selecting 
 their own second course. All this time two college ser- 
 vants have been walking up and down the hall, pricking 
 off on two long written not printed lists the names of 
 all present. Observe the gesture of the marker at this 
 moment. There is an undergraduate at the open door of 
 the hall, raising his cap to attract attention. The marker 
 nods and marks him, as being there, though not wishing 
 to stay and dine. Above where this youth has just ap- 
 peared, our friend's notice is drawn right in the middle of 
 his ale, by sarcastic remarks to the effect that he is under 
 scrutiny. Sure enough, in the gallery opening into the 
 hall above the door are a large party of ladies and gentle- 
 men, paying a visit to Trinity College, and stopping to 
 look down and see the animals fed. There, through at 
 last. Our friend is off like a shot. He does not wait for 
 the final grace. This is not read by the fellows them- 
 selves, they are too much overcome by their exertions to 
 be thankful, so two of the scholars are obliged to wait long 
 after they have got through their own in order to return 
 thanks for the fellows' dinner. 
 
 As our friend leaves the hall, he stops in the passage just 
 outside the door to read the notices posted upon the open
 
 104 On the Cam. 
 
 screen that cuts off this passage. He sees that W. H. 
 Stone has won the college prize for Alcaics ; the Professor 
 of Moral Philosophy begins his lectures next Wednesday ; 
 Professor Harold Browne of Emmanuel will preach next 
 Sunday in Great St. Mary's, the University Church ; and 
 the Trinity Cricket Club will meet for choice of officers. 
 His next step is down a low archway into the great college 
 kitchen. Here the old institution of a smoke-jack is in 
 perfection, roasting scores of joints and whole coops of 
 poultry at once. High up on the old stone walls are two 
 insignia of the kitchen ; one apparently the shell of a vast 
 turtle, presage of good cheer ; the other the ancient arms 
 of the college, the English Lion and Roses, and the grand 
 old motto, that has sustained the sons of Trinity through 
 many a hard contest with wickedness in high places, 
 " Virtue is the true nobility."* Our friend steps into a 
 little office at the side of the kitchen, and gives a modest 
 order. The whole cookery business of a college at Cam- 
 bridge is really an institution. Each college has its staff 
 of excellent cooks who not only serve the public dinner in 
 the hall, but also furnish meals and provisions ready cooked 
 on any scale of magnificence or simplicity to members of 
 the college. Considering the superior quality of the food 
 and cookery, and the promptness with which it is served, 
 the prices charged are by no means exorbitant. A gra- 
 duate, bachelor, or master of arts, can order any amount 
 he likes, merely by signing his name. An undergraduate 
 is confined within certain limits ; but a special order signed 
 by his tutor supersedes these, and these tutor's orders for 
 breakfast, dinner, and supper are accorded with very great 
 liberality. Having requested the cook to send in a pair 
 of cold fowls and a tongue in the course of the evening, 
 our friend retraces his steps, and passes out into the 
 courtyard. 
 
 * " Virtus vera nobilitas."
 
 On the Cam. 105 
 
 The Old Court of Trinity is one of the most splendid 
 monuments at Cambridge. It is far the largest academic 
 courtyard in England, being an irregular square of over 
 two acres in extent. On the west side are the hall, with a 
 few plain modern buildings, containing the kitchen, <fcc, in 
 connection with it, and also a beautiful bit of battlemented 
 Tudor architecture, the Master's Lodge, or residence of 
 the head of the College. On the north is a small row of 
 plain buildings, of the time of the Stuarts, occupied by 
 some of the dignitaries, and a fine old gateway, whereon is 
 a statue of Edward III, founder of King's Hall, the germ 
 of Trinity College ; beneath him is the motto, " Pugna pro 
 patria," and still lower the proud announcement, " Tertius 
 Edvardus, fama super aethera notus." Above him is a 
 clock, which strikes every hour twice. The members of 
 the neighbouring College of St. John's complaining that 
 Trinity clock struck too loud, a second movement was 
 added which struck in a softer note, and they were per- 
 fectly satisfied. The chapel, a long, ugly piece of modern 
 pseudo-Gothic, completes the side. The east and south 
 sides are occupied by a long series of very comfortable 
 lodging apartments, the main walls of the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth, when all the students are understood to have 
 had beds arranged throughout the length of one or 
 two long dormitories ; therefore the partitions are more re- 
 cent. In the rear of one side is access to the lecture- 
 rooms, and exactly opposite the Master's Lodge stands the 
 main gateway, surmounted by Henry VIII. without and 
 James I. within. Every one of these suites of rooms teems 
 with recollections of the great men who have lived there. 
 But suffice it to mention one single staircase, leading to six 
 sets of rooms. In that have lived successively Sir Isaac 
 Newton, Lord Lyndhurst, Macaulay, Thackeray, and Ten- 
 nyson. The centre of the court is divided into six plots of 
 the velvet turf of England, clipped and rolled to the last 
 degree of softness. It is a high offence for any one under 
 the degree of master of arts to walk on the grass. In the
 
 106 On the Cam. 
 
 centre is a grand old fountain under a magnificent canopy 
 of ornamented stone-work, near it one of Troughton's 
 curious sun-dials. But our friend has seen all these 
 things again and again. He hurries through the gateway. 
 As he stops to speak to the porter, does he reflect that the 
 rooms over his head were Lord Bacon's ? 
 
 He passes out into the crooked, narrow, busy Trinity 
 Street. It is full of brilliant shops and dingy lodging- 
 houses. Immediately opposite the gate stands the entrance 
 to the last new Court of Trinity, a gift of the present 
 honoured head of the College. A few rods through Trinity 
 Street bring him to Green Street, and up the steps of the 
 Union Society. The Union Societies of Cambridge and 
 Oxford are exceedingly characteristic institutions. They 
 are open to the whole body of the University. Anybody 
 can join who likes, without the formality of an election, 
 That at Cambridge contains a very well stocked reading- 
 room, good library, and convenient writing-room. All the 
 popular newspapers and periodicals are found there. Its 
 five hundred members making constant use of it from day 
 to day, never, perhaps, writing a note out of its rooms, or 
 reading for amusement anything not supplied by it, are 
 yet to a vast extent wholly careless of who controls it, or 
 what it does as a society. Its active working in all the 
 points I mention is in the hands of two managing clerks. 
 They are overseen by a board of officers, chosen every 
 term from among the whole body of members, graduates 
 and undergraduates. For these offices, in an American 
 college, the competition would be terrific, the canvassing 
 incessant, and the meeting for business most stormy. 
 Scarce anything of this is known at Cambridge. All the 
 officei's are frequently elected without opposition term after 
 term. A contested election twice a year is a very large 
 allowance. And hardly anybody cares about the business- 
 working of the society. When a contested election does 
 arise, it is generally on some point like college rivalry, 
 wholly apart from the real business.
 
 On the Cam. 107 
 
 The debates excite a little more interest. Every Tues- 
 day evening a debate is held in the large reading-room, on 
 some subject previously announced. Any one is at liberty 
 to propose a subject ; but there is so little eagerness to 
 assume this post, that it generally falls on the officers to 
 find somebody to bell the cat, or else do it themselves. 
 I should very willingly give you a little abstract of one of 
 these debates, if there were anything to abstract ; but their 
 general character is beneath contempt ; once in a while 
 there is an animated discussion, still less often a good 
 speaker, and on very rare occasions a full house.* English- 
 men are not commonly orators ; they consider public speak- 
 ing as much a specialty, a gift of individuals, as acting or 
 concert-singing, and, in truth, the orator is put very much 
 on the same level. Several causes have conspired to raise 
 in Cambridge, more even than in the rest of England, a con- 
 tempt for rhetoric. It is considered a jugglery, a cheat, 
 something contraband, which a gentleman and a scholar 
 had better keep clear of. Even when a Cambridge un- 
 dergraduate does consent to express his views in public, 
 it is in a deprecatory style, as who should say, " Don't tell 
 of me." I have heard a man, acute, well-informed, lively, 
 rise to speak on a question he understood and had studied, 
 and on which he wanted and intended to speak, in a house 
 that respected and liked him, with a subtle but shallow 
 antagonist to oppose, and in the certainty of a strong 
 cause ; and his exordium was in this style. " Mr. Presi- 
 dent, I didn't mean to speak to-night, and I haven't 
 much to say. I don't intend to trouble the House long ; 
 but, really, the last speaker didn't seem to me to know 
 what the discussion is about at all. I don't think he un- 
 
 * Mr. Everett must remember one or two exceptionally crowded 
 bouses, when he himself went down to denounce " The Times," or 
 support the cause of the North. But the period of his residence 
 was not a brilliant one for oratory; some ten years before the Cam- 
 bridge Union could boast of several eloquent, and one most hu- 
 morous speaker. ED.
 
 108 On the. Cam. 
 
 derstood the question, because," <fcc. &c. And all this is 
 not like the phrases we are so much accustomed to : " Sir, 
 it is with no premeditated speech that I rise to address 
 this assembly," <fcc, which, delivered as glibly as a school- 
 declamation of " Spartacus," causes about as much illusion 
 in our minds. My friend really and truly hadn't prepared 
 anything ; he didn't mean to detain the house ; his rising 
 that night was merely because conscience, reason, sense, 
 spirit, had temporarily prevailed in the life-long fight with 
 habit and prejudice which bade him avoid all such public 
 performances. But they could not prevail far enough to 
 give dignity to his manner, life to his voice, and spirit to 
 his diction. Therefore I can give you no better idea of 
 the Union debates than by leaving them undescribed. In 
 general, they are death itself. There comes every now 
 and then a season when a few active souls stir the Union 
 into life. But even then the animation cannot create the habit 
 of good speaking, to which the whole genius of the place is 
 opposed ; and the most intelligent audiences of Cambridge 
 young men, always professing the most thorough contempt 
 for rhetoric, are habitually carried off their feet by the 
 most worn-out claptrap. There are two subjects Avhich 
 never fail to rouse the flagging interest, and produce lively, 
 if not eloquent debates. One is anything connected with 
 the ecclesiastical establishment of England ; the other, any 
 question of the immediate management of College and 
 University. The foreign affairs of Europe and America 
 are tolerably suggestive ; literature, science, and philoso- 
 phy, dead weights. 
 
 But we have been leaving our friend an unconscionable 
 time on the Union steps ; to be sure he has been discussing 
 whether Davis will win the University scholarship next year ; 
 and this all-absorbing topic of interest for the classical 
 students at Cambridge is enough to excuse any delay or im- 
 politeness. But now he bounds up, and rushes into the read- 
 ing-room, for he missed the paper this morning. As he takes 
 up the " Times," and subsides into a very comfortable arm-
 
 On the Cam. 109 
 
 chair, he casually asks his neighbour, " If the Yankees have 
 got another drubbing ?" but, before he can get an answer, 
 his eye catches the telegram of the battle of Chattanooga, 
 and he does not repeat the question.* The "Times" is 
 soon discussed, a couple of other papers skimmed over, two 
 or three magazines ditto, and a couple of letters written 
 and posted. By this time, the deep-toned chapel bell of 
 Trinity is beginning to sound loud in his ears, and he re- 
 flects that a slight neglect of the religious services, in the 
 early part of the week, will necessitate attendance to-night. 
 It being, as we have said, a saint's day, he repairs to his 
 room. It is in Letter D, New Court. There are now 
 four courts in Trinity, the Old or Great, Neville's, the 
 New, about thirty-five years old, and the Master's. He 
 crosses the Great Court, defiles past the entrance of the 
 hall, and emerging in the Neville's Court, slips through a 
 portion of the cloisters, and under an archway into the 
 New Court. Already he sees the stream of white sur- 
 plices filing from every staircase ; for at service on Saturday 
 evening, Sundays, and saints' days, every member of the 
 college, except the noblemen, has to appear in a white 
 surplice, as though he were about to read the service. He 
 enters the door over which the letter D is painted, the 
 staircases, or, as we should say at Harvard, entries, being 
 lettered. His room is gained, gown dashed off and sur- 
 plice donned. 'Another run across the court; plenty of 
 time, though, the service does not begin till a quarter of 
 an hour after the bell. He enters the chapel, a narrow, 
 inconvenient building, of very slight architectural merit. 
 It is divided, like all the college chapels in England, into 
 two parts, by a screen of oak, above which is the organ. 
 The ante-chapel contains some fine stained windows : the 
 memorial tablets of many fellows of Trinity who are 
 buried there ; and three glorious statues. Eight and left 
 of the passage, through the screen, are those of Barrow 
 
 This Lecture was delivered January 26, 1864.
 
 110 On the Cam. 
 
 and Bacon, and near the entrance is Koubiliac's master- 
 piece the statue of Isaac Newton, with the motto, " Qui 
 genus Tiumanum ingenio superavit." 
 
 But our friend has seen all this before. He does not 
 stop to notice it ; nor the beautiful carving of Gibbons with 
 which the chapel itself is filled. At the upper end is the 
 communion-table, raise d on three high steps ; along each 
 side of the remainder run two tiers of raised seats, the 
 masters of arts and fellow-commoners occupying the highest, 
 the bachelors of arts, choristers, and undergraduate scholars 
 the second. The seats for the body of the students are 
 hard benches, with very flat apologies for cushions, not to 
 sit, but kneel upon, arranged lengthwise throughout the 
 body of the chapel and chancel. On one of these our 
 friend seats himself, and watches the white crowd pour in. 
 The bachelors of arts wear hoods, trimmed, with white 
 swansdown, hanging down their backs ; the masters, hoods, 
 of black and white silk, and the doctors, scarlet. Presently 
 pour in the two rows of chorister-boys, who take the treble 
 parts ; there are six of these on each side, together with 
 half the number of adult male singers. The effect of these 
 eighteen voices is very good, and the responsive parts are 
 beautiful. There enter the venerable head of the college, 
 ushered to a high seat next the door ; follow him the two 
 deans, officers who attend to the police-work of the col- 
 lege, taking their seats on high, behind the choristers. 
 The chaplain rises at the upper end. The evening service 
 of the Church of England is performed, in a manner which 
 seems very hurried to an American ; but which soon 
 appears in very favourable contrast to the drawl so common 
 here. As the " General Confession" is begun, see how 
 every undergraduate rises from his seat, turns round, and 
 bodily kneels ; neither sits nor bows, nor any compromising 
 posture. The musical part of the service is very good. 
 The Psalms are chanted responsively, and to very beautiful 
 tunes. The lessons from the Bible are always read by 
 some member of the college proper or foundation ; to-night
 
 On the Cam. Ill 
 
 being a saint's day, by a fellow, on Saturdays and Sundays 
 by a bachelor scholar, on weekdays by an undergraduate 
 scholar. This is a very pleasing part of the service, and 
 greatly interests the young men themselves in it.* All 
 this time the two markers have been pacing up and down 
 the chapel pricking down those who are present. The 
 general bearing of the undergraduates is orderly, except at 
 the extreme upper end, behind the chaplain, which is in- 
 fested with talkers, and called Iniquity Corner. There is 
 always, at the appropriate part of the service, an anthem, 
 adapted from some first-rate composer, and generally very 
 well performed. But to-night it is one of those persistent 
 ones where some refrain, as " Hallelujah," is repeated 
 over and over again, till it seems as if it never would stop. 
 At last, no, just as the whole congregation is going to 
 kneel, the tenor breaks out " Hallelujah" again, the 
 counter-tenor catches it from his lips, follow the bass, and 
 six trebles in full cry " Hallelujah" three times over; and 
 then, after an interminable peal of " Amens," the chaplain 
 begins hurrying through truth obliges me so to say it 
 the last prayers. As the clock strikes seven, he concludes ; 
 and the white crowd pour out. 
 
 At the door of the chapel our friend meets one of his 
 friends, a bachelor fellow. This gentleman was Senior 
 Classic a year ago, and gained his fellowship the first time, 
 so he is a model of scholarship and regularity to every one, 
 and an object of great admiration to the younger members 
 of the college. They stroll together to the fellows' stair- 
 case in the cloisters, and he says, " Come round to tea and 
 whist this evening at nine." The invitation is eagerly 
 accepted, and off runs our friend, for he must get through 
 a good bit of work to-night, and it has struck seven. So, 
 to secure himself from all interruption, he sports the outer 
 door. These outer doors are tremendous constructions of 
 hard wood, opening outwards, and so, when fastened by a 
 
 * We are truly glad to hear this. ED.
 
 112 On the Cam. 
 
 spring-lock, absolutely impenetrable without a key. When 
 shut to the}' are said to be sported. Within this barri- 
 cade our friend's domain consists of a front room about 
 fourteen feet by thirteen, looking into the court-yard, a 
 back room not quite as wide, and a small dark cupboard 
 called a gyp-room, where miscellanea are kept. Into this 
 receptacle he carefully puts the fowls and tongue aforesaid, 
 which he finds have arrived from the kitchen in his absence. 
 As to the internal appearance of the apartment suffice it 
 to say it is a college room, though not, on that account, 
 the carpetless, curtainless den of a bear as we are requested 
 to believe before Gail Hamilton's errata came out. No, 
 it is very comfortable, and all the more from having a 
 good soft-coal* fire in an open grate, instead of that abo- 
 mination, a cast-iron stove. 
 
 Our friend gets out his Plato and Dictionary, and also 
 writing materials. His first work is to prepare some com- 
 position, as it is called. This does not mean an English 
 essay. No, his private tutor has handed him, on a piece 
 of paper, a copy of twenty lines from Dryden's " Palamon 
 and Arcite." This, if you please, he is to translate into 
 Latin Hexameters as near like Virgil as possible. And 
 he will do it too, and it won't take him an hour and a 
 quarter to do the rough copy. And the rest of the time 
 till nine he'll have to read some Plato. And in doing 
 these verses not a shadow of grammar or dictionary will 
 he use, and yet the verses will be very far from bad. So 
 he works away, cheerfully but silently. At about half 
 past eight a rustling is heard in the back room ; the door 
 is opened, and slowly appears an aged grim figure, not 
 unlike the witches in Macbeth, holding a dimly burning 
 lamp. Yet the brave heart of a Cambridge youth never 
 
 * English comforts have evidently entered into the lecturer's 
 soul. Is soft coal so called to distinguish it from the charcoal or 
 coke hurned in stoves, which remains hard and crisp during com- 
 bustion ? Ed.
 
 On the Cam. 113 
 
 quails. He only says, " O, Mrs. Day, breakfast for six 
 tomorrow at nine, please order coffee and muffins at 
 Hattcrsley's." " Very well, sir ;" and the bedmaker, 
 who has entered by a door to which she alone has the key, 
 disappears, laying a funny little twisted note on his table. 
 It requires an immediate answer, and fearing to trust the 
 venerable genius of the apartments with his message, he 
 slips on cap and gown, and hies him to his friend's room 
 just outside the gate. 
 
 As he is hurrying back, nine having already struck, 
 behold a singular scene. A procession is seen advancing, 
 consisting of a master of arts in full academicals, with 
 white tie and bands, and behind two stalwart men, their 
 coats ornamented with a profusion of buttons. The train 
 moves speedily up to an undergraduate without a gown, 
 and in a little jaunty hat. " Are you a member of the 
 University, sir?" says the clergyman, raising his cap 
 politely. " Yes, sir." " Why have you not your acade- 
 mic dress on?" No excuse is apparent. " Your name 
 and college, if you please, sir." " Jones of Trinity Hall." 
 " Jones of Trinity Hall ; I fine you six and eight pence, 
 sir ; remember," to his attendants, " Jones of Trin. 
 Hall, 6s. 8d." and the train goes on. This is proctoriz- 
 inc/ ; the reverend one is a proctor, the attendants are 
 usually called bulldogs. There are two proctors, and two 
 assistant proctors, chosen from the colleges by a peculiar 
 rotation. It is their duty to attend to various University 
 matters, but particularly to parade the streets in this way, 
 with their attendants, reprehending all offences against 
 University discipline or public morality. 
 
 Meanwhile our friend has slipped through the gate and 
 reached his entertainer's rooms in the cloisters. There 
 on the table are many loaves of bread, little pats of butter, 
 each, according to the measure I stated, an inch roll, and 
 sturdy white gallipots of jam, which is eaten wholesale on 
 bread at Cambridge. All this is from the host's private 
 stores. Two or three cups of strong tea are discussed. 
 i
 
 1 14 On the Cam. 
 
 and the party sits down to whist. I can't pretend to give 
 you all their hands, or who won each odd trick ; but I 
 must, at the risk of shocking everybody, say that all Cam- 
 bridge, including the steadiest and most religious men, 
 plays whist and other games for money, though the stakes 
 are generally small. As the night wears on, frequent 
 peals at the gate bell are heard. To explain these it must 
 be noticed, that at sunset all the various entrances into the 
 colleges are shut and locked except the one at the great 
 gate. At ten, this also is locked, but the porter is in his 
 lodge, to let in every one that rings the bell. All entering 
 after lock-up are registered, and a very trifling fine levied 
 for all between ten and twelve. After twelve the chain is 
 put up, and a terrible blowing up is the consequence of 
 coming in later. If repeated, the results are serious, 
 though in no way affecting the rank in scholarship. 
 
 As twelve approaches these peals come louder and thicker, 
 then voices are heard perhaps rather uproarious, our 
 friends break up their party. The night is so lovely, that 
 two or three of them cannot resist pacing up and down the 
 old cloisters, whose echo sounds like the step of a comrade, 
 or along the flagged path in the great court, where the 
 fountain plashes ceaselessly all night long. O these walks 
 in Trinity Court at night ! Those whose feet once kept pace 
 with mine are pacing the deck of the Indian steamer, or 
 mounting guard on the battlements of Fort William, or 
 treading wearily the narrow rooms of many a school and 
 parsonage all over England, and some have found rest at 
 last. But never did lighter feet echo to lighter hearts 
 than along the gray flagstones of the courts of Trinity. 
 Our friend at length seeks his chamber, the fire is happily 
 not out, and he sinks upon an exceedingly comfortable bed. 
 
 At about half past six he is aroused to consciousness by 
 allusions to the hour and morning chapel. It is from his 
 gyp, who thinks it proper his master should attend. " No, 
 thank you, Stacey," is the groan from under the bedclothes. 
 " Don't forget breakfast at nine." Finally, after a roll or
 
 On the Cam. 115 
 
 two, about a quarter past seven he rises, and from his bed- 
 room window contemplates the prospect. A beautiful old 
 lawn, still of England's velvety softness, varied by broad 
 walks under lines of old trees, on the left is the college 
 brewery, and on the right the Trinity bridge is visible. 
 But what he thinks of is the December fog coming right 
 up the river as thick as a Scotch mist, and freezing him 
 to the bones to look at. In a few minutes, however, he 
 is seated in his front room at a nice fire, duly made for him, 
 observe, by the bedmaker. To her he hands a slip of 
 paper, it is an order on the kitchen. He then looks 
 over and corrects the Latin verses of last night, and reads 
 a little more Plato ; thus securing a good hour and more 
 of work before breakfast. At half past eight he moves his 
 work to another table, for now his bedmaker enters and 
 proceeds to lay the cloth, together with knives, forks, <fec, 
 all from his own stores. Nine o'clock strikes, a great 
 rattle outside ; enter a boy bearing a waiter covered with 
 green baize, green baize taken off discloses cups, saucers, 
 and spoons for six ; large coffee-pot, full of first-rate hot 
 coffee, cream, sugar, and hot milk to correspond, two 
 covered plates of muffins. These, be it observed, are 
 supplied from the grocer's, outside the college walls. 
 
 Knock, " Come in ;" enter first guest, who throws 
 down cap and gown in a corner, and proceeds to warm 
 himself, or look out of the window. Notice the court full 
 of strong men clad in white, carrying heavy blue wooden 
 trays on their heads. They are the cook's men, bringing 
 the breakfasts from the college kitchens to such as order 
 them. Observe, these hot breakfasts, ordered from the 
 grocer's and kitchens, are exceptional affairs ; generally, 
 every one contents himself with bread and butter, from 
 the college butteries, a different place from the kitchens, 
 and coffee or tea made by himself in his own rooms. One 
 of these cooks is seen approaching Letter D. Then tramp, 
 tramp, like the horse in Don Giovanni, and crash, the 
 heavy tray let down on the landing. Delicately are fried
 
 116 On the Cam. 
 
 soles, grilled fowl, and curried sausages extracted and set 
 down to warm before the fire, where a stack of plates has 
 been undergoing that operation for half an hour. 
 
 The rest of the guests soon assemble. They are five in 
 all ; two in their second year, like the host, and three 
 freshmen. Three freshmen invited by a second year man ! 
 Yes. They are of course new to the college. And hav- 
 ing some acquaintance with one of them, having been to 
 school with the brother of the second, and having already 
 met the third at a friend's rooms, the host thinks it his 
 duty, as a gentleman and a student, to show them this 
 hospitality and every attention he can. For the knowledge 
 how to furnish his rooms, <fcc, a new-comer almost always 
 depends on a friend of advanced standing ; in a great 
 measure his only acquaintances, except his schoolfellows, 
 for many weeks, are older men, and in short, throughout 
 his freshman year, an undergraduate looks to those of the 
 years above him for assistance, advice, and attention of 
 every kind. 
 
 Young men of Harvard ! Do you recognize such a 
 picture ? Does a new-comer to your college, just leav- 
 ing home, just fresh from school, just quitting boyhood, 
 thrown into a strange place, with a journey to pursue, a 
 way to make he knows nothing of, among new faces, new 
 scenes, new occupations, does he find advice, assistance, 
 attentions, friendship from those in the year above him ? 
 Do they seek him out on a slight acquaintance, and endea- 
 vour to make his path easier? I am ready to hide my 
 face with shame, when I think of the contrast. I am 
 a'.most ready to renounce my countrymen, when I think 
 how I, and a hundred freshmen with me, and ten thousand 
 before and after, have been received at Cambridge and 
 Oxford by men belonging to the nation, whose shyness 
 and indisposition to court acquaintance have grown into a 
 proverb. For I remember, I see now the despicable 
 substitute at our own colleges, for this truly gentlemanly, 
 noble, Christian behaviour. I see the laws of politeness, of
 
 On the Cam. 117 
 
 decency, of the land itself, habitually broken ; sometimes 
 ludicrously, sometimes tragically, but never from any better 
 motive, than that which, beyond the college walls, con- 
 demns the character of a man in any society, fondness for 
 practical joking. I have seen these silly, cowardly, black- 
 guardly practices, known at one college or another by some 
 miserable cant name, carried out year after year in one 
 form or another, any one of which practised three miles 
 from college would subject its perpetrator to fine and im- 
 prisonment ; and practised on the most defenceless, the 
 most inexperienced, the most timid of the academic com- 
 munity, and because they are defenceless, inexperienced, 
 and timid, not because they have raised a finger to pro- 
 voke a single insult or outrage. 
 
 And yet our colleges claim to surpass the community in 
 a high tone of feeling, yet our students fill pages of a 
 magazine, and spout reams of verses about " generosity," 
 ' kindliness," " the nobility of the student character," and 
 they leave their debating society, where these fine senti- 
 ments have been applauded to the echo, to indulge the 
 pleasures of a baby, after the manner of a New York fire- 
 man. And I put together the two pictures of English and 
 American students, and, with all my love for Harvard, my 
 heart sinks in despair. 
 
 And yet, not so ; for I do believe the time will come 
 when this shall be done away with ; * I believe there are to 
 be students of our colleges, who, when they have ended 
 their own course as freshmen, will begin a new era of 
 protection, of generosity, of friendship, to their successors. 
 If such there are, as I fervently trust there may be, within 
 
 * Mr. Everett lias all the better ground for this hope, that, a vast 
 improvement has taken place in this respect at the University 
 which he holds up as a model, within the last twenty years. We 
 remember the time when practical joking 1 was carried to great 
 lengths at one or two of the smaller colleges, and even knew a 
 morbidly sensitive man who pined and died in consequence of the 
 treatment he received. ED.
 
 118 On the Cam. 
 
 the sound of my voice, let me urge them, as their sincere 
 friend, as the friend of our common college, as the friend 
 of our dear country, no longer, no longer to let the 
 students of an English University surpass them in manli- 
 ness, in generosity, in courage.* 
 
 But we have allowed our friends plenty of time to eat 
 their breakfast, and it is getting near ten. On ordinary 
 days, our friend would go to Lecture at this hour; but it 
 is Saturday, a fact sufficiently shown by the freshmen 
 being disengaged at nine, they having two hours' lecture, 
 from nine to eleven, five days in the week. So, his friends 
 slipping away one by one (but not before the large pewter 
 mug of ale, with its glass bottom, has gone round) he 
 secures another good pull at Plato, and then goes to his 
 private tutor in the next college, that of St. John's. You 
 have not missed much by not going into Lecture. It is 
 held in a large bare room, with benches, and long tables 
 covered with green baize. The students, in their gowns, 
 in numbers varying from fifteen to one hundred and fifty, 
 are seated ; and the lecturer stands behind a desk, whence 
 he discourses most abstrusely on some author, or branch 
 of mathematics. Freshmen are occasionally asked to 
 translate or demonstrate; the other years never. The 
 lectured may take notes, or not, if they like. 
 
 Our friend has by this time got to St. John's College. 
 He finds his tutor, a gentleman of about the age and 
 standing of his late whist-entertainer. He looks over and 
 corrects the verses of last night, and gives our friend a 
 model translation, either his own, or not, as the case may 
 be. The Plato is then gone over for the rest of the hour, 
 occasionally interspersed by general conversation. Eleven 
 o'clock strikes. Our friend rises to go. " Will you give 
 me another piece of composition, sir ?" " O, yes ; Greek 
 prose this time, isn't it?" "Yes, sir." Out comes a 
 
 * Some further discussion of this point will be found in the 
 Appendix.
 
 On the Cam. 119 
 
 piece of Butler's analogy, enough to make one turn blue : 
 full of all sorts of technical metaphysical words. " There, 
 you'll find that very good to put into Aristotelian Greek." 
 Our friend takes it, quite as a matter of course, and off to 
 Trinity again ; he wants to consult a book in the college 
 library, not that of the University, and thither repairs. 
 
 This library is over the west end of the cloisters, in a 
 beautiful building, built by Sir Christopher "VVren, of 
 variegated red and yellow stone. The vestibule and stair- 
 case are full of choice inscriptions, &c. The library hall 
 itself is a fine room, well lighted, with high windows right 
 and left, book-cases up and down each side, and the floor 
 laid in black and white mosaic, wherein, by the way, the 
 chapel resembles it. At the south end is Thorwaldsen's 
 beautiful statue of Byron, which the dean and chapter 
 refused to admit into Westminster Abbey. Around in 
 the room are various curiosities connected with eminent 
 sons of Trinity, Byron's first letter, Newton's telescope, 
 Person's Greek writings, and, most precious of all, Mil- 
 ton's original manuscripts of " Lycidas and Comus," and 
 the original draught for a tragedy on the subject of 
 " Paradise Lost/' There are also several fine busts, of 
 Bentley, Barrow, Newton, Coke, and other great sons of 
 Cambridge. Here our student remains, keeping his cap 
 on, for the library is cold. His object is to consult some 
 old scholarship examination-papers, to see Avhat sort of 
 things he is likely to get in the grand trial next April. As 
 he expects to have something else to do this afternoon, 
 he concludes to make his daily visit to the Union now, so 
 he returns to his room, exchanges cap and gown for a 
 straw hat with a blue ribbon, and sallies out to his news- 
 papers. 
 
 The remaining hours pass glibly away in study, making 
 a few calls, <fec ; and two o'clock arrives. Farewell all 
 literary work, either for pleasure or profit. The hour for 
 exercise has come, and rare indeed is he who violates the 
 Cambridge tradition of two hours' exercise before dinner.
 
 120 On the Cam. 
 
 So he turns out of Green Street into Trinity Street again, 
 past the grey front of Caius and the gate of Humility, 
 past St. Michael's and St. Mary's Churches, the Senate- 
 House and the Schools, and turns towards King's College, 
 where he will find a companion for a seven-mile walk or 
 more. As he enters the gate he stops, as he has stopped 
 a hundred times, to gaze on the glorious chapel. I am 
 willing that a thousand Oxford graduates should write 
 hooks to prove that King's College Chapel is all wrong 
 that it extinguishes the Lamp of Truth (spelt with a big 
 T) and that it looks like a dining-table turned upside 
 down. If so, all I can say is, " Malo errare cum Platone ;" 
 I'd rather be wrong with King's Chapel than right against 
 it. The Lamp of Truth deserves to be extinguished in 
 the blazing sunlight of beauty and grandeur, and a dining- 
 table turned upside down turns out a much handsomer 
 object than I had supposed. Still every visitor to Cam- 
 bridge stops astounded before this grand mass of masonry 
 that bears its heavy stone roof unshaken to the sky, and 
 uplifts its heaven-kissing pinnacles one hundred and fifty 
 feet. Still every child of Cambridge walks in delight before 
 its peerless beauty by day, and trembles in its awful shadow 
 at night, and still every traveller on the rising ground 
 for miles away, sees looming up before him, sparkling like 
 silver in the sunlight, the majestic proportions of the fairest 
 temple in England. 
 
 Our two friends have met. They walk briskly clown 
 Trumpington Street, past half-a-dozen colleges, Catharine 
 and Corpus and Pembroke and Peterhouse, past the Fitz- 
 william Museum and the Addenbrooke's Hospital, past old 
 Hobson's Conduit and the Botanic Garden, and out upon 
 the London road, they leave it at the well-known corner, 
 turn through the Trumpington lanes and past Chaucer's 
 mill, and accomplish a good long round of over six miles 
 at least, in time for a stroll in the " backs" before dinner. 
 This name is applied to the walks along the river in the 
 rear of St. John's, Trinity, Clare, King's, and Queens'
 
 On the Cam. 121 
 
 Colleges. There is nothing of the kind lovelier in England. 
 The velvet turf, the ancestral elms and hoary lindens, 
 the long vistas of the ancient avenues, the quiet river, 
 its shelving banks filled with loiterers,* its waters studded 
 with a scene of gay boats, and crossed by light, graceful 
 stone bridges ; the old halls of grey or red or yellow rising 
 here and there, the windows peeping out from among the 
 trees, and the openings into the old court-yard with their 
 presage of monastic ease and learning, the lofty pinnacles 
 of King's Chapel o'ertopping all ; there is no such scene 
 of repose and of beauty in Oxford or any other place of 
 education. As our friends stroll about there, resting 
 from the lively discussion with which their walk has been 
 beguiled, new love for the home of their youth arises in 
 their hearts, and new vows are interchanged for its defence. 
 I do not believe a single student ever paced under these 
 ancient trees without some word of praise bursting from 
 liis lips for the beauty and glory of dear old Cambridge. 
 But the watches point to four, and the friends part, the 
 Kingsman to chapel, and our acquaintance to dinner, and 
 we wish him a good appetite and the first cut of the 
 mutton. 
 
 The lecturer forgot here that he had laid his scene in winter. 
 
 ED.
 
 VI. 
 
 LIFE OF AN UNDERGRADUATE. 
 EXCEPTIONAL. 
 
 Length of the College Course. Vacation. Taking the Degree. 
 Discipline. Sundays. Clubs and Associations. Cricket and 
 llowing. Description of a Boat-Race. Trinity Boat Song. 
 
 N my last lecture I put before you such a 
 picture as can be drawn in the space of an 
 hour, of the daily life of an undergraduate 
 at one of the principal colleges in Cam- 
 bridge University. In order, however, that 
 you should approximate to a correct idea of this part of my 
 subject, I must first offer an explanation of some techni- 
 calities occurring in the description, and secondly, call 
 your attention to some special scenes of student life, not 
 occurring in the course of every day routine. 
 
 And first : how long is this life led by the undergra- 
 duate ? The University year begins on the 1st of October, 
 with the first or Michaelmas term. This is said to divide 
 at noon of the 8th of November. This is of course merely 
 a nominal process. But instances have been known of in- 
 experienced youths ascending the Castle Hill to see the 
 term divide. The term ends on the 16th of December. 
 The second or Lent term begins on the 15th of January, 
 divides on the 14th of February, and ends on the 18th of 
 March. The third, or Easter term, begins on the 1st of
 
 On the Cam. 123 
 
 April, divides on the 13th of May, and ends on the 24th 
 of June. The Commencement is on the 21st of June, and 
 all the year between the end of one term and the beginning 
 of the next is vacation. But the American and English 
 ideas of term and vacation by no means coincide. In the 
 first place, the University is going on more or less all the 
 time. The library is open, the museums and public 
 buildings may be inspected freely. Various important 
 religious and academic ceremonies are performed in vaca- 
 tion. In particular, if there is to be any scientific conven- 
 tion at Cambridge, or any installation of a Chancellor, 
 always a very imposing ceremony, the effort is generally 
 to have it in vacation, that the students being away, their 
 rooms may be used for the occupation of the honoured 
 guests. This is a curious phase in English University 
 life, resulting from the large part of the year in which 
 rooms are unoccupied. Whenever a stranger arrives to 
 receive the hospitality of Cambridge, the first effort of his 
 University friend is to get him a suite of rooms in college, 
 which the tutor has a right to let him have, in the absence 
 of the regular occupant, his prohibition to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. 
 
 Again, a great many of the most important examinations 
 are held in vacation. And this again is intentional, in 
 order that the young men may not be interrupted in their 
 regular courses of lectures, nor the examiners in the per- 
 formances of their other duties in college or University, by 
 having to attend an examination. And the result is very 
 pleasant. For hereby those are attracted to Cambridge, 
 at the time when others are absent, who have this one ob- 
 ject to pursue, and each is sure of seeing none but those 
 who are sympathizing to the full with his trials. 
 
 It might be then hard to say wherein consisted the dif- 
 ference between term and vacation. I presume if this 
 question were actually put to an official martinet at Cam- 
 bridge, he would be greatly scandalized, and reply with 
 some academic technicality, making the matter no clearer.
 
 124 On the Cam. 
 
 But in general the distinction may be stated to be, that 
 the vacations are times when all college and university 
 lectures are intermitted. The regular college life, the hall, 
 and the chapel, go on the same, at least in the large col- 
 leges ; the students and officials come and go, and in the 
 winter vacations there is not much less liveliness in the 
 town. And this long period of nominal vacation, amount- 
 ing to nearly thirty weeks in the year, is practically even 
 longer. The University considers a term sufficiently kept, 
 as the term is, by two thirds residence, the college pre- 
 scribe in what part of the term this two thirds is to be 
 taken, and how much more residence they will require of 
 their members for their own purposes of discipline. So 
 that, in fact, any undergraduate may comply with all the 
 requirements in the way of residence, and only be in Cam- 
 bridge twenty-two weeks in the whole year, or less. And 
 though the colleges may keep a member for purposes of 
 discipline from the first to the last day of term, nobody can 
 be compelled to remain a day in vacation. 
 
 But this is the minimum ; such an immense amount of 
 vacation is much more than any of the studious desire. In 
 fact, it would be impossible to get any adequate prepara- 
 tion, for the final examinations, in only twenty weeks of 
 study a year. Accordingly the hard students are exceed- 
 ingly apt to drop up* to Cambridge some days before their 
 attendance is required, and to stay after the rest have run 
 down. They have their rooms and meals ; their private 
 tutors are generally quite ready to begin with them ; they 
 are not required to attend lectures, or chapel ; and they 
 have that great promoter of success in study quiet. The 
 summer vacation, in particular, which practically lasts from 
 the beginning of the second week in June to the middle of 
 October, is far too long for any one to pass in idleness. It 
 is habitually spent in two ways. One is, to make up a 
 reading party. A number of undergraduates, from four 
 
 * Authority for this phrase, Horace Walpole.
 
 Gn the Cam. 125 
 
 to ten, engage some tutor, and, in some cases of very 
 large parties, two, who then pick out a pleasant, but not too 
 pleasant, place to pass the summer. Scotland, the Lake 
 District, Wales, the Southern Counties, Brittany, and the 
 Tyrol, are all favourite resorts for these reading parties. 
 Sometimes no tutor accompanies them ; but, in all cases, 
 their plan, I am bound to say, faithfully carried out by 
 almost all, is, to pass six or eight hours* of each day in 
 study, and the remainder in athletic pursuits. But a large 
 number prefer at once to make a fourth term out of the 
 long vacation. They return to Cambridge early in July, 
 and remain till the end of August, or the beginning of 
 September, reading for dear life with their private tutors. 
 There are such unnumbered facilities for study, and so little 
 for anything else, in the " Long," as it is called, that you 
 have to study hard to keep yourself from dying of ennui, 
 even though attempts are made at Shakespeare clubs, boat 
 and cricket matches, <fcc. In fact, it is so desirable a place 
 for a student in arrears, that the authorities at the larger 
 colleges are obliged to restrict the undergraduates from 
 residing in the long vacation, and make it a special privi- 
 lege, consequent on obtaining high rank in the examination 
 in May. Observe further, that the foundation scholars of 
 the college have a right to stay at Cambridge in vacation 
 as well as term time, and to demand rooms and meals, in 
 virtue of King Henry VIII. 's will. 
 
 Of these terms, be they longer or shorter, the University 
 requires nine to be kept, as the phrase is, before any one 
 can receive a degree, and if it is a degree in honours, the 
 candidate must have begun his residence in the tenth term 
 preceding the examination. And as we have so often 
 alluded to taking the degree, let us have an ocular demon- 
 stration of the process of taking a degree, the operation 
 to which the thoughts of nearly every undergraduate are 
 
 * " Like seeks like;" Mr. Everett's friends must have been ex- 
 ceptionally industrious and self-denying. ED.
 
 126 On the Cam. 
 
 turned a thousand times in his career. Let us suppose, 
 then, that we have a friend whose name has been announced 
 as having successfully passed some examination, it makes 
 little difference which, in virtue whereof he is entitled to a 
 degree. The first thing you may be sure, considering the 
 scene is laid in a University, and that an English one, is 
 to pay, and pay well. The proctors, as representing the 
 University, receive a handsome sum from every expectant 
 bachelor for the University chest, as the treasury is called. 
 The college dues amount to about three pounds more. His 
 next business is to order the peculiar insignia of a Bachelor 
 of Arts, the black gown with its ribbons dangling in 
 front, and the long black hood with its swan's-down trim- 
 ming. He will also add a clergyman's bands, as a ne- 
 cessary part of full academic costume, if he have not already 
 procured them for some other public occasion. The hood 
 he will throw on over his undergraduate's gown, the 
 black gown he will intrust to his bedmaker, and so arrayed 
 will make his way to the Senate-House. The galleries 
 are filled with undergraduates, and the body of the hall 
 below by officials and spectators of all kinds, and by the 
 candidates themselves, often far exceeding a hundred in 
 number. As there is a good deal of waiting on all such 
 public occasions at Cambridge, the undergraduates in the 
 gallery proceed to amuse themselves by cheering. This, 
 as well as hissing, is commonly carried to a perfectly insane 
 extent, beyond all bounds of authority. Proceedings are 
 usually opened, as soon as the galleries are pretty well filled, 
 with, " Three cheers for the Queen," given vociferously. 
 Before any one can call anything else, somebody is observed 
 below who has not taken off his cap at the instant of entering. 
 " Cap, cap, cap, cap, cap,"* is at once the cry, and this is 
 kept up till it is taken off. " Three cheers for Lord 
 Derby ; " " Hurrah, hurrah," or rather " Hurray," the 
 
 * Invariably directed at proctors and fathers of college?, AV!JO are 
 obliged, ex officio, to remain covered. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 127 
 
 English form of a cheer. A few groans attempted by 
 some liberal, who further proceeds to " Three cheers for 
 Lord Palmerston ;" a few spirited cheers, and a good many 
 groans, which, however, are nothing to the bear-garden of 
 growls that replies to the call of " Three groans for John 
 Bright." Three cheers for something or other is drowned 
 in " Cap, cap, cap," " Hat, hat, hat." A pause, for an 
 instant, the individual summoned obstinately refusing to 
 remove his cap, when one of the proctors' attendants, whom 
 I have already introduced to you as bulldogs, appears 
 below. " Stuboy, Boning, row, row. Take his cap off; 
 bite him, Boning, please remove your cap, sir," <kc. 
 
 " Three cheers for ," in a feeble voice. " What is it, 
 
 sir, speak up." " Three cheers for the Bishop of Oxford." 
 Violent acclamations. The chief church dignitary in the 
 Sandwich Islands having recently addressed a large meeting 
 in Cambridge, was once irreverently summoned with, 
 ' Three cheers for the Bishop of Hullabaloo." I once 
 heard the United States called for in the course of the last 
 three years, when it was drowned with laughter, and calls 
 of the " Disunited States ;" and a proposal of cheers for 
 the Confederates was received with equal derision.* A 
 few more persons, obnoxious or honoured, are clamoured 
 for, when a loud burst of cheering throughout the length 
 and breadth of the Senate-House, calls our attention to a 
 somewhat singular procession that is walking in. Most of 
 its members appear as ordinary Masters of Arts, in black 
 gowns with white and black hoods thrown over them, but 
 the procession is headed by one, who, in addition to this 
 garb, bears an enormous silver mace, looking very like a 
 gigantic poker, and so usually denominated. 
 
 * The real humourists amongst the undergraduates seldom take 
 part in these proceedings, and the jokes are terribly mild. The 
 best we ever heard was at Oxford, when everybody was bored to 
 death by a Latin address in honour of somebody or another: 
 " That will do, sir, now construe," cried a voice from the gallery. 
 Eo.
 
 128 On the Cam. 
 
 Tlere are three of these mace-hearers, known as the 
 esquire bedells, who enclose a reverend-looking gentleman 
 in a scarlet gown and ermine tippet. This is the Vice- 
 Chancellor, the head of the University, and in all cases the 
 greatest man there, except when the Chancellor himself 
 takes it into his head, which is very seldom, to come down 
 and administer. The Vice-Chancellor is chosen from the 
 masters of the colleges annually, on the fifth of November, 
 and goes out of office on the fourth ; so that on the day 
 of election there is no one in office, but tAvo proctors are 
 considered as equal to one Vice-Chancellor, and get to- 
 gether bodily into his chair to preside at his election. This, 
 as all other elections of University officers, is by the body 
 of the Masters and Doctors, called the Senate, the gene- 
 ral affairs being managed by a smaller body called the 
 Council, who propose all measures to be acted upon by the 
 Senate, the enacting measure being called a Grace of the 
 Senate. The night of the Vice-Chancellor's election being 
 also the old day of the celebration of Gunpowder Plot, was 
 formerly celebrated at Cambridge by the town and gown 
 riots. I cannot say these are absolutely extinct. The 
 townspeople, who have nothing else to do, come out a good 
 deal. A certain number of students also come out and 
 walk up and down the streets, where passage is generally 
 freely conceded, though very opprobrious remarks are heard 
 right and left. I have tramped through a town and gown 
 row so called, and if I had desired a pugilistic encounter of 
 any kind, I should have had to seek it. 
 
 The Vice-Chancellor, by this time, has taken his seat 
 in the Senate-House. One of the esquire bedells has the 
 lists of candidates in his hand. The undergraduates are 
 ushered forward by some fellow of their college, who is 
 called "the father," and presents his " sons" in squads of 
 six or eight. If the Senior Wrangler or Senior Classic is 
 to take his degree, he is led up alone, by himself, amid 
 most vociferous cheering. What the students are supposed 
 to do when they are thus led up I don't know. The father
 
 On the Cam. 129 
 
 says something in Latin, I believe to the effect thru he 
 presents to the Vice-Chancellor this youth, whom he knows 
 as well in morals as in learning to be a proper person for 
 receiving the degree of B.A. Formerly, they were re- 
 quired to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. 
 They are then directed to one side, and the real process 
 of conferring degrees begins. They take their station in 
 a long queue, and come up to the Vice-Chancellor one by 
 one, first laying down their caps on the floor, and then 
 kneeling on the floor themselves. They fold the palms of 
 their hands together, and the Vice-Chancellor takes them 
 between his, and pronounces a Latin formula, giving them 
 all the rights, privileges, (fee, pertaining to the degree of 
 bachelor of arts, " in the name of the Father and of the 
 Son and of the Holy Ghost," raising his cap before the 
 sacred names. They rise, turn away, and the operation is 
 complete. No part, no preacher's gown, no diploma. As 
 they go out, the bedmaker is in readiness to exchange the 
 undergraduate's for the bachelor's gown, and to appropriate 
 the former, in connection with a pound sterling.* " It's 
 the custom, sir. All the gentlemen does it, sir. It's the 
 bedmaker's perquisites, sir," is all the explanation I ever 
 heard to be given, and this is about all the explanation 
 given for anything at Cambridge. 
 
 The age for taking the bachelor's degree is between 
 twenty-two and twenty-three. In giving the list of American 
 errors with reference to English Universities, I believe I 
 included the idea that the students were six or eight years 
 older than ours. As a point of fact, they are about two 
 years older. My own class at Harvard, of ninety members, 
 averaged exactly twenty-one years and six months of age 
 
 * Surely Mr. Everett was imposed upon ; many men keep their 
 old gowns, not in very good condition by that time, as mementos, 
 and we fancy that five shillings is the usual fee ; at any rate, cha- 
 ritable as he is in almost all respects, he is terribly hard on the 
 poor old bedmakers, who are not so black as they are painted. ED. 
 K
 
 130 On the Cam. 
 
 on graduation. I was twenty years old myself on the day 
 I entered Trinity, and I could find no one of my own year 
 in college that was not younger, and a great many in the 
 year above me were younger also. I ought, perhaps, to 
 have said something about the ceremony of entrance ; but 
 there is so little ceremony that I had forgotten it. The 
 college being selected, application is made to the tutor ; in 
 ft large college the particular tutor must be selected also. 
 He will formally receive the undergraduate, and receive 
 also a certain sum of money as matriculation fees, and 
 another larger called " caution money," deposited like our 
 bond, as a security for the payment of college dues, and 
 returned when all connection with the university ceases. 
 In some colleges there is an examination for admission, in 
 others not ; but whether there is or not, you begin residence 
 and attendance on lectures, &c. at once, and are told, not 
 if you have passed the examination, but if you have not. 
 Anyhow, you need not be troubled ; you can try two or 
 three times more before the year ends, and each time the 
 examination is easier. The fact is, at the small colleges 
 they are only too glad to get any undergraduates, and at 
 the large ones the college examinations will soon weed out 
 all the poor ones. 
 
 The means of discipline are elaborate and peculiar. A 
 certain amount of attendance at chapel and lecture is re- 
 quired ; and, if not complied with, a graduated series of 
 scoldings, rising from a simple printed notice, filled up 
 with a name, as follows : " Everett, Junior Soph., ir- 
 regular in his attendance at chapel, admonished by the 
 Junior Dean;" I did get one such notice once, up 
 through personal interviews with the Deans, Tutor, Master, 
 and Body of Fellows. By this time, an undergraduate so 
 persistently irregular will probably have brought matters 
 to a crisis by some other more flagrant act, and be obliged 
 to leave the college. Repeated absence from lecture is 
 generally punished by " gating," that is, confining a student 
 to the inside of the gate of his college, or street door of his
 
 On the Cam. 131 
 
 lodging-house, at an earlier hour than usual. I have 
 mentioned that after ten the gates are locked, and no one 
 can get in without ringing. I should add that, once in, 
 no one can get out after ten, without a special order from 
 a Fellow. Furthermore, no undergraduate can pass a night 
 out of Cambridge or out of his own rooms without special 
 permission from his tutor ; and in all these cases the situa- 
 tion of the porter, bedmaker, or lodging-house keeper is 
 made much too valuable, and the watch kept upon them 
 much too strict, to permit more than a very rare infringe- 
 ment indeed of these rules. Any college windows that 
 may look on the street are barred in the two lower stories, 
 to prevent egress, and every college is surrounded with 
 high walls, ditches, or iron fences bristling with a most 
 dreadful array of spikes. I have often stood at some of 
 these and contemplated the possibility of getting out, and 
 have been forced to acknowledge that it is out of the 
 question.* 
 
 Pecuniary fines, of small amount, are also very much 
 resorted to ; they are, in most cases, rather matters of 
 course, than penalties, such as for absence from morning 
 chapel, and go to increase the pay of the servants. In 
 some cases, neglect, or infringement of discipline, is 
 punished by " losing the week ; " that is, if the student 
 
 * And yet a man of our year habitually committed this question- 
 able deed, and only tore his clothes on one occasion. He loosened 
 one of the bars of his window, which he could extract and replace 
 in its socket at will ; clambered over a chevaux defrise, and was 
 free, and he returned in like manner. One winter's afternoon we 
 called and found him gazing out with a melancholy and puzzled air. 
 It had been snowing, and the freshly-fallen snow would betray his 
 foot-prints. Presently he cried, " I have it !" took up a coal, and 
 threw it at the window, and then called his bedmaker, and bade 
 her fetch the glazier. The glazier came, and in mending the 
 broken pane, trampled down the snow outside, enabling the too 
 ardent lover of freedom to wander out without detection that night. 
 But he was exceptionally daring and inventive, and the whole 
 proceeding was a Jack Sheppard affair. ED.
 
 132 On the Cam. 
 
 has already resided seven weeks, some misdemeanour will 
 cause the seven to count only six, which would compel him 
 to stay at Cambridge another, to make up the requisite 
 number enjoined in the course of a term. 
 
 I have been thus minute on these matters of discipline, 
 not in the hope of making them very clear, for nothing 
 short of some weeks' residence there can effect that, but 
 to illustrate the grand principle, that college discipline 
 has nothing to do with college rank. I remember 
 one instance, which will show more than a hundred 
 systematic descriptions, where a young man was so no- 
 toriously irregular in his attendance at chapel, that the 
 whole body of his college were determined to send him 
 away for a term ; but, as he was expected to take very 
 high rank in an approaching examination, they allowed 
 him, in consideration of that, to remain till the examina- 
 tion was over, and then forced him to " go down," at 
 once. 
 
 Another point that may be interesting, is the variation 
 adopted in this undergraduate life on Sunday. Sunday is 
 very generally observed in England ; but it is beginning 
 to get somewhat the character which it has in France. 
 There are long, cheap, slow trains running on the railways, 
 which carry out the poorer classes of London, whose hands 
 have been thrilling and brows straining with hard work, 
 from Monday morning to Saturday night, and pour them 
 out over the fields, to get a little taste of pure breezes, and 
 expand the poor, pent-up, bruised mind in the light of 
 heaven, and the all-refreshing air of society and rest ; then 
 gather them up again at night, tired and happy. At 
 Cambridge, there is a great deal of church-going. All 
 the college chapels have two, and some three, services a 
 day; at' some there is a sermon, at others not. It is, of 
 course, at all of them the service of the Church of England. 
 The whole University is supposed to go at two o'clock to 
 the sermon in Great St. Mary's Church. It does not all 
 go by any means. The reverend Master of Trinity has a
 
 On the Cam. 133 
 
 weakness for ordering such of his own subjects as he meets, 
 about the hour, to go. This service is peculiar in many 
 respects. The floor of the church, which, aside from its 
 being the church of the University, has its own parish, is 
 filled with graduates, the gallery with undergraduates. The 
 clerk of the church gives out a portion of Tate and Brady's 
 version of the Psalms ; this is sung by one of the college 
 choirs in attendance. This is followed by the preacher, who 
 is appointed for every Sunday and holyday at the beginning 
 of the year, and is always a man of note ; he rises and reads 
 the bidding pra3 r er. This is not a prayer at all, but an ex- 
 hortation to pray for " the whole state of the Catholic 
 Church." From this pretty general exordium, it proceeds, 
 by virtue 'of a series of especiallys and particularlys, to com- 
 mend to the prayers of the congregation all the persons in 
 England in any way distinguished in the Church or the 
 State. Gradually working his way to the two Universities, 
 the clergyman continues : " And herein for his Grace, 
 William, Duke of Devonshire, our Chancellor; for the 
 Right Worshipful the Vice-Chancellor ; for the professors, 
 proctors, and all that bear authority therein. For all par- 
 ticular colleges, and, as in private duty bound, I ask your 
 prayers for the royal and religious foundation of Trinity 
 College ; for the reverend and learned the Master, the 
 fellows, scholars, and all students in the same," and so on ; 
 till, at last, a call to pray for all the Commons of the Realm, 
 and also to praise God for all His mercies, concludes this 
 long introduction, to which is simply added the words of 
 the Lord's Prayer ; and at once every University man in 
 the congregation, who are all standing, raises his cap to his 
 face, which is a sight described as very imposing ; who- 
 ever saw it must have neglected to raise his own cap, in 
 order to notice those of others. The sermon, and the 
 ordinary concluding prayer of the English Church follow, 
 the sermon being always intensely learned, rather than 
 interesting. 
 
 Sunday is a great day at Cambridge for very long walks,
 
 134 On the Cam. 
 
 often of three or four hours' duration. The boating men 
 in particular, who are steadily engaged on the river every 
 other day, vary .their exercise always by a hard walk on 
 Sunday. On Sunday afternoon and evening, if it is fine, 
 the whole town, University or not, turns out into the walks 
 behind the Colleges, making a very gay sight. Sunday is 
 also a great day for early and long-protracted tea-parties 
 and social talks. I was once asked if the young men were 
 as ready to talk theology at an English as an American 
 University. Of ecclesiastical talk, the management of 
 religious communities, the temporal state of the English 
 and other churches, <fcc, there is a great deal; but theology 
 proper, all doctrinal discussions, they are very shy of. In 
 fact, a Dissenter, a person not of the Church of England, 
 they wouldn't dare to argue with, and they couldn't with 
 any one else. 
 
 Another subject which is intimately connected with the 
 life of the young men at Cambridge is the clubs and as- 
 sociations that they form for all manner of purposes. These 
 are very numerous. That kind, however, which is most 
 common in America, namely debating and library societies, 
 is very little seen in Cambridge. There is the general 
 Union Society for the whole University. There are also 
 one or two minor societies for literary purposes ; but they 
 are either confined to a very small set, or only brought 
 into a temporary life by a few stronger spirits. Neither 
 debating nor reading essays are English characteristics. 
 
 There are also various scientific societies, some entirely 
 confined to the undergraduates, others patronized and 
 strengthened by the presence of the older men in authority. 
 There was an entomological society that used to scour the 
 plains and downs near Cambridge to make " captures," as 
 they said. You generally knew the rooms of its members 
 by a strong smell of laurel-water, ether, or sulphur, used 
 to kill the unfortunate insects. 
 
 There were a great many religious societies for mission 
 work of all kinds in the Church of England. Shortly be-
 
 On the Cam. 135 
 
 fore I left Cambridge, there was a terrible squabble at the 
 Union, because a member of one of the High Church 
 Societies had made extensive use of the Union writing- 
 paper and its letter-carrier to send out circulars of his 
 own club, contrary, as might be supposed, to the standing 
 orders of the Union. It was furiously discussed, and all the 
 High Church members of the Union voted for doing nothing 
 to him, while all the Broad, Low, or No Church members 
 wished him suspended from the club till he apologized, as 
 was done. A great deal of very efficient work is done 
 among the young men in collecting subscriptions for re- 
 ligious and charitable objects throughout the country. 
 
 There are several musical societies in Cambridge, with 
 extensive ramifications amoug the town's-people. England 
 is becoming more and more of a musical country every 
 day, the works of Handel and Mendelssohn in particular 
 being very much studied. The musical element was en- 
 tirely too strong for me. My first set of rooms had a piano 
 adjoining, in fact against the wall, and my second had a 
 cornet underneath, and several other instruments at hand. 
 At present, the generosity and tolerance I feel to persons 
 of all other tastes than my own entirely vanish in the case 
 of college musicians. The charms which soothe the savage 
 breast split the studious brain. 
 
 There is at Cambridge a small, and pretty select society 
 called the Athenaeum, and modelled on the London clubs. 
 That is, it takes in all the principal periodicals, has a good 
 library for popular use, and is a grand centre for social 
 gatherings of all kinds. It is in fact the head-quarters of 
 the aristocratic, or, as truth compels it to be called, the fast 
 element. It is pretty exclusive in its elections, and also 
 pretty expensive. Its character varies from year to year, ac- 
 cording as those who are admitted as a matter of course all 
 members of noble families, for instance are men of refined 
 tastes or the reverse. At the time I entered, there was 
 just passing away a generation of members who would be 
 an honour to any community, and had raised the club very
 
 136 On the Cam. 
 
 high in the estimation of the rest of the University. Before 
 I left, a great many very desirable members had refused to 
 join it, on account of the tastes and habits of many of those 
 already belonging to it. 
 
 The Athenaeum has under its wing two or three other 
 societies of kindred character. One, the Amateur Dramatic 
 Club, or A. D. C. as it is commonly called, gives excellent 
 stage performances, open to all the University, for a few 
 nights in every term. It is fortunate in possessing some 
 members of very superior dramatic talent, who, though they 
 have long ceased to be members of the University, make a 
 point of coming back to Cambridge to act, and to assist in 
 developing the rising dramatic talent. The acting is 
 generally extremely good, and the society an agreeable 
 one. 
 
 There are also several dining clubs, more or less com- 
 posed of members of the Athenaeum. Two of them, the 
 True Blue and the Beefsteak, are of extreme antiquity, 
 the True Blue members still dine in the dress of the last 
 century. The Beefsteak is governed by certain rules, 
 doubtless established to check the profuse banquets and 
 inordinate drinking of a hundred years ago, viz. that 
 there shall be no food on the table but beef in various forms, 
 and that every member must drink a bottle of port. These 
 rules, like the resolutions which Mr. Ticknor's admirable 
 biography records in the college life of Mr. Prescott, have 
 become an encouragement to the excess they sought to 
 check. 
 
 Of all these societies the Athenaeum is the only one that 
 can exercise anything like influence. A man may get 
 some notoriety in the Union, but as anybody can belong 
 to it, he can obtain no peculiar influence there on outsiders. 
 In fact, most students at Cambridge fall at once into some 
 line or other, either that of study, or athletics, or pleasure, 
 and are then chosen into aertain clubs as matters of course. 
 It is only in those very rare cases of persons who take up 
 two or more occupations, that the societies can be said to
 
 On the Cam. 137 
 
 exert influence outside themselves. The true type of a 
 Cambridge club is one where a certain body of students, 
 interested in one object, unite to carry out that object, and 
 are ready to admit anybody who cares for it too, and want 
 nobody who does not. And the perfect example of these 
 is in the clubs for athletic sports, and chiefly for cricket 
 and rowing. 
 
 If any one is interested to see what a nation can do as 
 a nation, without any help from another, let him look at 
 the game of cricket as played in England. I can no more 
 undertake to give an account of it here, than I can of the 
 House of Commons, or the Court of King's Bench. One 
 might devote a course of Lowell Lectures to it, or write a 
 
 O 
 
 college text-book about it. But I will say to you as 
 Victor Cousin did to his class about the Buddhists, " I 
 do not speak of the Buddhists, gentlemen, because I know 
 nothing of them." I know nothing of cricket. I used to 
 see my friends, wearing caps and sleeves of all imaginable 
 patterns, and was told that they were the badges of the 
 "Perambulators" or " Quidnuncs." I saw them start at 
 unearthly hours in the morning, dressed principally in 
 flannel, and come back pretty late in the afternoon, and 
 hear that the Pifflers had been playing Koyston. I have 
 moreover been to one or two cricket-matches, and seen 
 some splendid catches at long -off. But of the mysteries 
 of cricket and cricket clubs I know very little. They are 
 very numerous ; cricket players associating together for all 
 possible and impossible reasons, and the best players 
 belonging to several clubs at once. They are working hard 
 all summer long, and rather tire one with their utter 
 absorption in their favourite sport, which to an outsider is 
 truly unintelligible. But it only lasts a few months in the 
 year, and the rest of the time they can talk and act 
 rationally. 
 
 Eowing is also carried at Cambridge to great perfection. 
 It is a natural offshoot from the maritime character of the 
 English. The best amateur rowing is at the two Univer-
 
 138 On the Cam. 
 
 sities, and their annual match in April, in which I regret 
 to say Oxford has now won three years successively,* is a 
 splendid exhibition of river rowing, and pretty rough rowing, 
 too. But as eyewitness is always better than description, 
 I will ask you to walk down with me to the last boat-race 
 of the season at Cambridge, and contemplate what is perhaps 
 the noblest of athletic sports in its highest perfection. 
 
 The principal University boat-races at Cambridge take 
 place in the month of May, and surely if the Argonauts 
 themselves were to select a time and place for the display 
 of their strength, they could not choose better than the 
 Cambridge May term. Mr. Warren Burton says that the 
 wit of his district school described the fun of the winter 
 school term as one long Thanksgiving Day, minus the 
 sermon, the music and the dinner. One might describe 
 the Cambridge May term as one long Class Day, minus 
 the literary exercises, the dancing and the cheering. An 
 army of Amazons take Cambridge by storm in the month 
 of May, and grey old Alma Mater puts on her best dress, 
 and sets her best parlour in order to receive her guests. 
 But of all the attractions of that happy season, there is 
 none more universally appreciated than the boat-races. 
 We will suppose ourselves walking down to the last-one of 
 the season, f 
 
 It begins at seven o'clock, just in the calm, clear. 
 English twilight. We need not fear that it is too soon 
 after dinner, for the authorities fully respect the value of 
 exercise, and accommodate the boat-races by instituting 
 an early dinner at two o'clock at this season. We put on 
 our checkered straw hats with their dark-blue ribbons, to 
 show that we belong to the First Trinity Boat-Club, stroll 
 out of the great gate, past the church where is the monu- 
 ment of poor Kirke White, erected by our late distinguished 
 
 * Xow, alas, five! (1865). 
 
 -f- All Cambridge men will recognize the following as a fancy 
 picture, combined from the history of many boat-races.
 
 On the Cam. 139 
 
 countryman Dr. Boott, past the gate of St. John's and the 
 Templars' round church, and through a few narrow lanes 
 to a broad common, the pasture-ground of a hundred 
 broken-down horses. Our path has been accompanied by 
 crowds of men- in boating rig, broad flannel trousers, heavy 
 tanned leather low-heeled shoes, pea-jackets, and club- 
 hats or caps, making eagerly for the boat-houses. These 
 soon heave in sight on the farther bank of the poor little 
 narrow river. All along the strand below them are the 
 long, narrow, sharp club-boats, of which a new one is 
 manned every instant. From the windows of the rooms 
 occupied by the St. John's boat-club we can see the red 
 flag waving, emblazoned with the arms of the Lady Mar- 
 garet Somerset, foundress of St. John's and Christ's Col- 
 leges. This flag being displayed shows that St. John's is 
 at present head of the river. We stroll along the banks, 
 now muddy and now sandy, watching the coal-barges 
 trailing slowly up from Lynn and Wisbeach, and the light 
 club-boats, bearing down crews of inferior oarsmen to 
 witness the contests of the champions, and darting between 
 the barges like flies in a cow-pasture. We are in plenty 
 of time, for the grey old church of Chesterton, across the 
 water, is ringing out a quarter to seven in its sweet chimes. 
 But what is this that encounters us, breaking in rudely on 
 all the pastoral and soothing thoughts of chimes and evening 
 and what not ? A boy, or a monkey ? A boy, and a very 
 dirty one, with a broom still dirtier than himself. With 
 this he assiduously sweeps the coal-dust and mud left by 
 the colliers right under our feet, and then calls upon us in 
 an uncommonly cheerful voice, to " Give me a copper, sir, 
 just one, sir, I've got no father, sir." Spurning him, his 
 broom, and the ashes of his father, we press on, our path 
 every moment getting more and more crowded with eager 
 spectators. We soon arrive at a ferry, where are three or 
 four very dingy craft, soliciting passengers, but getting 
 none. No, we will wait till the regular boatman comes 
 back from his last load, with his clean blue boat, and his
 
 140 On the Cam. 
 
 hat showing the ribbon of the head of the river. He is at 
 once saluted as " Charon" by a dozen voices, and imploring 
 us to " step steady, gentlemen," soon punts us over on the 
 verge of foundering. A few moments more, and we are 
 at the railway bridge. Here all spectators who have come 
 down in boats disembark, and leave their boats to walk on 
 to the racing ground. 
 
 This extends for about a mile and three-quarters from 
 the railway bridge. In the great University races the 
 boats take their stations at the farther end of it and row 
 up towards Cambridge, ending at the railway bridge. The 
 river turns and winds a good deal in this distance, giving 
 scope for the most careful steering, as it is scarcely ever 
 over twenty yards wide. At about the middle of the course 
 is the Plough Inn, which can be reached by a very pretty 
 drive, and is generally the rendezvous of those who do not 
 like the idea of a run on the bank. We ourselves are on 
 the towing-path the other side from the Plough. Just 
 watch the crowd on the bank, oarsmen in their club flannels, 
 Athena3um men with their faultless London garments, 
 tutors and proctors in their clerical garb, and some very 
 hard student, a prospective senior wrangler, who has acci- 
 dentally come down for an evening stroll, and looks round 
 bewildered, for he never heard of a boat-race, and can't 
 conceive why he never met such a crowd here before. 
 There you can see the racing boats begin to come up the 
 river, not the best, however, those before us will take 
 their places at the end of the division. Each boat will row 
 down to nearly the end, then turn so as to bring up against 
 its proper post, with its head up the river. There it will 
 be moored, and the crew step out. This is soon made 
 apparent, as we see walking up to us the crews of the boats 
 that just shot past us. There, men are beginning to gaze 
 eagerly on that next boat, as the dark-blue uniform 
 flashes into sight, "First Trinity Second" is the cry from 
 the bank. There are three clubs in Trinity, of which the 
 first is the largest, and it generally can muster three boats
 
 On the Cam. 141 
 
 among the first twenty. At present, its second boat stands 
 ninth on the river. You will understand that all members 
 of the college, irrespective of seniority, join the boat-clubs ; 
 the control and management being in the hands of the 
 older members. These are very assiduous in practising 
 the Freshmen and new-comers generally, and selecting the 
 good oarsmen from them for the high boats. First Trinity 
 Second has passed, and next is a curious uniform of grey 
 and blue, which proclaims it to be Christ's. The next is 
 the maroon-colour of Corpus, the next the rich rose-colour 
 of Emmanuel, and the next the royal purple of Caius. 
 
 As fast as each boat turns, rows up to its post and stops, 
 it is surrounded by a crowd of admirers from its own college, 
 and some sarcastic outsiders, who exchange remarks of all 
 kinds with each other on the event, and countless bets are 
 made. The crews begin to feel cold, and start on a stroll, 
 gradually the crowds melt together, and the whole bank be- 
 comes alive with a thousand University men of every type 
 of face, mind, and particularly costume. 
 
 Hush ! there is a boat sweeping down, evidently far 
 better than any that have gone before it. Its oarsmen 
 wear black hats, with a black and white ribbon round them. 
 They are a wiry, vicious-looking lot, and though a series 
 of misfortunes has brought them down to fourth, yet no 
 one dares speak slightingly of Trinity Hall. They soon 
 attract a great crowd, for Trinity Hall, besides its own 
 peculiar fame, is the champion in general of the smaller 
 colleges. But still greater excitement is manifested, as a 
 plain grey uniform comes into view, and all eyes are turned 
 to watch the most noted club of the University. It is Third 
 Trinity, composed exclusively of members of Trinity Col- 
 lege, who have previously been at Eton or Westminster 
 schools, which, being situated on the Thames, are far 
 ahead of all other schools in rowing. And now the tale of 
 boats is nearly complete. The dark blue of First Trinity 
 swings into the second place, and just as its adherents are 
 eagerly pressing the question, " Shall you do it ?"' " 0,
 
 142 On the Cam. 
 
 shall you do it ?" some one else shouts, " There they are, 
 there's the pigs." This coarse, but well-known name, calls 
 all eyes to the St. John's oarsmen, in their scarlet uniform, 
 proudly rowing to the first place. Night after night 
 have they haffled Trinity in all attempts to bump them, 
 and assume the head place. You will understand, 
 that the Cam being wholly too narrow to permit of rowing 
 abreast, it is the practice in all great races to draw the 
 boats up in a line, with a boat's length between each, and 
 the object is then to row over the distance so as to touch 
 the stern of the first with the bo\v of the second boat. If 
 this is effected, the first changes places with the second in 
 the next race, or is dropped altogether, according to the 
 terms of the match. Notice in many of the other boats 
 oarsmen with the sky-blue caps, that marks a University 
 oarsman, one who has been chosen to row against Oxford ; 
 but not in the Trinity boat. They have University oars, 
 more than one, but not to-night. No ; to-night all shall 
 wear the dark-blue alike, for the honour of their dear old 
 college. The St. John's men, who have at last won the 
 head place, and held it triumphantly night after night, shall 
 they be defrauded of the laurel on their very brows, and in 
 one night be condemned to hold the second place for a 
 whole year ? Ah, but the Trinity men have been working 
 together night after night ; every race has put new vigour 
 and unity into their stroke. Steadily have they worked up 
 above all other rivals, and last night they pursued the 
 Johnians, pressing hard up to the course's end. Well did 
 Virgil know and what did he not know the passions 
 that stir in the breasts of oarsmen, 
 
 " These burn with shame to lose their hard-earned crown, 
 And life would freely barter for renown, 
 But those, with rising hope, their triumphs scan, 
 For they can conquer who believe they can."* 
 
 * Shade of Dryden ! Forgive your humblest admirer for joining 
 three feeble lines to one of your matchless verses !
 
 On the Cam. 143 
 
 Such are the contending thoughts in the minds of the 
 countless admirers of either side that are strolling up and 
 down the banks ; when, suddenly, they are recalled to their 
 senses by a sudden bang. The first gun ; and the crews 
 all make rapidly to their boats, and begin to embark. 
 Eagerly the coxswain looks over his crew. " Now, then, 
 who's number 4 ? 0, Wright ; well, where is he ? Here, 
 Wright, Wright. He'll be late, to a dead certainty." 
 No ; there comes that hard, compact figure, and that 
 generous face breaking through the crowd of grey jackets, 
 for he has been exchanging a last defiance with the crew of 
 the Third Trinity, who are insinuating, audacious mortals, 
 that not only will First not catch John's, but will get 
 bumped themselves. " Now then, 4, get in. Are you all 
 ready ?" " No, no, not yet ; my stretcher's wrong." 
 The dark-blue jackets are torn off, and thrown to the men 
 on shore. " Now ; Sturge times us, doesn't he ?" " Ay, 
 all right ; " and you see by every boat some sympathizing 
 friend with a stop-watch. Bang ! the second gun. The 
 last arrangements are hurriedly made. All along the 
 banks eager partisans are just ready to begin their race 
 with their favourite. " Push out," is the cry ; and slowly, 
 steadily, the oars are raised, and the boat gently feuded off. 
 " Quarter of a minute gone ;" and all down the bank comes 
 up the refrain from every boat, " Quarter gone." The 
 last settlement in the seats, the last jacket pitched ashore, 
 the last firm grasp of the oar, never to be let go. " Half 
 a minute gone ;" now the boats are all in the middle of 
 the stream. " Back a stroke, 2 ; easy backing ; pull, bow 
 and 3 ;" for the oars are numbered, beginning at the bow ; 
 not, as with us, at the stroke. " Fifteen seconds left." 
 All eyes along the bank are fixed on the watchmen, as their 
 timing now comes more frequently. " Ten, nine, eight, 
 seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, gun," bang ! 
 splash. " Well started, well started," cry the partisans on 
 the bank. " Well rowed, well rowed ;" for First Trinity has 
 leapt ahead with a bound, as if she were on wings ; and all
 
 144 On the Cam. 
 
 the hopes of Third Trinity to bump her, with that headlong 
 spurt so characteristic of Etonians, is nipped in the bud. 
 " Well rowed, Trinity ; well rowed, John's. !NTow then, 
 take her along." See the headlong rush upon the bank. 
 A thousand men, in every sort of dress or undress, tearing 
 along at the rate of a mile in three minutes ; now stumbling 
 and falling, now shouting and pushing, now silent, with 
 their lips burning, and their eyes starting, but all on fire 
 with excitement. There, that fat little tutor is knocked 
 down, and his pupils rush over him, all but trampling him 
 to death ; but never stop for anything like that. There a 
 crowd have stopped to congratulate Emmanuel, Avhich has 
 succeeded in bumping Caius. Victors and vanquisher 
 haul off to the side and let the hind boats come up. Far 
 down you see evidences of other bumps ; all of which attract 
 weary admirers, thankful to get a respite from running. 
 But still, all the real interest is with the head boats. As 
 the tortuous track winds by Grassy Corner, a broad green 
 peninsula, covered with spectators, the excitement is fearful. 
 " "Well rowed, well rowed, Trinity. Well rowed, 4," as 
 Wright's broad back comes leaping forward and springing 
 back, like a three-ton trip hammer. " Well steered ; 0, 
 well steered, Trinity," as the little spectacled coxswain, 
 well known all over England, swings up his boat close to 
 the corner, gaining several feet at once. " Well rowed, 
 well rowed ; half a length more." " You're safe, John's, 
 you're safe ; they'll never do it." There, the Plough Inn 
 is coming in sight ; pass that corner, and it's ah 1 a straight 
 reach, no more room for picking up there ; no more fine 
 steering. But see, the Trinity stroke bounds forward with an 
 effort to which all his former exertions were child's play; and 
 the dark -blue oars leap in their sockets till their blades seem 
 like a single broad flash of light along the gunwale, and the 
 shout rings like a volley of musketry ; " Well rowed, well 
 rowed, Trinity ;" and, as they swirl round Ditton Corner, 
 once more that deft pull on the strings, and the sharp bow 
 comes flashing up into the stern of the Johnians ; and, like
 
 On the Cam. 145 
 
 a peal of thunder, bursts forth the thrice re-echoing, 
 " Hurrah for First ; well rowed, First, well rowed." 
 " Quick ; here, bring the flag." The grand old standard, 
 the Golden Lion with his three crowns on the dark-blue 
 field, is raised by the coxswain ; and, as the boats row 
 home in the thickening twilight, it will trail from their 
 stern along the dark green waters, and wave triumphantly 
 from their boat-house window. Loud and deep is the 
 rejoicing among the sons of Trinity, as they walk back to 
 their dear old halls ; hearty their praises of the valiant 
 oarsmen that have worked so long and so well ; and espe- 
 cially their choicest encomiums will rest on the stroke, an 
 American, God bless him, and a scion of the old Gar- 
 diner stock on the Kennebec. And in their loud rejoicings 
 to-night, at supper, their songs will swell in praise of 
 Trinity in strains not unlike those which follow : 
 
 BOAT-SONG FOR TRINITY. 
 
 Raise the shout of glory ! 
 Tell once more the story 
 How her forehead hoary 
 
 Shines with laurels new. 
 From the banks rebounding, 
 Every foe confounding, 
 Peals the triumph, sounding 
 
 O'er the royal blue. 
 
 Long the insulting foemen, 
 Like the haughty Roman, 
 Dared our valiant yeomen, 
 
 Sneering, to the fight. 
 But in vain they vaunted, 
 Not a moment daunted, 
 All on fire we panted 
 
 For the latest night. 
 
 " Now each eye be steadv, 
 Every oar be ready,
 
 146 On the Cam. 
 
 We shall triumph," said he, 
 
 He our leader true. 
 Then, the last shot parting, 
 With one impulse starting, 
 Like an arrow darting 
 From the bow, we flew. 
 
 Every glad shout feeling, 
 From our comrades pealing, 
 All our sinews stealing, 
 
 Surged our heart's best blood. 
 While the rhythmic chiming 
 Of our tough oars rhyming 
 To the steersman's timing, 
 
 Swept along the flood. 
 
 Hark ! the shout rings clearer 
 From each hearty cheerer, 
 Nearer fast and nearer 
 
 Our brave craft doth go. 
 Then, together dashing, 
 All our oar-blades flashing, 
 Like an earthquake crashing 
 
 Burst we on the foe. 
 
 See, ye brave who man her, 
 See, ye hosts that scan her, 
 How her ancient banner 
 
 Far resplendent streams, 
 * Where the haughty scion 
 Of King Edward's lion, 
 Glorious like Orion, 
 Trebly crowned gleams. 
 
 Raise the shout of glory ! 
 Tell once more the story, 
 How the mother hoary 
 
 Hails each victor son. 
 Peals of joy attend her, 
 Stalwart arms defend her, 
 Loyal hearts befriend her, 
 
 Trinity has won !
 
 VII. 
 SURVEY OF THE DIFFERENT COLLEGES. 
 
 St. John's. Magdalene. Sidney Sussex. Jesus. Christ's. 
 
 Emmanuel. Downing. St. Peters. Pembroke. Queens'. 
 
 St. Catherine's. Corpus Christi. King's. Clare. Trinity 
 Hall. Caius. 
 
 N my last two lectures I introduced you to 
 the life of an undergraduate of Trinity Col- 
 lege, both as it exists every day, and with 
 certain exceptional scenes. This pre-emi- 
 nence may be fairly accorded to Trinity, as 
 being the largest, the richest, and the most versatile of all 
 the colleges. Every one is partial to his own, out of a great 
 many; but no one can have lived long at Cambridge 
 without noticing not only that Trinity has the pre-eminence 
 in the points just mentioned, but also that the public favour 
 has been steadily setting to it for many years above the 
 other colleges. It numbers at present over five hundred 
 undergraduates, more than double the number of St. John's, 
 which is the next largest. It would be, however, very un- 
 fair to represent Cambridge without taking any account of 
 the other colleges whose members together constitute at 
 least two thirds of all the University, and have each and 
 all of them its own share in moulding the University to its 
 present form and so retaining it. 
 
 It is impossible to give any general rules why a student 
 coming to Cambridge selects one college more than another.
 
 148 On the Cam. 
 
 If the two largest did not either of them please him, with 
 all their manifold advantages, one would think that among 
 the five or six of the richest and most favoured he must 
 surely find the right one. And yet you see every year, 
 men of all possible powers and tastes, turning up at one or 
 other of the smaller colleges, entirely happy there, as eager 
 for the honour of their dear little hermitage as all the 
 Trinity men and Johnians for their great barracks, and 
 you labour in vain to discover why they selected as it were 
 this country town rather than either of the great metropoles 
 of learning. In some it is family association, in some an 
 old friendship with one of the authorities, in some a pre- 
 ference for the peculiar hours and accommodations. There 
 were formerly they are breaking it up very fast now at 
 different colleges rich scholarships and funds limited to 
 young men from particular schools. For instance, Wake- 
 field, in Yorkshire, a large, dingy manufacturing town, 
 wholly given to its country staples, has an ordinary gram- 
 mar-school, where there are not a great many of the 
 farmers' and mill-owners' sons who care to pursue high 
 classical or mathematical study. Now Clare College, at 
 Cambridge, has three or four rich exhibitions, as they are 
 called, for students from Wakefield school. Consequently, 
 every year, the three or four rough, stalwart young York- 
 shire formers and manufacturers, who have been willing to 
 apply their canniness to collegiate studies, walk up to 
 Clare College, one of the most elegant and exclusive of all 
 at Cambridge. 
 
 I propose to take an hour's walk with you to-night 
 round the various halls and colleges of Cambridge, spending 
 a few minutes at each to study their peculiarities. We 
 will start from the great gate of Trinity. Turning up 
 Trinity Street, and passing the end of Trinity College 
 Chapel, we find Trinity Street becoming St. John's 
 Street, which shows us that the rich antique gateway in 
 red and white brick before which we stand is that of
 
 On the Cam. 149 
 
 St. John's College. It presents three courts extending 
 in a straight line up to the very bank of the river. They 
 are all plain, but the second, a piece of red brick Tudor 
 architecture, with high gables all round, is remarkably 
 neat, compact, and homelike. The general plan of all 
 the colleges is much the same. In the first court you 
 find lecture-rooms, a chapel, and a Master's Lodge. 
 At the side opposite the gateway you pass into the 
 second court through an archway which has on one side 
 the door of the dining-hall, and on the other the passage 
 to the kitchens and butteries. Further on will be the 
 library. These are not invariably the relative situations, 
 but more common than any other. 
 
 After passing through the three older courts of St. John's, 
 we come suddenly out on a very pretty covered Gothic 
 bridge, spanning the river between the third and fourth 
 courts. To look out from the airy and elegant mullioned 
 windows down the river, with the buildings coming down 
 close to the water, in their rich red and yellow, and the 
 heavy black silent barges forcing their way slowly up, 
 gives a silent picture of a perfectly Venetian character ; 
 while looking up the river, there is a view of some of the 
 rooms in Trinity, their windows just peeping out of clusters 
 of ivy, and all along the banks smooth lawns shelving to 
 the water under venerable trees, and the grey old bridge 
 of St. John's, all telling you you are in dear domestic 
 England. The new bridge is poetically called by its 
 owners the Bridge of Sighs. But the profane, remem- 
 bering the term pigs so commonly applied to Johnians, 
 have denominated it the Isthmus of Suez. So when the 
 Johnians ordered a new organ, a great local wit called it 
 " Bacon's Novum Organon." The fourth, or new court 
 of St. John's, is a magnificent structure, or rather half a 
 structure. It is said that the architect, a very zealous 
 reviver of the Gothic style, on seeing an undergraduate 
 in the court shut his window on a very cold day, rushed
 
 150 On the Cam. 
 
 up to his room, and begged him never to shut both halves 
 of his window, because the true effect of the building de- 
 pended upon one half being open. 
 
 St. John's is the great mathematical college. It has 
 always sent out more senior and other high wranglers 
 than any other. Not that it has failed to educate fine 
 classical scholars also, but the very decided preference is 
 for mathematics. It is also the great Tory college, and 
 can always produce a high conservative candidate at all 
 elections to oppose the liberal candidate from Trinity or 
 some other college. 
 
 Let us walk out into the beautiful grounds of the college 
 and look at the new court from them. Its proportions 
 are truly noble, but may be best observed from the bridge 
 of Trinity. It is said that an undergraduate of St. John's 
 was once lounging on Trinity bridge just before dinner, 
 when the reverend and learned the Master was returning 
 from his daily canter. He rode up to the youth with the 
 remark, " Sir, this is a place of transit and not of lounge." 
 No attention was paid to this, and the remark was re- 
 peated with yet more force. " Sir, are you aware what 
 the bridge of Trinity College is made for?" "Yes, sir, 
 to see St. John's new buildings from." And the Master 
 rode on to dinner. 
 
 Passing out of St. John's College grounds we come 
 through a handsome iron gate upon the road leading 
 back of the college. \Ve see before us the racket courts, 
 built by subscription in the college we have just quitted. 
 This fine sport, giving excellent training for e}-e and 
 hand, and hard work for every muscle, is greatly esteemed 
 at English schools and colleges. Beyond it is the 
 cricket ground for Trinity. Passing up the road to the 
 northward, we see on the right a very quaint old building 
 already alluded to, now occupied as a farm-house. It is 
 of the Norman period, and known as the School of Py- 
 thagoras. The ground around it belongs, curiously 
 enough, to one of the colleges at Oxford. A tortuous
 
 On the Cam. 151 
 
 street leads us into one of the great arteries of the town, 
 the high road coming from Huntingdon on the west, and 
 Ely on the north, and turning down it in an easterly 
 direction we soon come to Magdalene College.* 
 
 This college is small, and of no very great interest. 
 It was founded by Lord Audley, one of Henry VIII.'s 
 magnates. He was also the founder of Audley End, a 
 magnificent mansion in Essex, now owned by a de- 
 scendant of the proud baronial family of Neville, and the 
 well-known parliamentary house of Grenville. To this 
 seat of Audley End, Lord Audley attached the master- 
 ship of Magdalene. So that whoever owns Audley End, 
 by descent or purchase of any kind, owns also the right 
 to appoint the head of Magdalene College. It is of 
 course generally given to some Kev. Mr. Neville or 
 other. 
 
 Magdalene possesses one invaluable treasure, the library 
 and manuscripts of the celebrated Samuel Pepys, Secre- 
 tary of the Admiralty to the last Stuart kings, and author 
 of the well-known Diary. This beautiful collection is 
 preserved with considerable jealousy, but is always ac- 
 cessible to proper persons desirous of consulting it. There 
 is little remarkable about the Magdalene buildings. The 
 college is small and not wealthy. It has of late had one 
 or two distinguished scholars ; but it is famous for a 
 luxurious table, and very lax discipline. So that it is a 
 favourite home for young men who are of the opinion, 
 either from conjecture or experience, that other colleges 
 are too strict for them. 
 
 Continuing past the front of Magdalene, we soon re- 
 cross the river by an ugly iron bridge in the busiest part 
 of the town, where coal-barges deposit their loads. We 
 
 * In Nichols' " Progresses," p. 45, it is stated that Magdalene 
 College is called Maudlin after its founder, thus M Audley n. 
 But if this is the case, why is Magdalene College, Oxford, also 
 called Maudlin ? ED.
 
 152 On the Cam. 
 
 pass the fronts of St. Clement's and St. Sepulchre's 
 Churches, and shortly after arrive at Jesus Lane. In 
 the corner which it forms with the street in which we 
 have been walking stands Sidney Sussex College. It 
 consists of two courts in a combination of the Elizabethan 
 and Renaissance styles of architecture, having no buildings, 
 but instead, a high wall on the side towards the street. 
 There is nothing peculiar or interesting about it, except 
 an original portrait of Oliver Cromwell, and the gardens, 
 which are laid out with unusual taste and skill. 
 
 We accordingly leave Sidney on our right, and turning 
 down Jesus Lane, pass a perfect nest of small houses, all 
 let in rooms to undergraduates, mostly Trinity men. I 
 should have said that at the large colleges, especially 
 Trinity, the number of resident students is much larger 
 than that of the rooms, and, therefore, at least half live 
 out of the college buildings, while all the really first-rate 
 sets of rooms are appropriated to the authorities, who, in- 
 stead of being interspersed among the students as police- 
 men, generally congregate together in the best quarters, 
 and leave the undergraduates to themselves. In the 
 smaller colleges, on the other hand, any undergraduate 
 can get an excellent set of rooms. It will be understood 
 that every undergraduate, however limited his means, has 
 two rooms to himself, and that the system of chums is 
 unknown. 
 
 We leave this h'ttle colony of Trinitarians, and pass the 
 opening of Park Street, wherein are the rooms of the 
 A. D. C, or Acting Club, and soon there rises on the 
 right the long garden wall of Jesus College. A broad 
 bricked walk leads us from the street to its massive stone 
 gateway. It is one of the most interesting and beautiful 
 colleges in Cambridge. There is a single little court 
 entirely surrounded by cloisters, the only complete one 
 in the University. From this extend lines of buildings, 
 open on every side to the free air coming across gay 
 gardens and broad meadows. The chapel is of church-
 
 On the Cam. 153 
 
 like proportions, and is considered, next to that of King's, 
 the most beautiful in Cambridge. Gregorian chants are 
 introduced into the service there, which are considered to 
 belong peculiarly to the High Church ritual, and indeed 
 the whole college is given to the study of Divinity of the 
 most Anglican, or even Anglo-Catholic kind. Jesus Col- 
 lege is founded on the site of an ancient nunnery, and 
 most romantic stories are told of the fair nuns who once 
 were sheltered there. The monastic vows of damsels 
 could not long remain in force while a flourishing Uni- 
 versity of young men was growing up all around them. 
 And the students of Cambridge having gained entire 
 possession of the hearts of the nuns of St. Ehadegund, 
 it was determined to give them possession of their house 
 also, and the ruined nunnery became Jesus College. 
 
 Passing on from Jesus we turn to the right and cross 
 a broad open plot of ground, surrounded by handsome 
 houses. It is called Christ's Piece, and a few steps 
 farther brings us to Christ's College. This college was 
 founded by the Lady Margaret Somerset, Countess of 
 Richmond and Derby. She also founded St. John's 
 College, in whose boat-club her name is perpetuated, as 
 well as in two professorships. She seems to have been a 
 most benevolent and honoured personage in the latter part 
 of the fifteenth century, though her position was some- 
 what singular. Her son, Henry Earl of Richmond, 
 claimed a right to the throne, derived through her, and 
 actually became King Henry VII. more than twenty 
 years before the death of the mother by whom he claimed. 
 We pass through the ancient gateway of Christ's College 
 into a very airy and bright but irregular court-yard, 
 thence into a second open space, called the second court, 
 but of a very park-like character, with only one elegant 
 row of Palladian buildings. At an archway barred by a 
 gate we stop, ringing a large bell, and admiring the arms 
 of Lady Margaret, the old lilies and lions, over the grating. 
 A venerable gardener soon answers the summons, and as
 
 154 On the Cam. 
 
 he knows me of old, lets me walk in without a question. 
 We are now in the fellows' garden of Christ's College. 
 These fellows, shrewd men, among their other advantages, 
 manage to secure a fine piece of ground to themselves, 
 within the college precincts, where they have a nice gar- 
 den to stroll in after dinner. Generally these gardens are 
 not accessible to the public except when thrown open on 
 great occasions, but Christ's always is. We compliment 
 the old gardener on his velvet turf and hoary walnuts and 
 elms, but we do not stop for them. Xeither do we linger 
 long in the pretty summer-house, embowered in trees, with 
 the alcove behind it, and the wide and deep bathing-tank, 
 fed with an ever-running spring of pure water, and its banks 
 surrounded with busts and memorial urns to the great men 
 of the college. Here, come through the shrubs by this 
 winding path to the open grass, and look before you. 
 What is it? A mound of earth four feet high, covered 
 with turf, and a decaying limb of a mulberry-tree growing 
 out of it, and propped up by stakes all around it ? Yes, 
 this is what we have come to see. This decaying mul- 
 berry, over two hundred and thuiy years old, is watched 
 and tended in Christ's with the utmost care. Years ago, 
 when it was falling from age, and props became of little 
 avail, the turf was banked up around its stem. Its chinks 
 are sealed up with lead and canvas like the old elm on 
 Boston Common ; if a bough breaks and falls it is instantly 
 divided with religious exactitude among the fellows of the 
 college. Well may they watch it, well may they treasure 
 it, well may pious pilgrims year after year seek it out 
 and save its leaves as precious relics. For it stands as 
 the record how the wayward, proud college-boy became 
 the statesman, the philosopher, the poet. It stands as 
 the record how a mighty genius, broken by calamity, 
 oppressed by bigotry, tortured by fanaticism, could yet 
 triumph over all opposition, and bring a world in homage 
 to his feet. It is the mulberry planted by the hand of 
 Milton.
 
 On the Cam. 155 
 
 Retracing our steps through Christ's College, we turn 
 down St. Andrew's Street, and presently there rises on 
 our left a well-proportioned range of Palladian buildings ; 
 they are the front of the two courts of Emmanuel College. 
 With the exception of a large pond where swans swim in 
 the rear, there is little remarkable about the internal ar- 
 rangement of this college. But about its history there is 
 much to notice. It was founded by Sir Walter Mildmay, 
 a statesman of high eminence in the reign of Queen Eliz- 
 abeth, and just at the time when the Puritans and the 
 Bishops were involved in the fiercest controversy, which 
 had recently resulted in the acts of uniformity, and other 
 confirmatory acts, endeavouring to force the Puritans into 
 unwilling allegiance to the Church of England. Sir Wal- 
 ter Mildmay was strongly attached to the simpler forms of 
 worship, and it was understood by all his contemporaries 
 that his college was for the special education of the Puri- 
 tans. The Queen herself met him soon after the college 
 had gone into operation, and said, " So, Sir Walter, I 
 hear you have erected a Puritan foundation." " No, 
 Madam," was his reply ; " far be it from me to counte- 
 nance anything contrary to your established laws ; but I 
 have set an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God 
 alone knows what will be the fruit thereof." " And," 
 says Fuller, who tells the story, writing in 1634, " sure I 
 am at this day it hath overshadowed all the University." 
 
 This, my friends, is why Emmanuel College is of such 
 tender interest to us. This it is which makes every New 
 England visitor to Cambridge hurry away from the hall 
 of Trinity, the library of Magdalene, the chapel of King's, 
 to gaze with pious reverence on the ancient halls where 
 his sainted ancestors stood forth against the bigotry and 
 intolerance of the whole University, and the Virgin Queen 
 herself, to worshipGod aftertheir own fashion. The Roman- 
 izing traditions of Whitgift and Bancroft had prescribed 
 that all churches and chapels must be built in a line east 
 and west. But the founder of Emmanuel had learnt from
 
 156 On the Cam. 
 
 his Euclid, that a limited straight line can be produced in 
 a straight line in any direction, and, determined to give 
 not the slightest countenance to superstition, he drew the 
 line of his chapel north and south, for he knew that too 
 could be produced from earth to heaven. It was at Em- 
 manuel that were educated most of the learned ministers 
 who exchanged their dear native country, their parsonage 
 houses peeping out from among the beeches, and their an- 
 cient ivy-grown parish churches, where men had wor- 
 shipped for eight centuries, for the trackless forest. It 
 was from Emmanuel that there went forth Hooker and 
 Shepard and Higginson and John Cotton, to carry the 
 lamp of the Gospel and the scarcely less glorious lamp of 
 liberty all over the wastes of Xew England. It was from 
 Emmanuel that John Harvard came to make his will in 
 favour of the college at Newtowne and then die. These 
 were the children that Emmanuel sent forth to help the 
 struggling colony of the Massachusetts. They knew how 
 to stretch the transepts of their chapel east and west from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific ; they knew how to extend their 
 nave and choir and chancel north and south from the St. 
 Lawrence to the Gulf; that when hatred and strife had 
 vanished, there might rise in one chorus from every aisle 
 of the nation's vast cathedral, the universal song to the 
 Lord Jehovah. 
 
 " Ay, call it holy ground, 
 
 The soil where first they trod ; 
 They have left unstained what there they found, 
 Freedom to worship God." 
 
 But how is the beauty of Israel fallen upon her high 
 places! After the restoration of Charles II, William 
 Bancroft was appointed Master of Emmanuel, and the 
 work of " purification" began, the chapel was turned into 
 a library, and a new one duly built east and west. In 
 1753, Carter exultingly states that the " leaven of Puri- 
 tanism has been happily purged out a good while since,"
 
 On the Cam. 157 
 
 and now, Emmanuel, the home of Harvard, and Jesus, 
 the college of the apostle John Eliot, contend for the honour 
 of being the most Puseyite College in Cambridge. 
 
 Passing through the gate of Emmanuel, we continue 
 our walk down St. Andrew's Street. We see on the left 
 the passage to a large square, called Parker's Piece. It is 
 not in anyway fenced in, and is occasionally used for mili- 
 tary or agricultural shows, but mainly for cricket and foot- 
 ball. It is really a work of danger to cross it, for if you 
 do so in the spring, after you have narrowly escaped tum- 
 bling over a wicket on one side, and a small boy acting 
 long-stop on the other, you will find one very hard ball 
 come bang against your shin, and another thud against 
 your hat, two or three more bearing down upon you with 
 more than Folly Island accuracy, and your ears deafened 
 everywhere with the cry, "Thank you, ball;" "Ball, if 
 you please!" "Ball, sir, thank you," &c. <fcc. In the 
 winter Parker's Piece is given up to football. 
 
 Continuing on our way, we arrive at a large iron gate, 
 through which we turn, and arrive at the only place in 
 Cambridge which looks to an American anything like a 
 college yard. It is, indeed, a finely situated piece of ground 
 of about thirty acres in extent, a portion planted with trees, 
 and in the centre a wide velvet lawn, right and left of which 
 stand two rows of buildings, which will eventually be con- 
 nected so as to make three sides of an immense quad- 
 rangle. This is Downing College, founded, as I mentioned 
 in my first lecture, by Sir George Downing of Gamlingay, 
 a descendant of Sir George Downing, a graduate of the 
 first class that ever left Harvard, that of 1642. He was 
 appointed minister to Holland by Cromwell. By dint of 
 the most arrant knavery and treachery, he contrived to re- 
 tain the appointment under Charles II, and add to it con- 
 siderable wealth and a baronet's title. The second or third 
 Sir George Downing drew up a long and elaborate will in 
 1717, bequeathing all his property, after the death of the 
 last heir to the title, to found a college in the University
 
 158 On the Cam. 
 
 of Cambridge. The history of the foundation is an inter- 
 esting commentary on the text, " How hard it is to do 
 good." Sir George died in 1749, and the last heir of his 
 race in 1764. For four years the estates were held by 
 persons who had no right to them. In 1768 the opinion 
 of the Court of Chancery was given with great minuteness 
 unanimously in favour of the foundation. In 1769 a 
 decree was obtained in favour of it. But the original 
 trustees had died in the lifetime of the founder, and the ex- 
 ecution of the trust devolving on the heirs-at-law, a series 
 of oppositions and litigations delayed all definite action till 
 1800, when the privy council recommended the foundation 
 to the king. The charter was granted Sept. 22ud in that 
 year. The statutes for the government of the college were 
 framed in July, 1805 ; the first stone laid on the 18tb of 
 May, 1807 ; and the college finally opened for the resi- 
 dence of undergraduates in May, 1821, fifty-seven years 
 after the death of the last person who had any legal hold 
 on the property, seventy-two years after the death of the 
 original founder, and one hundred and four years after the 
 will was drawn, creating it. Downing College has never 
 been largely attended. The University teems with un- 
 numbered jokes about the one student there, how, when 
 he is ill, he lets the tutor off from lecturing, &c. But of 
 late, the funds have been put more actively at work, and 
 the college authorities have acted very wisely, in offering 
 liberal inducements for the pursuit of those studies not 
 generally favoured in other colleges. 
 
 Crossing the court and grounds of Downing we come 
 out by a small iron gate through Fitzwilliam Street into 
 Trumpington Street, and find ourselves opposite the glo- 
 rious Corinthian front of the Fitzwilliam Museum. This 
 splendid building contains a large and exceedingly valuable 
 collection, but as I never saw it, I cannot describe it to 
 you. Passing up Trumpington Street, immediately be- 
 yond the Fitzwilliam Museum we come to St. Peter's 
 College, always called Peterhouse. This is the oldest
 
 On the Cam. 159 
 
 college in Cambridge, having been founded in the year 
 1257. It consists of two very elegant courts, the first 
 open toward the street, the chapel standing half way 
 between the two sides, and connected to them by light 
 galleries. Through a gate on the left we have access to 
 the spacious and elegant gardens of Peterhouse, one of 
 the prettiest resorts in Cambridge, the first of them stocked 
 with beautiful deer. The first window on the street as we 
 turn into the college is in the room inhabited by the poet 
 Gray. He is well known to have been of the most sensi- 
 tive, morbid, and fastidious disposition, which rendered 
 him a mark for the other students to play tricks on. In 
 particular he had a tremendous dread of fire, and had 
 rigged a fire-escape connecting with this very window. 
 His fellow students went beneath one night and raised a 
 terrific cry of " fire," and poor Gray, hastily getting his 
 fire-escape in order, descended, and found ready to re- 
 ceive him a tub of cold water. These and other tricks 
 so disgusted him, that he migrated, as the term is, to 
 Pembroke. 
 
 The chapel of Peterhouse, though not very striking 
 outside, has some great attractions within. The east 
 window, representing the Crucifixion, is a very fine speci- 
 men of the ancient style of coloured glass, and the eight 
 side windows are equally beautiful examples of the elegant 
 Munich glass, so brilliant in colour, so lifelike in design, 
 so vivid in conception, and of which such an attractive 
 specimen has recently been presented to one of our most 
 ancient and honoured churches by the munificence of our 
 esteemed fellow citizen, by whose authority these lectures 
 are addressed to you, the Hon. John A. Lowell. 
 
 Crossing the street from Peterhouse, and going a little 
 farther on, we follow Gray in his migration, for we are 
 now before the old front of Pembroke College. This was 
 founded in the fourteenth century by the widow of Aymer 
 de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a distinguished hero in the 
 times of Wallace and Bruce, and well known to all who
 
 1 60 On the Cam. 
 
 have ever waded through Castle Dangerous, that sad 
 monument of the decay of the transcendent genius of 
 Sir Walter Scott. A large part of the original buildings 
 still remains, and is nearly tumbling to pieces. The little 
 retired second court, and part of the first, are wholly 
 covered with ivy, forming a lovely picture on the outside, 
 but painfully suggestive of damp within. Pembroke is 
 famous for possessing some curious waterworks in the 
 fellows' garden, and also a hollow sphere capable of 
 holding several persons, and made to illustrate the me- 
 chanism of the earth in its daily and yearly path. It has 
 educated a very large number of distinguished men, among 
 whom are the martyr Ridley and William Pitt the younger. 
 It has also done itself honour by bestowing its fellowships 
 in many cases on distinguished members of other colleges, 
 among whom the poet Gray, as aforesaid, and Professor 
 Adams, " the other discoverer of Neptune," are among the 
 most renowned. It is one of the pleasantest and most re- 
 spectable little colleges in Cambridge, and its fellowships, 
 though very few, are among the richest ; but the fellows 
 prefer, year after year, to enjoy these large funds as they 
 are, to dividing them into a greater number of less value, 
 and thus providing the means of rewarding a greater 
 number of students. 
 
 Kecrossing Trumpington Street, we soon come to the 
 handsome front of the Pitt Press. This is one of the 
 most prominent buildings in Cambridge, and, like King's 
 College Chapel, may be seen from a long distance on a 
 clear day, gleaming like silver in the sunlight. It is 
 merely an ornamental front to the printing-office behind, 
 and was built with the surplus of the fund raised for 
 erecting a statue to William Pitt. This press enjoyed 
 for a long time, and to a certain extent does still, in com- 
 mon with the University Press at Oxford, and that of a 
 single publisher in London, the exclusive right of printing 
 and publishing English Bibles and Prayer-Books. The 
 printing at the Pitt Press, especially the Greek, is of re-
 
 On the Cam. 161 
 
 markable beauty. In fact the air of Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, whether in England or America, seems favourable 
 to the production of beautiful press-work. 
 
 Turning to the left down the street at the corner of 
 which the Pitt Press stands, and taking the first turn to 
 the right, we find ourselves opposite the front of Queens' 
 College. This college was founded by the haughty and 
 unfortunate Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI, and 
 her foundation was patronized and enlarged by her suc- 
 cessor, Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV. These 
 two lovely and unhappy queens, who will for ever live to 
 assail each other in the burning lines of Richard the Third, 
 are here united in the noble work of charity. The college 
 by them jointly founded is one of the most curious, and to 
 many, the most attractive in Cambridge. The first court 
 is a fine specimen of the architecture of the Renaissance ; 
 the chapel is filled with curious monumental brasses. On 
 the right opens a broad, sunny court, with well-arranged 
 flower-beds and a noble walnut-tree in the centre. Behind 
 the hall is the second court, a quaint old pile of buildings 
 surrounded by a low cloister, where the sun seems to lie 
 all the day. On the right is the lodge occupied by the 
 President ; for Queens' is the only college at Cambridge 
 where this term is used instead of Master. It contains an 
 old picture-gallery of rare attractions. The buildings in 
 this court touch the river, and you emerge from them 
 upon a very quaint wooden bridge of one arch, carrying 
 you over into a lovely garden or rather wilderness, where 
 there is a broad gravel walk along the bank of the river, 
 with a view opposite of a smooth shaven bowling-green, 
 backed by many a range of majestic and quaint buildings, 
 while through the arch of the next bridge a glimpse is 
 offered of the rich masses of foliage along the Cam, over- 
 topped by the majestic towers of King's. Returning to 
 the court we see in one corner the tower from which 
 sounded the blasts of that silver trumpet that blew down 
 the accursed wall that mediaeval schoolmen had built up
 
 162 On the Cam. 
 
 around the treasures of learning. Often and often have 
 devout scholars gazed with reverence on the 
 
 " lamp at midnight hour 
 Seen from that high lonely tower ;" 
 
 but even in the affection they bore its master, hardly 
 dreamed that it was indeed a light shining in a dark 
 place, which should shine brighter and brighter unto the 
 perfect day of truth and science and liberty, for that 
 room was the home of learning when learning seemed 
 lost to Cambridge, that lamp was the lamp of Erasmus. 
 
 Passing out of this most interesting college, which of 
 late, though it has produced some splendid mathematicians, 
 has for some unexplained reason been greatly lowered in 
 general estimation, we come to the front of St. Catherine's 
 College. We enter and find ourselves in a very large 
 court, surrounded on three sides by ordinary brick build- 
 ings, and open on the fourth to Trumpington Street, into 
 which we pass, for there is nothing in St. Catherine's, or 
 Cat's, as it is commonly called, to detain us. On the 
 opposite side of the street is the imposing front of Corpus 
 Christ! College, a building in the impurer style of modern 
 Gothic, but very effective from the magnitude of its pro- 
 portions. It admits us into a very spacious court, one 
 of the most ambitious in the University, but inferior in 
 picturesqueness to the second court at the side, which is 
 wholly embowered in ivy. From this we pass out by a 
 side entrance, leading us to St. Bene't's Church,* from 
 whose contiguity the college was often called Bene't 
 College. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, the master 
 was Dr. Jegon, a man of considerable strictness. Some 
 
 * The lower archway of St. Bene't's, one of the most perfect 
 bits of Saxon architecture in England, has till lately been concealed 
 by a barbarous gallery, which has now however been taken down ; 
 and when the clearing away of the whitewash and plaster, the 
 pointing of the stonework, &c. at present going on is completed, 
 there will be no lion more interesting to the visitor of architectural 
 tastes in England. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 163 
 
 of the foundation scholars having committed an offence 
 for which they were heavily fined, Dr. Jegon devoted the 
 proceeds to various needed repairs of the buildings. Soon 
 after he found pasted up a paper whereon was writ 
 
 " Dr. Jegon, Bene't College Master, 
 Broke the scholars' heads, and gave the walls a plaster." 
 
 The Doctor wrote underneath, 
 
 " Knew I but the wag that wrote this verse in bravery, 
 I'd commend him for his wit, but whip him for his knavery." 
 
 Corpus Christi is now a flourishing college, distinguished 
 for educating poor young men, especially from the great 
 cities. Its members, consequently, take a strongly radical, 
 all but agrarian tone, in debates at the Union.* 
 
 Passing by St. Bene't's Church into Bene't Street, we 
 turn into King's Parade, which, however, is only a wider 
 portion of the one main street of Cambridge, which we 
 have already known, in parts, as Trinity, St. John's, and 
 Trumpiugton Streets. The whole space on our left, from 
 the opening of Bene't Street to Senate-House Green, is 
 occupied by the buildings of King's College. It consists 
 principally of a long ornamented wall, called a screen, in 
 the worst style of the modern Gothic, and exhibiting in 
 its centre a vast gate-lodge and archway, surmounted by 
 a mass of pinnacles, which look like nothing but a wine- 
 bottle between four glasses. Passing through this marvel- 
 lous structure, we enter a vast quadrangle. On our left, 
 is a range of buildings in the same style of architecture as 
 the screen, containing rooms for the undergraduates, the 
 hall, library, and provost's lodge. In front are the fellows' 
 
 * We are inclined to dispute this " consequence," having ob- 
 served that the pecuniary position of undergraduates exercises 
 little or no effect on their political opinions. Trinity men are, as 
 a rule, richer than Johnians, yet Johnians are the Tories, par ex- 
 cellence, while the Trinity tendencies are liberal. However, Corpus 
 men have a reading-room, provided with papers, &c, in their col- 
 lege, and are therefore no great frequenters of the Union. ED.
 
 164 On the Cam. 
 
 quarters, a Palladian structure, very well proportioned, and 
 elegant in itself, but wholly out of keeping with the older 
 and newer parts of the college. On the right of the quad- 
 rangle is the chapel. 
 
 I have already alluded to this more than once in terms 
 of the highest praise ; but I might allude to it again and 
 again, and never exhaust the subject. The first feeling 
 that strikes you is the perfect proportion of the whole 
 structure ; and this is an impression which every subse- 
 quent examination serves to confirm. The next is its 
 vastness. As you contemplate it from the other side of 
 the court, you notice all along the sides, built in between 
 each pair of buttresses, what seem like small nooks, or 
 cellar windows, and are amazed to find on approaching 
 them that they are three or four times higher than the 
 passer-by. Externally the building measures three hun- 
 dred and sixteen feet by eighty-four. Its height to the 
 top of the battlements is ninety, and to the top of the 
 four heaven-kissing pinnacles one hundred and forty- 
 six. These dimensions are greatly lessened internally 
 by the tremendous thickness of the walls. It is one vast 
 nave, divided in the centre by a heavy oak screen, above 
 which is the organ, the chapel proper being raised two 
 steps, paved with black marble, and filled with splendid 
 oak carving. On each side, twelve magnificent windows 
 of the finest stained glass of Henry VIII .'s time, and at 
 the end a still more splendid one of grander proportions, 
 cast an awful glory over the whole. All around, the solid 
 stone is wrought into ten thousand decorations, where 
 reign pre-eminent the rose, the portcullis, and the crown, 
 badges of the unhappy house of Lancaster. Far above, 
 the solid stone roof descends into a hundred pendants, all, 
 together with the massy columns that uphold it, sculptured 
 into countless fantasies, and bringing most vividly to mind 
 the exquisite conceit of Scott, how 
 
 " You would have thought some fairy hand 
 'Twixt poplar straight the osier wand
 
 On the Cam. 165 
 
 In many a freakish knot had twined, 
 
 Then framed a spell when the work was done, 
 
 And changed the willow wreaths to stone." 
 
 And when the anthem is rising and swelling in floods of 
 harmony through all the resounding vault, the still more 
 entrancing picture of Milton bursts upon you, as he wrote 
 it in the glory of his matchless youth, and full of the 
 recollections of his Alma Mater, 
 
 " But let my due feet never fail 
 To walk the studious cloisters pale, 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 With antique pillars massy proof, 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim, religious light : 
 There let the pealing organ blow, 
 To the full-voiced quire below, 
 In service high, and anthems clear, 
 As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 
 Dissolve me into ecstacies, 
 And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 
 
 Having finished but ten years would not complete the 
 survey of this glorious chapel, let us ascend the turret, 
 and pass between the roofs. Over the solid stone roof we 
 have just admired, is a passage the whole length of the 
 chapel, four or five feet high, beneath the outer roof. 
 Ascending to this, a most magnificent view of Cambridge 
 is before us. You can look down into the court-yards and 
 see everything that goes on, for there is not a place in 
 the University of which the majestic towers are not watch- 
 ful guardians. 
 
 King's College, one of the very richest in the Univer- 
 sity, has, till lately, been of a very exceptional character. 
 When King Henry VI. founded it, he founded also, as 
 Gray has let us know, the great public school on the 
 bank of the Thames, commonly known as Eton College. 
 At this school, which generally numbers in all more than 
 700 boys studying there, a large number, called King's 
 College, are educated free, from King Henry's founda-
 
 166 On the Cam. 
 
 tion.* Every year one or more of these, not generally 
 more than three or four in all, were chosen to the scholar- 
 ships of King's College, and in time advanced to fellow- 
 ships. And all this magnificent foundation was entirely 
 for the fifteen scholars, and sixty or seventy fellows, 
 there being no pensioners or ordinary undergraduates at 
 all, and no members on the foundation coming from any- 
 where but a limited part of one school ! King's College, 
 however, has already been put on a more liberal footing, t 
 and it is supposed in time will be thrown open to all the 
 world, like the other colleges. This Eton preparation 
 makes admirable classical scholars of the King's men ; but 
 it is only till lately that they had a full opportunity to 
 show it, for, according to the old constitution, a King's 
 College man received his degree from the University with- 
 out an examination, and was, in other ways, not amenable 
 to University authority. But all this is now changed. 
 
 Let us go to the back of King's College, and stand on 
 its ancient bridge. The view is indeed beautiful. You 
 have in front the whole range of buildings, Queens' Col- 
 lege, King's College, Clare College, St. Mary's Church, 
 the Senate-House, all peeping out of foliage, or standing 
 proudly on their smooth lawns. At your feet are the 
 spacious grounds of King's, shelving down to the stream 
 dotted with a score of gay pleasure-craft. Down the river 
 the graceful stone bridges of Clare and Trinity hide be- 
 tween them a monstrosity belonging to the town, and still 
 lower down the vista is completed by the rich front of St. 
 
 * We never heard the foundation at Eton called "King's Col- 
 lege," though the boys on it are " King's Scholars." The original 
 name of the school was " The College of the Blessed Mary of 
 Eton beside Windsor." The boys on the foundation are termed 
 Collegers, the others Oppidans ;' the latter numbering nearer 900 
 than 700. 
 
 f Under the new statute of 1861, the foundation of King's College, 
 Cambridge, consists of forty-six fellows, and not less than forty- 
 eight scholars, governed by a provost. Twenty-four of the scholar- 
 ships are appropriated to the scholars of Eton College. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 167 
 
 John's new buildings. Crossing the bridge we pass for a 
 moment along the road running behind the colleges, and 
 turn into the ancient avenue of Clare, one of the prettiest 
 walks in Cambridge. It ends on the very elegant bridge 
 just described, by which we recross the river and soon 
 stand in the single court of Clare College. This college 
 is one of the most ancient, but its buildings are a very 
 choice specimen of the architecture of Inigo Jones's time. 
 Everybody is struck with the neatness, finish, and perfect 
 respectability of Clare but there is nothing very remark- 
 able connected with its history. Passing out of Clare, we 
 see before us a very ancient gateway of Gothic architec- 
 ture, through which there is now a passage to the Wood- 
 wardian Museum of Geology.* It is part of an ancient 
 building, called the Schools, containing rooms where the 
 public instruction and examination of the University was 
 formerly given. A little farther on, is the entrance to 
 Trinity Hall. I have already spoken to you of this college 
 as at one time entirely given to the study of the civil law. 
 It was then in a very lax state, hardly acknowledging any 
 rules at all. Of late, however, it has taken a great 
 start. The Senior Wrangler of the last year 1863 was 
 from Trinity Hall, and though it is very poor, it is making 
 glorious exertions. It is, at present, very much distin- 
 guished as a boating college. It is said that one or two 
 summers ago, a gentleman called at the gate with a view 
 to placing his son there. He asked the porter for the 
 tutor, Mr. Latham. " O, he's gone down to see the boats, 
 sir !"_ O, well, Mr. Stephen."" O, sir," with a look 
 of utter astonishment ; " why, he's a-coaching our boat, 
 sir." Coaching is the regular term for all instruction. 
 " Well, then, I suppose I must ask for the master, Dr. 
 Geldart," " Well, sir, I think Dr. and Mrs. Geldart has 
 driv down to the boats, sir." Further cross-examination 
 
 * Since this was written an entrance to the Woodwardian Mu- 
 seum has been opened in Senate-House Passage. ED.
 
 168 On the Cam. 
 
 demonstrated that there was nobody in college but the 
 porter himself, and another college servant who was para- 
 lytic. The gentleman concluded he would go on to some 
 other college, where they didn't go in for things with quite 
 so much energy. Trinity Hall is indeed a hearty, jolly 
 place, governed and inhabited by a splendid set of men, 
 whose main fault is that they are given, after very noisy 
 suppers, to going out at nine or ten o'clock into the court- 
 yard, and shouting for half an hour, on the slightest pro- 
 vocation, and frequently on none at all. At least, I have 
 known them do it the night their boat became head of the 
 river, and the night she was bumped as well. 
 
 Cambridge has long been celebrated for the number 
 and excellence of its mixed drinks and possets, brewed on 
 a basis of generous wines, admirable hot in the winter 
 evenings, and still more admirable cold after breakfast, 
 or during whist. The very best of these, in fact the only 
 ones deserving the name,* are brewed at Trinity Hall 
 butteries, and furnished in glorious old silver craters. 
 The Greek word is the only exact one. If you doubt 
 it, go there and order a Madeira cup. 
 
 The buildings of Trinity Hall are in no way remark- 
 able, but they have a lovely fellows' garden along the 
 river. 
 
 Passing out of the second court, we see in front of us 
 a heavy pile of brick buildings, evidently new. It is the 
 hall of the last college on our list, Gonville and Caius, 
 always called by a peculiar mispronunciation of the last 
 name, Keys. To enter it to our own satisfaction we must 
 pass down the lane to the left, and turning into Trinity 
 Street, we soon arrive at a very low archway. When 
 Dr. Kaye Latinized his name into Caius and increased 
 Edmund Gonville's foundation, he established three 
 
 * Has Mr. Everett ever tasted the 'milk punch' at King's? or 
 the 'Cup' at Pembroke? Trinity 'Silky' he must have tasted 
 and forgotten. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 169 
 
 gates, each with an allegorical meaning. The first is 
 the one by which we enter. One of the last times I went 
 in was with a Boston friend, well known in editorial circles. 
 " This," said I, " is the gate of Humility ; " and as I said 
 it, my editorial friend, not understanding the full force of 
 the remark, hit his elegant beaver a most fearful smash 
 against the low arch of the gate of Humility. You come 
 into a curious irregular shaped court-yard, with a few 
 strange old buildings in it, roughly paved, and planted 
 with trees. In front a more imposing gateway greets 
 you, and as you pass through its ample arch, you see, by 
 the Latin inscription, that it is known as the gate of 
 Wisdom and Virtue. It leads you into the second court. 
 Both this and a third court on the right are extremely 
 common in their appearance, and quite unworthy of the 
 college, which ranks as the third in size at Cambridge, 
 and is much resorted to by two sets of men. First, per- 
 sons preparing for the medical profession, for which great 
 incentives to study are offered at Caius ; and, second, 
 persons of the Low Church party. Of these Caius is 
 the stronghold in Cambridge. The new hall is very fine, 
 quite worthy of the college which had the honour to edu- 
 cate William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of 
 the blood. 
 
 Finally, we turn to the left from the second court and 
 leave it by Dr. Kaye's third gate, that of Honour. It is 
 elegantly decorated, and one of the prettiest of the smaller 
 objects in Cambridge. You have now completed with 
 me the rounds of the colleges, and should you feel fa- 
 tigued, we are at the entrance of the University Library, 
 where you can go in and rest ; and I will leave you there 
 for the present, as you will hardly be able to read through 
 all the two hundred and odd thousand volumes before next 
 Friday night.
 
 YIII. 
 GREAT MEN OF CAMBRIDGE BEFORE 1688. 
 
 Erasmus and early Scholars. Reformers. Elizabethan States- 
 men and Poets. Sir Edward Coke. Translators of the Bible. 
 Bacon. New England Puritans. Strafford. Cromwell. 
 Milton. 
 
 my last three lectures I have endeavoured 
 to fulfil my promise of giving you some 
 insight into the actual condition of the 
 Cambridge students, their ordinary and 
 extraordinary mode of life, as it is in the 
 largest and most important college, with a glimpse at the 
 peculiarities in colleges smaller, but not on that account 
 of less marked individuality. But you will see at once 
 that if we stopped here, we should obtain but an imperfect 
 idea of what the Cambridge man truly is. The under- 
 graduate life, though a picture singularly curious, in- 
 teresting, may I not say lovely to any warm-hearted 
 observer, is yet rather the promise than the reality. The 
 young men themselves, exercised in college studies, ex- 
 cited by college amusements, absorbed by college compa- 
 nionships, realize but little the influences they are going 
 through. The lessons learnt at Cambridge, about the age 
 when the law allows the privileges of manhood, are often 
 not put in practice till many years, and perhaps many 
 miles, separate the graduate from his Alma Mater. And 
 since the University is confessedly and avowedly a training
 
 On the Cam. 171 
 
 school, we must look to those who have been her sons, 
 rather than those who are, for the full value of her lessons. 
 For instance, if a Bostonian sought to impress a stranger 
 with the value of the education given at Harvard, he 
 would not dwell so much on the varied and interesting 
 and improving course of study pursued there, or on its 
 administration by a most intelligent and conscientious 
 body of instructors, or on the annual resort made there 
 by the most promising offspring of the most honoured 
 families. No ; rather on its past history, on its having 
 been the mother of so many renowned sons, on its having 
 sent forth the fathers of the American Revolution, Otis 
 and Warren, and the five brave men of Massachusetts whose 
 names stand on the charter of 76; that it was the home 
 of our great historians, Sparks and Bancroft and Prescott 
 and Motley, that the long series of the Massachusetts 
 Chief Justices, that have placed the decisions of her 
 courts at the very head of the common law authorities, 
 went forth from its walls, that in the space of one 
 hundred and ninety-three years it has not once had to 
 go out of its own graduates to seek a presiding officer 
 over the gallant youth intrusted to it. 
 
 And so, ladies and gentlemen, you will at once recog- 
 nize that I shall present to you a most important view of 
 the value of Cambridge life and education, when I recall 
 to you in this lecture and the following the names and 
 services of the great men of England that have been 
 educated at Cambridge, and thus fulfil the second part 
 of my engagement of the other night, to show you what 
 manner of men have been inmates of her halls in times 
 
 In this investigation I shall not attempt to trace the 
 sons of Cambridge into the Middle Ages. True that it 
 was even in those misty times one of the few places 
 where the rays of the sun of truth did penetrate the 
 gloom, but its history is too uncertain, and the part 
 played by University men in the struggles of those
 
 172 On the Cam. 
 
 stormy times too insignificant, to detain us long. The 
 Reeve's tale in Chaucer presents us with a very lively 
 though very coarse picture of the manners of the under- 
 graduates. That, together with the tradition that Chaucer 
 himself studied there, must suffice us till we come to the 
 period of the revival of learning and the Reformation of 
 the Church. 
 
 And these two great movements of the human mind 
 furnish a most appropriate introduction to the history of 
 the great men of Cambridge. From the moment that 
 the torch of truth was brought to the shores of England, 
 the sons of Cambridge leapt forth to seize the precious 
 flame and bear it on, blazing brighter and brighter, to 
 generations of Englishmen yet to come. The greatest 
 name connected with the revival of learning in some 
 respects the greatest name in modern literature is in- 
 dissolubly associated with Cambridge, that of the mighty 
 Erasmus. He is not the earliest of all the scholars in the 
 new field of Greek literature, possibly not the most 
 learned. But no one man ever did so much to spread 
 such a wealth of learning over such a great part of Europe 
 as Erasmus. After his fame had become established 
 throughout the Western world, after he had finished that 
 long and laborious course of study that made him master 
 of the treasures of all ancient lore, he came to reside at 
 Cambridge, in the second court of Queens' College, and 
 was appointed to the professorships of Greek and Divinity. 
 The arrival of such a man, with such a reputation, at 
 once struck the death-blow at the monsters of mediaeval 
 quibbling that had so long held undisputed pre-eminence 
 in the schools at Cambridge, and the new study of classical 
 literature began its triumphant march. Erasmus himself 
 did not remain more than a few years at Cambridge. It 
 was not for the Coryphaeus of literature to give his whole 
 life to any one place. But his spirit remained and a 
 brilliant race of scholars succeeded, the worthy precursors 
 of the great lights of later days. Of these the most dis-
 
 On the Cam. 173 
 
 tinguished were three, who were selected as tutors to three 
 grandchildren of Henry VII, Sir John Cheke, tutor to 
 Edward VI, John Aylmer, tutor to Lady Jane Grey, and 
 Eoger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth. It is beauti- 
 ful to notice in the lives of these men the softening in- 
 fluence of a new and free course of study, a protest against 
 the verbal formalities of an earlier age. In the " School- 
 master" of Roger Ascham, we find an eloquent denuncia- 
 tion of the cruel usage of scholars by their teachers ; and 
 in the letters of Lady Jane Grey it is related how en- 
 gaging was the gentleness of John Aylmer as opposed 
 to the severity of her parents, the " pinches, nips, and 
 bobs" with which Lord and Lady Dorset sought to train 
 the tenderest soul that ever died to appease a woman's 
 hate. Alas ! three hundred years have had their effect, 
 and even Latin and Greek masters in England now avail 
 themselves too often of these same " pinches, nips, and 
 bobs." 
 
 Nor was Cambridge behind-hand in the work of the 
 English Reformation. Sad indeed it is to think that the 
 glorious reviver of literature, so nobly qualified to be also 
 the reviver of Gospel truth, should have let himself be 
 retained in the ranks of superstition, against which his 
 heart and his mind alike revolted. But the spirit of free 
 inquiry which he had planted at Cambridge could not be 
 destroyed. The names which we are most accustomed to 
 associate with the fires of martyrdom, the learned and 
 energetic Ridley, the politic and adroit Cranmer, the 
 honest and intrepid Latimer, all testified to the value of 
 Cambridge training by their deaths in the market-place 
 of Oxford. In the succeeding generations, the haughty 
 prelates that upheld the hands of Elizabeth in her strug- 
 gle with Puritanism, Whitgift, and Grindall, and Parker, 
 were all faithful sons of Cambridge. Again and again 
 raised to positions of authority in Church and State, yet 
 their proudest titles are written in the books of their mo- 
 ther's colleges, where their constant transfer from one
 
 174 On the Cam. 
 
 fellowship to another shows how eagerly the halls that 
 knew their early promise vied with each other to do honour 
 to their majestic maturity. 
 
 We may hesitate before we accord high praise to the 
 characters of those divines who attempted to force the 
 hated yoke of an alien religion on the necks of the daunt- 
 less confessors who paid, with country, liberty, and life, for 
 their adherence to a simpler worship. A much more 
 ample meed of honour are we ready to bestow upon that 
 wonderful group of civilians and courtiers that surrounds 
 the throne of Elizabeth : 
 
 " Girt with many a baron bold, 
 Sublime their starry fronts they rear, 
 And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old, 
 In bearded majesty appear." 
 
 There we behold "Walsingham, the accomplished, the 
 adroit, the high-minded, upholding the interests of the 
 cause of liberty, and the United Provinces, against all the 
 parsimony and coquetry of Elizabeth ; there is Nicholas 
 Bacon, the great father of the greater son, the faithful 
 friend of England, ever in advance of his age, steadily 
 rolling back the waves of Scottish force and Spanish fraud, 
 still holding to the golden mean, still faithful to his motto 
 of " Mediocria firma ;" there is Hatton, called to a lofty 
 station, because his grace and elegance had captivated the 
 woman's heart, yet sustaining himself in a manner not 
 unworthy of her chancellor, who stood alone against Guise 
 and Farnese, and Hapsburg; there is the still more ac- 
 complished, the still more elegant, alas, the too unfortu- 
 nate son of glory, as daring as Frobisher, as far-seeing as 
 Mildmay, as fascinating as Leicester, yet a perfect gentle- 
 man, a true friend of the people, a loyal subject of the 
 Queen, the brave, the high-minded, the thrice unhappy 
 Essex ; then, lastly, surrounded by a throng of disciples 
 inferior in skill, in reputation, in foresight, to him, but to 
 him alone, stands the ancient treasurer, the minister for
 
 On the Cam. 175 
 
 forty years, the one man for whom this queen forgot alike 
 caprice and haughtiness, the intelligent, the judicious, 
 the honoured, Burghley. And all these men, and those 
 who sat at their feet, and drank of their wisdom, all these 
 men who sustained the English state so long against the 
 Escurial, the Louvre, and the Vatican combined, all 
 were loyal, devoted sons of Cambridge. So she responded 
 to the call of literature ; so she responded to the calls of 
 the Church ; and so, with tenfold energy, she responded 
 to the call of the state. One name, indeed, is wanting to the 
 glory of Cambridge, the only one that could have raised 
 its glory higher, the man whom no University educated, 
 because no University could educate him as well as he 
 educated himself, the peerless star of poetry.* Yet, in 
 that bright constellation, which seems to turn round that 
 one constant, spotless orb, there are other stars, of less 
 magnitude indeed, but sparkling with a tender lustre all 
 their own, that we never could spare from the intellectual 
 heavens ; and that one whose light is the purest, whose 
 twinkle is the merriest, whose blaze is the most constant, 
 who but he is a son of Cambridge ? who but he drew in 
 the breath of poetry on the banks of the Cam ? who but 
 the laureate king of fairy land? who but Edmund 
 Spenser ? 
 
 In the next age, when for the pure, breezy air of the 
 Elizabethan period, there comes over us a sweet but sickly 
 perfume, fit introduction to the deadlier blast of war, that 
 is soon to scorch us, Cambridge sends forth many a 
 gallant son, whose fresh inspiration of genius and sound 
 learning blows cool and pure in the heavy air. Hers are 
 two poets, the best of their age. Jonson, glorious Ben, 
 rough indeed, and rushing into wild vagaries, but ever 
 weighty, manly, and teeming with true wit and humour ; 
 and likewise that gentle soul, fettered by the heartless 
 
 * Would that Shakespeare had been educated at one of the Uni- 
 versities ! it would probably have been better for his own happiness, 
 and we should have known more about him. ED.
 
 176 On the Cam. 
 
 conceits and fancies of his time, but dear to every pious 
 heart for his heavenly resignation, his spotless holiness, his 
 unfeigned love to God and man, the Church's poet, George 
 Herbert. Hers likewise are the masters of the three great 
 arts that rule the world. From her halls came forth the 
 true founder of modern anatomy, William Harvey, whose 
 wonderful insight first caught the electric flash of truth 
 that in one blaze joined together all the scattered dis- 
 coveries that men had been painfully struggling to make 
 out for centuries, and placed on an irrefragable basis the 
 philosophy of the fountain of life. Hers is the mighty 
 Coke, whose name, in spite of his harshness, his per- 
 plexities, his arrogance, must ever be held up to the Saxon 
 world as the great master and expounder of that wondrous 
 system, the common law of England as founded in remote 
 ages by Gascoigne and Littleton, sons of Cambridge, and 
 who deserves still greater honour, in spite of still greater 
 harshness and arrogance, because he alone stood up against 
 king, lords, and commons, to stigmatize by their right 
 names the vices of the chancellor, and alone, in a corrupt 
 age, never sullied the purity of the judicial ermine. And 
 to her, above all, belongs the largest part of those sainted 
 fathers, who, in an age of senseless quibblings, of nauseous 
 bombast, of barren wranglings, gave to the English world 
 that stupendous work, which for two hundred and fifty-six 
 years has stood forth the noblest specimen of our noble 
 language, and oh, a thousandfold better praise, has been 
 the solace of hundreds of millions, the guide of youth, the 
 friend of manhood, the staff of age, the English Bible. 
 
 But in this age, so interesting and yet so painful, there 
 is one name that arrests the attention of every one with a 
 peculiar fascination, because it is one of those names to 
 which we refer immediately the great movements in the 
 human mind that have made our age other and better 
 than those before it. I mean, of course, Francis Bacon. 
 It is much to be like Erasmus, a great leader in a great 
 time, standing confessedly far in advance of it. It is
 
 On the Cam. 177 
 
 honourable, like Burghley, to take a position slightly in 
 advance of the age, and when seeming most to yield to its 
 influence, really to be carrying the age itself onward little 
 by little. But there is a peculiar glory belonging to that 
 man, who before all others, contrary to all others, can feel 
 in his own soul the divine message which calls him to 
 be the one deliverer from bondage, the one guide to 
 a promised land ; to see what other men have not seen, 
 and cannot see, except he reveal it ; to proclaim to an 
 enslaved and superstitious world a new prospect of liberty, 
 a new name of God ; to " speak to the children of Israel 
 that they go forward," to assert a new law above super- 
 stition, above tradition, above long-established custom; to 
 mount to that summit, which is to others but a weary, 
 barren peak, and raising his eyes northward and south- 
 ward and westward, behold the fields standing thick with 
 corn, shouting for joy and singing, white with harvest 
 and waiting but for the labourers to thrust in the sickle, 
 the lakes and rivers flashing in the noonday, and waiting 
 for the fishers of men to launch out their ships and let 
 down their nets for a draught, the hillsides clothed up 
 to their summits with thick vines teeming with the dark, 
 full-orbed clusters, bursting with the juice of life, and 
 needing but the manly feet to tread the ensanguined 
 wine-press, the hill tops shouting from every cleft for 
 the cities to be set on them that cannot be hid, he who 
 can do all this, see all this, declare all this, he is the 
 offspring of gods, he is the King of men. 
 
 It is interesting to mark the soil in which the seeds of 
 greatness are sown. In the latter half of the sixteenth 
 century the whole continent of Europe was torn by the 
 strife of two opposite factions, Eome and Geneva, the 
 bigots and the fanatics, the first incapable of producing 
 a, reformer, the second equally incapable of producing a 
 philosopher ; and when the time came that the philoso- 
 pher and the reformer must appear in one person, there 
 was in all Europe but one place and one body of men 
 
 N
 
 178 On the Cam. 
 
 wherein he could arise. In England, in that company of 
 grave, studious, enlightened statesmen, equally removed 
 from bigotry and fanaticism, equally friendly to progress 
 and philosophy, seems marked by the finger of Providence 
 the fit nidus for the imperial seed. I have shown the 
 share that Cambridge had in forming the minds of Eliza- 
 beth's counsellors. It is at Cambridge then that their 
 great inheritor must be trained, he must learn at Cam- 
 bridge the same lessons of gravity and progress that his 
 fathers learnt, and bring forth from them that stupendous 
 work, the revolutionizing of human knowledge. Yes, a 
 statesman of Elizabeth must furnish the stock, King 
 Henry's College must train and water. The son of Sir 
 Nicholas Bacon, the son of Trinity College in Cambridge, 
 is Francis Bacon, the parent of the new philosophy. 
 
 It must be in truth stated, that the benefits rendered to 
 the mind of Bacon by the studies of Cambridge were 
 rather by inspiring a disgust of the wrong mode of train- 
 ing than love of the right. The exertions of Erasmus for 
 literature had not penetrated to the bottom, and the 
 sciences it need not be said were in bondage. Hence 
 Bacon left Cambridge with a disgust at the whole system 
 of the schoolmen's Aristotelianisms, which led to the 
 determination to find some new field for human thought. 
 This was well. The emancipation of the sciences might 
 have been delayed for many years, had not their liberator 
 been given the strongest proofs of the trammels in which 
 they were held in the most liberal institution in the world. 
 It is no disgrace to Cambridge that before the new philo- 
 sophy was born she was faithful to the old ; but if her 
 head was still untutored her heart was sound, and no 
 child of hers would ever have inaugurated the great reform, 
 if she had not been the asylum of liberal principles and 
 generous impulses. 
 
 It is impossible, while we are extolling Bacon to the 
 skies as the founder of a new system of intellectual activity, 
 and holding up his name as an honour to his Alma Mater,
 
 On the Cam. 179 
 
 to avoid some notice of his political character, and give our 
 answer to the question that has exercised so many minds, 
 whether the Chancellor is to sink the character of the 
 Liberator in a black slough of odium, or merely stand by 
 as a man of his age, amiable but not perfect, leaving the 
 Philosopher to shine with untarnished glory. A most in- 
 genious attempt has recently been made by Mr. Hepworth 
 Dixon to clear Lord Bacon's character from all odious im- 
 putations. The spirit in which such a work is conceived is 
 a tender one, but not on that account necessarily a right 
 one. Macaulay has shown great reasons for thinking that 
 spotless integrity in high places was in that age not so 
 wholly despised as is commonly supposed, that many 
 vigorous protests had for at least a century been fulmined 
 in the ears of the most servile courtier ; and that the pub- 
 lic mind was awake to the beauty of purity and the foulness 
 of venality. On one occasion I heard one of the most dis- 
 tinguished English philosophers admit this, and urge that a 
 man who received the unheard-of honour of being elected 
 to Parliament for three constituencies at once, cannot have 
 been notoriously corrupt in the face of the English people. 
 I reminded him that this identical unheard-of honour was 
 conferred on Admiral Russell ninety years afterwards, 
 merely from the ebullition of party feeling, at the time 
 when he sat in King William's Council with a letter from 
 King James in his pocket. But in the examination of a 
 character like Bacon I am content to waive all this. Grant 
 that the age was hopelessly corrupt, was Bacon to be bound 
 by his age ? When struggling in chambers in the Inns of 
 Court, coldly patronized by his powerful cousins, he had 
 the magnificent boldness to assert that he had taken all 
 knowledge to be his province. Acting up to this declara- 
 tion, he carried out his new system of philosophy against 
 England and the Continent, against Oxford and Cambridge, 
 against Leyden and Padua. Knowing that he could not 
 be appreciated in his own day, knowing, it would seem, 
 that it must take fifty years for Newton to
 
 180 On the Cam. 
 
 " Let down the golden everlasting chain, 
 Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main;" 
 
 that it must take a hundred and thirty years before Frank- 
 lin could draw the lightning from heaven ; that it must 
 take over two centuries before days of ceaseless observa- 
 tion and weary toil, and nights of exposure and chill on 
 the inhospitable Alps, should permit that the colossal mys- 
 tery of these Titanic currents, driving their crystal moun- 
 tains across the length and breadth of nations, should be 
 revealed to the piercing eye of Agassiz, Bacon solemnly 
 bequeathed his works to the judgment of posterity. And 
 such a man is to be judged by the age, such a man is to 
 be pardoned because the times were corrupt ! The philo- 
 sopher could tear to rags the flimsy subtleties of Aquinas, 
 and wrench away with unlineal hand the sceptre from the 
 grasp of Aristotle. But the Chancellor is to receive a 
 compliment after the manner of Cecil, and accept a con- 
 sideration by the pattern of Egerton ! Yes, Duns Scotus 
 gave no pounds or places if his works were spared ; Aris- 
 totle offered no lands or peerages in pawn for his crown ; 
 and the scapegrace of Trinity combination-room hurled 
 them from their seats of honour. But Buckingham spoke a 
 gracious word, James slobbered a fulsome compliment, and 
 the son of the Hertfordshire baronet bowed to the dust 
 before the favourite of the Austrian and the Solomon of 
 Scotland. O, if that transcendent mind had but " armed 
 itself to bear " a single reverse, to stand by a single un- 
 fortunate friend, to turn from a single bribe, we might 
 have lived a few years more in syllogisms and quibblings, 
 we might have had Halley and Hunter each a century 
 later ; but England would not have had to wait two cen- 
 turies before the morality of the woolsack became as pure 
 as the morality of the fireside, nor would a Dixon and a 
 Montagu have had to exert all their ability to apologize 
 for venality against the indignant reclamations of a Mil- 
 man and a Macaulay. 
 
 Lord Bacon, Chancellor to James I, died in 1626. In
 
 On the Cam. 181 
 
 1632 terminated the University life of Milton, who was 
 Secretary to Cromwell. The intervening six years, be- 
 longing peculiarly to the reign of Charles I, are signalized 
 for England by the foundation of the Massachusetts colony. 
 Without detracting the least from the sacred devotion of 
 the Plymouth pilgrims in 1620, or the enterprise of the 
 Salem pioneers in 1624, we must yet look to the expedi- 
 tion of 1 629 as giving its real character to the settlement 
 of Massachusetts as she now is. Observe then, my friends, 
 how, at each successive stage in the ever-renewed neces- 
 sities of human progress, Cambridge stands with the men. 
 Did the literary tastes of England need reformers ? Cam- 
 bridge has them ready. Did the Church of England need 
 learned and devout men to strengthen it? Cambridge has 
 them ready. Did the statesmanship of England need re- 
 organization or rather creation ? Cambridge sends forth a 
 brilliant body of men to do the work to the admiration of 
 the world. And now that Providence has brought the time 
 for a new work of grace, now that the oppressions of the 
 Non- conformists have come to that point of cruelty that 
 they cannot be borne in England, and yet have not so inter- 
 woven themselves with political affairs that they can be 
 forcibly resisted in England ; now, in short, that the " three 
 kingdoms are to be sifted to plant the wilderness," it is at 
 Cambridge that the plan of the new colonies is laid ; it is 
 from the graduates of Cambridge that the new colonists 
 go. These facts, long known to diligent antiquaries and 
 historians, are too 'much forgotten by the descendants of 
 those men, to whom the name of Oxford, the stronghold 
 of intolerance, is more familiar than Cambridge, the mother 
 of their ancestors. They have, however, been lately recalled 
 to us by that most interesting monument of the piety and 
 reverence of a descendant, who has embalmed for ever, by 
 the rich adornments of typography, and the still richer 
 adornments of taste and genius, the cares, the struggles, 
 the affections, the prayers of the most honoured of the 
 founders of Massachusetts, and added a new leaf to the
 
 182 On the Cam. 
 
 laureate crown that encircles the name of "Winthrop. To 
 the original documents incorporated in this most interesting 
 record we owe our knowledge of the fact that John 
 "Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, by many supposed 
 to have been unconnected with either University, was in 
 fact a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, and, though 
 his academic course was prematurely closed, always re- 
 tained a friendly intercourse with the old halls. And of 
 the brave, the learned, the pious men who accompanied 
 or immediately followed him, by far the majority were 
 graduates of Cambridge ; and it is truly a delight to me 
 to recall some of their names to you, and if I can, forge 
 another link in that golden chain whereby I seek to connect 
 indissolubly my country and my University. 
 
 Of the brave and wise laymen, who assisted Winthrop 
 in laying the foundations of the infant government, few had 
 a college education. Few civilians had adopted the doc- 
 trines of the Puritans in that class which attended the 
 Universities. There are two names, however, distinguished 
 in the administration of affairs ; the venerable Simon 
 Bradstreet, the last of the colonists, whom the people of 
 Massachusetts chose for their governor, in place of the 
 tyrant imported by the Stuarts ; he was a son of Emmanuel 
 College ; and Hugh Peters, who, casting in his lot for 
 some years with New England, returned to his own country 
 to share in yet fiercer troubles, and was one of those fear- 
 less men that signed the death-warrant of the public enemy 
 and traitor Charles Stuart.* But it is chiefly in the list 
 of reverend divines that Cambridge furnished the strength 
 of New England. Even in the Salem company, before 
 Winthrop left England, Francis Higginson of Jesus Col- 
 
 * The defence of the regicides lies in the difficulty we have at 
 the present time in judging of their position, their motives, and 
 the passions which swayed them. Surely it is a dangerous thing 
 to applaud them for the deed itself; the scholar may amuse him- 
 self with a theory, but the practical man may make it a precedent. 
 En.
 
 On the Cam. 183 
 
 lege went out to be the first minister of Salem. There 
 are those who excuse the treatment of the Puritans, and 
 attempt, in this day of enlightenment, to obtain popularity 
 for that poor senseless bigot, Archbishop Laud, let such 
 listen to the words of Higginson, as he departed on his 
 tempestuous voyage to Salem. Calling up his children 
 and other passengers into the stern of the ship, to take 
 their last sight of England, he said, " We will not say 
 as the Separatists are wont to say at their leaving of 
 England, ' Farewell, Babylon ! Farewell, Borne.' But 
 we will say, ' Farewell, dear England ! Farewell the 
 Church of God in England and all Christian friends there ! 
 We do not go to New England as Separatists from the 
 Church of England .... but we go to propagate the 
 Gospel in America.'" And so he concluded with a fer- 
 vent prayer for the king and church and state in England. 
 His successor in Salem, Skelton, was likewise a son of 
 Cambridge from Clare Hall. Two progenitors of honoured 
 races in New England, Ezekiel Rogers of Rowley, and 
 George Phillips of Watertown, were both sons of Cam- 
 bridge ; the former from Corpus, the latter from Caius. 
 But the great strength of ministers was from Emmanuel : 
 Maude of Dover, Whitney of Lynn, and Ward of Ipswich, 
 all were children of her vigorous youth. From her were 
 the two valiant pioneers, Hooker and Stone of Cambridge, 
 who had scarcely brought that settlement to a state of 
 prosperity before they resolved to penetrate yet farther 
 into the wilderness, and pitched their tent on the lovely 
 river-side at Hartford. From her, too, was Shepard, the 
 chief glory of the early church at Cambridge. These 
 names alone would be enough to entitle the ancient halls 
 on the Cam to the eternal honour and love of the people 
 of New England, and of all the States of the Union, whose 
 pioneers were New England men. But there are yet 
 dearer names. From Jesus College came that most 
 devoted of men, who, when hundreds around him, of those 
 whose piety was most renowned, were thinking of nothing
 
 184 On the Cam. 
 
 but their own prosperity, gave the whole force of his faith- 
 ful, his energetic, his well-trained mind to casting, if pos- 
 sihle, a single ray of light on the poor, neglected, outraged 
 children of the forest, and completed, without assistance, 
 that superhuman work, the translation of the whole Bible 
 into the Indian language, the Apostle John Eliot. From 
 Cambridge, also, I need not say again, for it formed the 
 theme of my first lecture, came the fathers of our thrice- 
 honoured home of learning, our dear Alma Mater, our 
 peerless Harvard. From the walls of Emmanuel came 
 that gentle divine, who just lived to be admitted a freeman 
 of Charlestown, and then closed his youthful eyes in death, 
 but not before he had bequeathed half his slender fortune, 
 and though he knew it not, his name, to the New England 
 college. From Cambridge, also, came the first two Pre- 
 sidents of Harvard, and the only two which have not been 
 her own children, Henry Dunster of Emmanuel, and 
 Charles Chauncy of Trinity. So that, indeed, Cambridge 
 in America is the child of Cambridge in England, bone of 
 her bone, and flesh of her flesh, and that strong, deep, rich 
 stream which flowed through the heart of Burghley and 
 Spenser and Coke and Bacon, is the source of that proud 
 current, which, after nerving the hearts and hands of so 
 many statesmen and counsellors and divines, is now, with 
 its holy dew, moistening the worn-out fields of Virginia, 
 in the hope to prepare it for an unwonted harvest of 
 Freedom. 
 
 But our obligations to Cambridge are not yet concluded. 
 For it is you and I, fellow-citizens, we men and women of 
 Boston, that have reason to be proud of our sainted ances- 
 tors, who came forth from the walls of Cambridge. Who, 
 with his eye, sharper than any diviner's rod, detected the 
 lovely springs of water that flowed into the defiles of these 
 hills, and turned the Shawmut peninsula into Trimoun- 
 taine ? who but William Blackstone of Emmanuel ? The 
 faithful ministers of the First Church, that, it must be 
 confessed, waged rather unsparing war against those who
 
 On the Cam. 185 
 
 did not agree with them, but still were learned, just, and 
 holy men, 'do we owe no debt to them ? John Wilson 
 of King's and John Norton of Peterhouse ? And him who 
 was selected from all England as the chosen pastor of that 
 old First Church in Boston, him, the scholar, the preacher, 
 the father, him, in whose honour the beloved name of 
 Boston was given to Trimountaine, him, whose blood is 
 in the veins of hundreds, far and wide, in New England, 
 shall we not shout for his name, our honoured patriarch 
 and exemplar, John Cotton ? 
 
 John Cotton was, indeed, a true son of Cambridge. He 
 was educated at Trinity College, winning the esteem and 
 honour of all who knew him. Under ordinary circumstances 
 he would undoubtedly have been a fellow of Trinity; but, in 
 the year for his competition, the expenses entailed by the 
 erection of the hall I described to you the other day broke 
 in on the distribution of fellowships. He, however, received 
 a fellowship at Emmanuel, and gave himself zealously to 
 the work of preaching. His style of oratory was brilliant 
 and captivating ; and was wont, as was the custom of the 
 English Church down to the reign of William the Third, 
 to draw forth the loud hums of the assembled undergra- 
 duates. But several days of serious thought led our 
 modest and reverend patriarch to doubt the propriety of 
 this Periclean oratory, as his grandson Mather calls it ; 
 and, when he was appointed to preach at the University 
 church, a large auditory, which had assembled to hear a 
 mouth-filling piece of rhetoric, were astounded by a plain, 
 trenchant discourse on the duty of repentance. Such 
 Puritanism they would not hum. But Cotton cared not 
 for hums nor hahs. He soon received the invitation to 
 preside over the parish which is overtopped by the majestic 
 tower of Old Boston, in Lincolnshire ; and, after serving in 
 patience and fortitude against all the thunder of the petty 
 Vatican set up at Lambeth, he left his noble church on the 
 German Ocean, and his loved resort by the Cam, and sought 
 peace and freedom in the New Boston. Here he died,
 
 186 On tJie Cam. 
 
 full of years and full of honour. Here his name stands 
 for ever, a beacon light to all Christians and freemen ; 
 and here his descendant rejoices, to-night, that he can 
 make the name of his venerated ancestor a bond between 
 New England and Old. 
 
 To Old England our attention is now again attracted by 
 the tremendous crisis which overwhelmed her, and threat- 
 ened, at times, to subvert all order and law in her state ; 
 but which developed in her sons a genius for oratory, for 
 statecraft, for battle, inferior to no nation in the world, and 
 to which we cannot but attribute most of the blessings that, 
 after the overflow of the torrent of revolution had gone by, 
 sprang up from the enriched soil of freedom. It is need- 
 less to say that both the Universities, when the final appeal 
 to arms came, ranged themselves on the side of the king. 
 From both were derived abundant contributions of plate 
 and money ; from both many a gallant young student went 
 forth in what he deemed the cause of right. From Cam- 
 bridge came the two extremes of the Cavalier party, the 
 two men that might be esteemed each as expressing in 
 himself, the one all the crimes of the tyrant, the other all 
 the virtues of the party. It is the questionable glory of 
 Cambridge to have educated that loveliest of serpents, that 
 most honied of traitors, the apostate friend of liberty, who, 
 after making his name honoured as the defender of the 
 people, sold this glorious birthright for a title, and enrolled 
 himself among the evil counsellors, whose advice the 
 tyrant loved to take, because it suited full well the dic- 
 tates of his own heart. False to liberty, false to the 
 people, false to himself as he was, Cambridge cannot but 
 sigh for the learning, the eloquence, the courage, that 
 perished with her unhappy son, Thomas, Earl of Strafford. 
 And, while he was breathing his accursed poison into the too 
 willing ear of Charles, another son of Cambridge, who, in 
 his ardent devotion to the throne, never lost his love for 
 the people, was pleading and praying that gentle measures, 
 and unbroken faith, might be the monarch's guide. It is
 
 On the Cam. 187 
 
 the old story of the two angels, on the right and the left. 
 But, though the demon's counsels prevailed, and though 
 even his headlong fall from earth in a cloud of lurid flame 
 could not deter his infatuated master, still that gentle spirit 
 kept by the side of his monarch ; and, when all had been 
 tried in vain, he sealed his devotion with his life, the 
 loveliest, the truest, the tenderest soul of men. And over 
 his grave we feel our hearts half drawn to the cause from 
 which our minds revolt, and drop a memorial tear for the 
 son of Cambridge, Lucius, Viscount Falkland. 
 
 But in this great cause, where mighty principles of law 
 and government and morality are at stake, let us not be 
 misguided. Sons of the Puritans, let no considerations of 
 mere sentimentality or personal attractions lure us from 
 admiration of these mighty heroes, the champions of Eng- 
 lish liberty. Those whom the influence overshadows of a 
 throne, an aristocracy, an established church, those may 
 refuse, from conscience and timidity, to espouse the sterner 
 but the juster side. But we, we can weep over Falk- 
 land, but we recognize with pride that on the list of the 
 sons of Cambridge there stands next to his the name of 
 the scion of nobility who dared to be faithful to the people, 
 the ancestor of a noble race who still remain in our own 
 borders, and in whose honoured home the Father of his 
 Country loved to find hospitality and affection, the leader 
 of the armies of the Parliament, Thomas, Lord Fairfax. 
 
 But Cambridge has another name that at this period 
 won far greater renown. In the little college of Sydney 
 Sussex, there hangs an original portrait of one of the very 
 first men who ever studied there. It is said that the con- 
 templation of this portrait afforded to David Hume the 
 materials for that elaborate character he has drawn of the 
 greatest man that comes into his history. In the case of 
 Hume there was every passion at work to lead him to 
 vilify unsparingly the mighty subject of his portraiture. A 
 Scot, he had doubtless been satiated at his nurse's knee 
 with songs that cursed the conqueror of Dunbar field. A
 
 188 On the Cam. 
 
 devoted adherent of monarchy, he detested the founder of 
 the Commonwealth. A professed deist, he was incapable 
 of sympathizing with the leader of the Puritans. A prac- 
 tical infidel, his whole nature was alien to the man who 
 was so tremendously in earnest in all his actions. Yet 
 even he, from a calm study of that nervous face, that the 
 flattering painter received such imperative directions to 
 leave in its native plainness, is obliged to acknowledge the 
 injustice of the abuse lavished on his subject by the Stuart 
 partisans ; is compelled to temper every censure with a 
 compliment, and finally to award him that splendid praise, 
 which he shares with our peerless Washington, a perfect 
 self-control of a fiery and haughty nature. Such is the 
 verdict of an enemy. But for us, fellow-citizens, for us, 
 children of the Puritans, for I love to repeat the name, 
 there need be no hesitation. We do not need the lofty 
 verses of Milton, the rugged logic of Carlyle, the match- 
 less eloquence of Macaulay, to change our hate into love, 
 or quicken our cold encomiums into heartiness. The tra- 
 ditions of our ancestors call upon us to admire the Puritan ; 
 the recollections of '76 appeal to us not to falter in our 
 admiration of him who crushed the tyrant ; and our 
 brethren, falling every day in defence of their country's 
 outraged laws, cry to us from the ground to raise the shout 
 of glory for the mighty leader who could see through the 
 bloody cloud of civil strife the pathway to peace, and strike 
 a crushing blow at the crest of the despot, who set up the 
 standard of battle rather than abide by his faith and the 
 laws. 
 
 Yes, bigots may defame him, tyrants may insult him, 
 but when the hosts of God rise for their great review, and 
 the champions of liberty bare their scars, there shall stand 
 in the foremost rank, shining as the brightness of the fir- 
 mament, the majestic son of Cambridge, the avenger and 
 protector, Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 It would be delightful, if in the case of all these men, 
 so renowned in their various ways, we had fall accounts of
 
 On the Cam. 189 
 
 their college life. A few traditions have been preserved, 
 but only a few. One of the most important personages at 
 Cambridge in the first quarter of the seventeenth century 
 was old Hobson, the carrier. In the year 1625, a plague 
 in London obliged his regular trips to the metropolis, with 
 letters and parcels, to be suspended. His regular work 
 being thus interrupted, he sickened and died. A young 
 student of Christ's College, then only seventeen years of 
 age, composed a couple of epigrams on this irreparable 
 loss, and I read you a compilation from both, to give you 
 a little idea of Cambridge wit at that time. 
 
 " Here lies Old Hobson ! Death hath broke his girt, 
 And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt ; 
 Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one, 
 He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown. 
 Best that gives all men life, gave him his death, 
 And too much breathing put him out of breath ; 
 Nor were it contradiction to affirm 
 Too long vacation hastened on his term. 
 Merely to drive the time away he sickened, 
 Fainted and died, nor would with ale be quickened ; 
 ' Nay,' quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretched, 
 'If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched.' 
 Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right, 
 He died for heaviness, that his cart went light ; 
 His leisure told him that his time was come, 
 And lack of load made his life burdensome. 
 But had his doings lasted as they were, 
 He had been an immortal carrier. 
 His letters are delivered all and gone, 
 Only remains this superscription." 
 
 It would, perhaps, require some perspicacity to detect, in 
 these reiterated conceits and rough verses, the gravity of 
 thought and melody of diction that entrance us in the pages 
 of " Paradise Lost." 
 
 In no part of history, ancient or modern, is there a life 
 of such intense though melancholy interest as that of Mil- 
 ton. His course at college is represented by old tradition 
 to have been a contest, and a bitter one, with the autho-
 
 190 On the Cam. 
 
 rities. It is not unlikely that that fearless spirit, that 
 dared confront the direst anathemas of church and state, 
 may have incurred the censure of some academic martinet, 
 but it is impossible that the college life of so good a 
 scholar, and so pious a man, could have been a series of 
 rebellions and punishments.* For the ten years after 
 leaving Cambridge, the life of Milton is like his own Eden, 
 a living garden of all the fruits most exquisite to a young 
 man ; personal beauty of an enchanting perfection, the 
 devoted friendship of some of the choicest spirits of the age, 
 and experienced in all the delights of a tour in Italy, a 
 welcome at the delightful country mansions of the English 
 nobility, where the art of living is understood as nowhere 
 else in the world, the attention of all observers, attracted 
 more and more each year to the exquisite beauties of his 
 occasional lyrics. Had Milton died at thirty, he would 
 have been universally esteemed one of the happiest of men. 
 In 1641, his life changed. Liberty and truth were assailed 
 by tyranny and bigotry, and calmly this young and ele- 
 gant poet comes forward to grapple in the death-struggle. 
 For ten more years his life is given to a defence of the great 
 principles on which he believes justice and truth to rest. 
 He knows full well what the issue of such a fight must be, 
 and what the world would require at his hands, and not 
 for an instant does he falter in his great work, till he has 
 won a name, as a statesman, that sounds through Europe. 
 Had he died in 1652, twenty years after leaving college, 
 he would have lost some private happiness, but he would 
 have died in the full enjoyment of well-earned fame. But for 
 twenty-two more years he must struggle with all the ills that 
 flesh is heir to. First went those rich dark eyes, that had 
 won the heart of the Italian princess, still he could bear to 
 
 * By no means " impossible," though it may not have been so in 
 fact. The energy and force of character which, virtuously applied, 
 render a man notable for good, may have caused the errors of his 
 youth to be equally conspicuous. History teems with examples. 
 ED.
 
 On the Cam. 191 
 
 lose them in the cause of liberty, as long as his mighty 
 protector, the protector of England remained. But the 
 Stuarts returned, and to the sting of blindness, and of 
 that slow but too often sure-footed guest, poverty, was 
 added a storm of obloquy and contumely for what they 
 were pleased to term heresy and treason. The Duke of 
 York, afterwards the last and worst of the Stuart kings, 
 who loved to see the Covenanters put to torture, and 
 stood silent while his own nephew crawled in chains to 
 his knees and begged for life, delighted to expend the 
 energies of his narrow, superstitious, bitter mind in insults 
 and injuries on the poor old man. The sweet presence 
 of woman's love, that has so often breathed consolation 
 to a hundred wretched hearts, was poisoned for him by 
 countless trials. But all availed not to slay that immortal 
 soul. Blindness could not check the keenness of that vision, 
 to whom myriads of 
 
 " Starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
 With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
 As from a sky," 
 
 who beheld the angelic squadron turning fiery red at the 
 insults of the enemy of God. IsTo poverty could check that 
 boundless imagination that built up the opal towers of 
 heaven and adorned its battlements with living sapphire, 
 that laid out the walks fragrant with cassia, nard, and 
 balm, that raised Seleucia, Rome, and Athens, from their 
 ruins by the splendour of his descriptions. Servile parlia- 
 ments and haughty princes might revile or torture the 
 breaker of the golden image and the assertor of the liberty 
 of the press. But what cared he, who had but to dictate 
 five words in his majestic picture of the sun in eclipse, and 
 straightway monarchs were perplexed with fear of change. 
 The fanatical Sherlock and the bigoted San croft might fix 
 on him a thousand charges of heresy, but it was nothing 
 to him who felt himself already admitted within the veil, 
 and holding communion with heaven itself in the solu-
 
 192 On the Cam. 
 
 tion of its eternal history, and its transcendent mysteries. 
 The frigid conceits of the past age, and the senseless bom- 
 bast of his own, could not break one of the thousand strings 
 in his heavenly harp ; the servility and fanaticism of a 
 whole nation could not shake one lofty and free thought in 
 his breast ; the bestial licentiousness of the sons of Belial 
 that thronged the court could not cast one spot on that 
 snow-like purity. All honour then to the defender of 
 liberty, reverence and homage to the champion of reli- 
 gion. Thrice echoing shouts of glory, and ever-blooming 
 showers of laurel to the profound statesman, the elegant 
 scholar, the consummate poet, the revealer of Hell and 
 Heaven and Paradise ! And let no meaner name sully 
 our lips to-night than that of the greatest son of Cam- 
 bridge, John Milton.* 
 
 * Poor Charles 1 ! Unhappy Laud ! Ai'ter having served as the 
 favourite themes of virgin essays and speeches in England for so 
 many years, there seems to be a prospect of America taking them 
 in hand; and they are probably destined to excite unreasonable 
 admiration, or equally unreasonable hatred, in the breasts of pos- 
 terity, while the Anglo-Saxon race shall last. Yet they were very 
 average and respectable individuals, and it was not their faults that 
 they were made to represent principles. Charles I. was not a 
 tyrant, nor yet a martyr; he was a king who naturally wished to 
 retain his power, and had no idea of being made a nonentity of. 
 It may be all the better for us that he was the loser in the struggle; 
 we believe that it is : but surely it was hard enough upon him to 
 lose his head, without being spattered with more abuse than Xero 
 or Louis XI, and that throughout all ages. As for Laud, he 
 thought lie was upholding the interests of true religion, and his 
 warmest opponent can say no more for himself. ED.
 
 IX. 
 
 GEEAT MEN OF CAMBRIDGE SINCE 1688. 
 
 Mathematicians. Scholars. Divines. Lawyers. Statesmen. 
 Authors. Newton, Bentley, Barrow, Lyndhurst, Pitt, Ma- 
 caulay, and others. Song for Cambridge. 
 
 N my last lecture I recounted to you some of 
 the principal great men educated at Cam- 
 bridge from the time of Erasmus to the time 
 of Milton. And I think the propriety of 
 thus terminating the series of the earlier 
 worthies at this point will readily be recognized. Milton 
 was one of the last educated under the old system of the 
 Aristotelian logic. The next generation began to turn its 
 attention to the new sciences, to discuss the discoveries of 
 Galileo and the reasonings of Kepler, and to elaborate or 
 refute the systems of Descartes. In the year after Milton 
 died, a special dispensation the legality of which we will 
 not here consider was granted by King Charles II. to 
 permit Isaac Newton to hold his college fellowship with- 
 out taking holy orders in the Church of England. New- 
 ton, when at the zenith of his reputation, became master 
 of the mint to William III, and thus the next set of men 
 after Milton at once introduces us to the new order of 
 things, the new world created in England, by that estab- 
 o
 
 194 On the Cam. 
 
 lishment of the constitution more firmly on the basis of 
 law, which she owes to the revolution of 1688. 
 
 In the present lecture, therefore, I shall call jour atten- 
 tion to the great men of Cambridge, who, though in part 
 educated earlier, jet nearly all flourished and made their 
 mark in the world between the expulsion of the Stuarts 
 and the present time. In a period so long and of such a 
 character, the method I pursued last Tuesday of dividing 
 the whole into generations or epochs, and showing the part 
 Cambridge plajed in each of them would be whollj im- 
 practicable. I shall, therefore, rather take up several of 
 the great departments of human knowledge, in which the 
 sons of Cambridge have excelled, and recount to jou the 
 services rendered in each bj her more illustrious children. 
 
 And first let us consider what Cambridge has accom- 
 plished in the two great divisions of learning which she 
 calls her own ; mathematical philosophj and classical 
 scholarship. And in the first of these departments the 
 name I have already mentioned at once places Cam- 
 bridge ahead of all other institutions that have made the 
 mathematical and physical sciences a part of their training. 
 In Isaac Newton all men of science are ready to recognize 
 their superior, and proud to be thought his pupils and fol- 
 lowers. Pope's well-known epigrammatic statement, 
 
 " Xature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; 
 God said, ' Let Xewton be,' and all was light," 
 
 though, like all epigrams, hyperbolical, is, like all Pope's 
 epigrams, true, though not perhaps in exactly the author's 
 sense. The application of the principles of law to the pheno- 
 mena of nature was not originated by Newton. The ancient 
 mathematicians, Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, 
 those of the Middle Ages, Stevinus and Commandine, 
 and still later, Galileo and Kepler, had made many invaluable 
 generalizations from most admirable experiments. The 
 imperfection of the early telescopes had been in part regu- 
 lated by the micrometer, that beautiful invention of Gas-
 
 On the Cam. 195 
 
 coigne, the too-early lost, the youthful astronomer whose 
 studies were untimely broken by Marston Moor. At 
 Cambridge, particularly, the work had been nobly inaugu- 
 rated. Wallis and Barrow had all but developed the great 
 principles of modern mathematics, they had all but solved 
 the problem of the Universe. But still the laws them- 
 selves lay hid in night ; and till the sun arose, nothing 
 satisfactory, nothing certain could be told. That sun was 
 Newton. As soon as he appears there is a scattering of 
 mists and darkness, never again to gather in like force. 
 After him there is light, not always the light of noonday, 
 or of the summer solstice, nor yet a light of any magic 
 power that enables us to see everything just as it is, 
 many of Nature's laws are yet to be known, but yet that 
 light without which the most brilliant discoveries serve like 
 diamonds by their very brilliancy only to heighten the 
 surrounding darkness, in which they flash out, reflecting 
 the glory, and adding to it their own. 
 
 In discussing such a man as Newton, it is best at once 
 to speak of his discoveries in terms of perfect truth, or 
 even to leave points uncontested of which the truth may be 
 in his favour. Let us then avow freely, that his great 
 mathematical system was discovered by Leibnitz almost 
 simultaneously ; that in the opinion of many distinguished 
 mathematicians the theory of Leibnitz is the more philo- 
 sophical, and the methods pursued by him more rational 
 than Newton's ; that the theory of light proposed by his 
 contemporary Huyghens commands at the present day the 
 universal preference of the most distinguished savans, 
 unless possibly Sir David Brewster. But all this is as 
 nothing to the main question. Even where Newton was 
 erroneous or unphilosophical, his errors and his confusion 
 have led ultimately to higher truth and purer truth than 
 the barren exactitudes of others. And the great theory on 
 which all his discoveries depend, the law of universal at- 
 traction, has not only remained irrefragable, but is every 
 day confirmed in the most surprising manner. Again and
 
 196 On the Cam. 
 
 again, when some new irregularity in the heavenly bodies 
 has caused the superficial mathematicians to declare that 
 now at last the Newtonian system would not hold, a closer 
 investigation has proved that the supposed objections were 
 only striking demonstrations of its truth. It is the New- 
 tonian theory of attraction that gives the stand-point 
 Archimedes sought to move the world. It is this that 
 verified every figure in the incomparable calculations of 
 Bradley, this that nerved the all-grasping sinews of the 
 celestial mechanic, this that winged the thought of 
 Leverrier into the sightless depths of the Uranian abyss, 
 this that gave our own matchless Bond the confidence 
 and the power to seize the fiery tresses of the trailing 
 wanderers, to make the rough dull cloud-mass of Orion 
 blaze with the sparkling glories of the perfect gem, to 
 unbridle the oceanic ring of Saturn from the curb the 
 ages had thrown over it. And if the time should ever 
 come, and who, considering the infinity of creation and 
 the might of science, shall say it will not come ? when a 
 system of the Universe is demonstrated in whose mighty 
 generalizations Newton's is a mere special case, still shall 
 grateful learning pay honour to the rising sun that shone 
 through the mists of her natal hour, still shall Cambridge 
 do honour to her noblest son, trained by her counsels, 
 nurtured in her walls, honoured by her culture. 
 
 It is no vain boast that Newton was trained at Cam- 
 bridge. Had he other masters than Barrow, he might 
 have waited long for his discoveries ; but Barrow, and his 
 great contemporary, Wallis, had already brought mathe- 
 matics to such a state, that the Newtonian discoverers 
 must come soon. Contemporary with Newton at Cam- 
 bridge was Flamstead, the first astronomer royal, and the 
 great illustrator of the laws of the tides, and Roger Cotes, 
 a name too little known in the world, but appreciated by 
 all mathematicians, of whom Newton himself said, " If he 
 had lived, we might have known something." At a later 
 period we find the blind mathematician, Saunderson, Vince,
 
 On the Cam. 197 
 
 and Taylor, who added many important formulae to prac- 
 tical calculations. Still later, occur the names of Wood 
 and Peacock, hated by youthful students in Algebra ; of 
 Sir John Herschel, the worthy son of a worthy father ; of 
 the astronomers royal, Maskelyne and Airy, and, finally, 
 in our own time, of that wonderful genius, John Couch 
 Adams, who, in the same year as Leverrier, made precisely 
 similar calculations on his own account, demonstrating the 
 existence of another member of the solar system. 
 
 And then in the other chosen branch of Cambridge 
 studies, the Classical Literatures and Languages. If our 
 age begins with the prince of mathematicians, it also begins 
 with the prince of scholars. Never since Greek learning 
 was revived, not in Erasmus, its great parent, or More 
 and Cheke, his coadjutors, or Casaubon, the patient stu- 
 dent, or Spanheirn and Grsevius, the elegant imitators ; 
 not in Wolf, the arch heretic, nor Hermann, the all-cor- 
 recting, nor Lobeck, the omnivorous, never, perhaps, 
 except in the unmeasured learning and magnificent intel- 
 ligence of Scaliger, has been found such a scholar as 
 Richard Bentley. He was one of those men to whom 
 ordinary Greek and Latin is like a child's primer, and 
 who has only a slight chance of making a mistake when 
 he comes to those tremendous passages where all the con- 
 centrated obscurity of the author is darkened tenfold by 
 all the diffused stupidity of the copyists. In his hands 
 the vast mass of rough and unexplored Greek literature, 
 which men had been content to pass by as hopeless, be- 
 came a great mine of rich jewels, which indeed needed 
 labour to dig, to wash, to polish, but which repaid that 
 labour by a lustre far more glorious than those of the well- 
 known pebbles to be found in every river's bed. 
 
 Richard Bentley was a member of St. John's College, 
 Cambridge. In the latter part of the seventeenth century 
 he was involved in what the learned know as the " Phala- 
 ris " controversy with some of the young wits of England, 
 which resulted in a nominal and temporary success of his
 
 198 On the Cam. 
 
 adversaries, but really and ultimately in the establishment 
 of Dr. Bentley as the greatest of English scholars ; and if 
 he only did justice to himself, one of the greatest of Eng- 
 lish wits and critics. In this discussion, he was brought 
 into collision with Atterbury, Swift, and the other wits, 
 and they communicated their enmity to Pope, who has 
 filled whole pages with abuse of Bentley, a little more 
 virulent and a little less true than Pope's satire generally 
 is. The reputation thus acquired procured Bentley the 
 appointment from the crown of Master of Trinity College ; 
 as there is only a single wall of brick between Trinity and 
 his own college of St. John, he is reported to have quoted 
 somewhat profanely, " By the help of God I have leapt 
 over a wall." Though not originally a member of it, 
 his whole soul and energy were given to the college of his 
 adoption, but his ideas for increasing it provoked the re- 
 sentment of the existing fellows, particularly Dr. Conyers 
 Middleton, the author of the Life of Cicero. He was 
 at once involved in new controversy with them, wherein 
 his excessively imperious and overbearing temper doubtless 
 did him no good ; but which ended in his appeal from the 
 petty jealousies and scholastic insolence of the University 
 to the justice of the king and council being triumphantly 
 sustained, and now, while Conyers Middleton's servile 
 biography of Cicero is daily less and less esteemed, and 
 his really valuable theological essays are hardly read, his 
 rival is rising every day in the reputation of scholars, as 
 the great founder of classical criticism. 
 
 Second to Bentley, but second to him alone, is Richard 
 Porson. This glorious interpreter of the Greek drama, 
 gifted with memory, with wit, with acuteness, with vigour 
 beyond almost any man, who, if he had no other merit, 
 would be immortal from the beauty of his Greek manu- 
 script, is a lamentable instance of transcendent powers 
 joined to almost irresistible failings. Porson was probably 
 the brightest wit in a generation of humourists, and the 
 hardest drinker in a generation of drunkards. He would
 
 On the Cam. 199 
 
 drink anything, even the alcohol set aside to fill a lamp. 
 This at once plunged him into debt and sloth, from which 
 even the necessity of earning his bread hardly extricated 
 him. Had William Pitt a Cambridge man and a devoted 
 friend of the Greek classics done his duty by literature 
 and given Person a pension, he might have been raised from 
 the necessity of associating with hack-writers, and his 
 orgies deprived of half their coarseness, or perchance broken 
 up for ever. But in spite of poverty, of idleness, of vice, 
 the splendour of his wit, the soundness of his mind, the 
 sweetness of his disposition, have left to those who study 
 him attentively a memory they must love while they cen- 
 sure. His researches in the ancient drama have placed 
 the whole criticism of its masters, so difficult yet so delight- 
 ful, on a new basis, while his letters to Travis have demon- 
 strated beyond power of refutation that the so-called 
 " proof-text " so often cited, viz. 1 John v. 7, has noplace 
 whatever in the Bible. 
 
 A little prior to Porson was another great Cambridge 
 scholar, a perfect mine of erudition, the learned Samuel 
 Parr. Had Dr. Parr devoted himself wholly to what he 
 was best adapted for, namely, the editing of the classics, 
 he might have made himself a great name. But in an evil 
 hour he made it his business to be a great conversationist, 
 like Johnson, whom he imitated in little but rudeness. Yet 
 some good jokes are told of him. He was once present at 
 a dinner in company with Sir James Mackintosh, whom 
 Parr and his party always accused of apostacy from the true 
 cause of liberty. The conversation turned on the Irish 
 rebels of '98, and Mackintosh said of one of them, "He 
 was the worst of men." Parr looked fixedly at him, 
 and in a spiteful voice, almost unintelligible from a pecu- 
 liar lisp, hissed out, " No, Sir James, he was a very bad 
 man, but he was not the worst of men. He was an Irish- 
 man, he might have been a Scotchman ; he was a priest, 
 he might have been a lawyer ; he was a traitor, Sir James, 
 he might have been an apostate."
 
 200 On the Cam. 
 
 It is to the exertions of Cambridge men that we owe 
 that accurate and beautiful knowledge of the spirit of 
 Greek poetry that so distinguishes the English scholars. 
 They not only understand how to sift the endless chaff of 
 German erudition from the wheat, and to work up the 
 latter into the purest flour, but to flavour the bread of 
 learning with an ambrosial gusto all their own. The 
 names of Dobree, of Elmsley, of Monk, of Blakesley, of 
 Long, of Paley, of Thompson, of Mtmro, of Vaughan, of 
 Lyttelton, of Merivale, are familiar to all scholars as those 
 of accurate, of elegant, of acute interpreters of the trea- 
 sures of ancient lore. 
 
 Next to the study of the learned languages and mathe- 
 matics, unquestionably the greatest attention is paid at 
 Cambridge to Theology. In the period selected for this 
 evening, the greatest name as well as the first is that of 
 Isaac Barrow, the preceptor of Newton. Distinguished in 
 the early part of his life for his mathematical skill, his 
 fame now rests on his theological works, and chiefly his 
 sermons. I might do worse to-night than stop my lecture 
 and read you a sermon of Barrow ; but without going that 
 length, let me advise any young preacher, who thinks his 
 last discourse, intended for some special occasion, has 
 completely used up the subject, to take down his grand- 
 father's old copy of Barrow's sermons, only to find every 
 one of his own thoughts much better expressed, and a great 
 deal more he never dreamed of, and all penetrated by a 
 combination of intellectual mastery, of chastened eloquence, 
 and of pure Christian holiness, that must carry conviction 
 to the hearts of even such godless audiences as Barrow 
 was wont to address. 
 
 In Barrow's own time, the popular preference was de- 
 cidedly given to Tillotson. His sermons, though now less 
 read, deserve to be revived for the exquisite spirit of love 
 and gentleness breathing through them all. When Tillot- 
 son died, William III, not given to demonstration, and 
 not fond of Englishmen, wrote to his most intimate corre-
 
 On the Cam. 201 
 
 spondent, that he had " lost the best friend he ever had 
 and the best man he ever knew." Cambridge is proud to 
 rank Tillotson of her sons. 
 
 In the same age are Pearson, whose treatise on the 
 Creed is held to be a chief stone of the foundation of 
 English theology; Cudworth, the author of a vigorous 
 intellectual system, and Burnet, of the " Theory of the 
 Earth," the latter renowned also as a devoted friend of 
 liberty ; the eloquent and virtuous bishops, Stillingfleet 
 and Beveridge, Patrick and Tenison ; the grave and pious 
 Calamy ; Lightfoot, the greatest English Orientalist ; and 
 Jeremy Collier, who, in spite of his bigotry and his absur- 
 dity, deserves the thanks of all lovers of literature and 
 morality, for having been the first to strike a blow at the 
 impurity of the English drama. But, perhaps, none of 
 all these is so entitled to the respect and love of Christians 
 as one who, though belonging to an earlier generation, 
 may well be considered the father of Christian instruction 
 in modern England, whose books are daily republished as 
 surpassing all others in the value of their precepts and 
 consolations, the sainted Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 In the next century the list of Cambridge divines is 
 swelled by Sherlock and Hoadley, fellow-students and 
 fellow-bishops ; Horsley, one of the most energetic contro- 
 versialists and one of the best of men ; Samuel Clarke, so 
 long the leader of the liberal theologians ; and Paley, who, 
 though his Moral Philosophy is justly superseded, and his 
 Hora3 Paulina is fast giving way to better books, must 
 stand for ever as an honest, a vigorous, and a pious 
 opponent of the sloth and infidelity wherein the religion of 
 England appeared irredeemably plunged. 
 
 In the last two generations the divines of Cambridge 
 have not fallen from the reputation of their predecessors ; 
 but I omit their consideration till a later lecture, when I 
 shall discuss the whole subject of the connection of Cam- 
 bridge with the Church of England. 
 
 Next in estimation to the profession of Divinity, un-
 
 202 On the Cam. 
 
 doubtedlj stands that of Law. The science of the laws of 
 England formed no part of the instruction at Cambridge 
 till Sir George Downing included in his gifts to Downing 
 College a professorship of the laws of England. Civil law, 
 as I have already explained, formed an important branch 
 of Cambridge study. But although not directly connected 
 with the University, the Inns of Court, in London, where 
 chiefly the Law was and is studied, always accorded great 
 privileges to persons coming from the University, shorten- 
 ing the time required for residence to such as had taken 
 the Master's or Bachelor's degrees. And in England, as 
 here, the best training for the legal studies has always, and 
 rightly, been considered to be the education given at col- 
 lege. A distinguished member of the English bench, who 
 had himself taken the highest honours of his year at 
 Cambridge, admonished his young nephew, who proposed 
 studying there, that he must " be sure and get a Wrang- 
 lership," such an unfailing prestige did it give among the 
 retaining attornies to have stood high at the Universities. 
 About the time of the revolution of 1688, the Attorney- 
 General, Sir Eobert Sawyer, one of the ablest of all the 
 English counsel, was a son of Cambridge, and represented 
 her in Parliament. From his time there has always been 
 a supply of distinguished members of the Inns of Court 
 from Cambridge ; the virtuous Camden, the faithful friend 
 of Chatham ; the unfortunate Charles Yorke, who put an 
 end to his own life the day after he had received the wool- 
 sack on which his father had sat before him ; and that 
 truly Christian knight, Sir Eardley Wilmot, whose modesty 
 shrank from the honours of the great seal. Two chancel- 
 lors of still greater fame join the list, Edward Thurlow 
 and Thomas Erskine. Thurlow, it may well be supposed, 
 was a sadly unruly member of the University. It may not 
 be amiss to recall some of the anecdotes of his college 
 course which Lord Campbell has preserved. For ex- 
 ample : There was a stringent law at Cambridge against 
 any garments except those of a black or " subfusk " hue ;
 
 On the Cam. 203 
 
 and especially against any cuffs of a gay colour being 
 attached to the coat. Thurlow was reprimanded for trans- 
 gressing this rule. He denied the charge altogether. 
 "What, sir," said the college functionary, indignantly, 
 ; am I not to believe my own eyes?" " No, sir," said the 
 future chancellor ; and. stripping off his coat, showed that 
 the sleeves, terminating in the gay cuffs, were attached to 
 the waistcoat. On another occasion, the dean of the col- 
 lege imposed upon him as a punishment, according to 
 & practice given up entirely at Cambridge, but not wholly 
 at Oxford, to translate a paper of the Spectator into 
 Greek. Thurlow performed the task with a good deal of 
 skill ; but, instead of taking it to the dean, who was not 
 a very learned man, took it to one of the tutors, a splendid 
 Greek scholar. This was considered a piece of imperti- 
 nence ; and being interrogated by the body of the autho- 
 rities as to his excuse, he replied : " Sir, I have all possible 
 respect for the dean, and therefore took my imposition to 
 the tutor, as a person who could inform him whether or 
 not I had done the task satisfactorily." For this exquisite 
 piece of insolence no punishment seemed suited, rustication 
 being too lenient, and expulsion too severe ; but, in com- 
 pliance with the advice of the tutor, Thurlow voluntarily 
 left the University. I refer you to Lord Campbell's 
 " Lives " for the sequel to the story, which shows that 
 Thnrlow, though a perfect bear, had a good heart as well 
 as a sound head. I own more authentic anecdotes quite 
 refute the supposition. 
 
 The advantages which Lord Erskine derived from Cam- 
 bridge were peculiar. It was after having tried unsuccess- 
 fully both branches of the service that he determined to go 
 to the bar. Any one who had taken a University degree 
 could be called to the bar in three years, instead of five, 
 after entering the Inns of Court.* Erskine, therefore, en- 
 
 * Any one, whether a graduate or not, can now be called in three 
 years, and the ancient privilege is therefore void. ED.
 
 204 On the Cam. 
 
 tered his name, and kept his rooms, at Trinity College, 
 Cambridge; and, being the son of an earl, was admitted 
 to his degree after two years' residence, and without an 
 examination. This privilege of the nobility is now dis- 
 used ; but it might well have been continued if it were 
 always the means of smoothing the passage to legal 
 honours of such a man as Erskine, the most consummate 
 forensic orator of the age, and one of the truest friends of 
 liberty that ever lived. 
 
 Another most eminent lawyer, who owed his education 
 to Cambridge, was the great Ellenborough. His profi- 
 ciency was such that he was expected to take the first 
 honours of his year in both classics and mathematics. He 
 was disappointed in the latter, being only third wrangler, 
 instead of senior ; but he was easily first in the classical 
 department ; and thus continued the fame of his family, 
 his father and two brothers having all three graduated with 
 distinction at Cambridge, and all three risen to bishoprics. 
 Many years after, when the examinations had much in- 
 creased in difficulty, Sir E. H. Alderson, afterwards greatly 
 distinguished as an Exchequer judge, actually obtained the 
 highest honours of his year in all the possible subjects of 
 competition, a case of which only three instances have 
 ever occurred since the records begin in 1752. Two other 
 renowned lawyers, Bickersteth, afterwards Lord Langdale, 
 and Sir Frederick Pollock, whose recent decision in the 
 Alexandra case has rather shaken the value placed by 
 Americans on his legal acumen, obtained the highest 
 mathematical honours of their respective years. Cam- 
 bridge also was the mother of a judge, now retired from 
 the bench, but esteemed as few ever have been, and espe- 
 cially honourable for his steady friendship for America 
 the learned and virtuous Parke, Lord Wensleydale. And 
 finally, within the last few months, his friends and relatives 
 in Boston have received the melancholy tidings of the loss 
 of one of the most distinguished English lawyers and 
 orators, the veteran among them all, who, at the age of
 
 On the Cam. 205 
 
 eighty-eight, when scarce able to move, still could protest 
 in Parliament against the supineness of younger leaders, 
 the faithful and honoured child of Cambridge, the son of 
 the distinguished artist, whose speaking portraits are 
 among the choicest decorations of our mansions and halls, 
 the Boston boy, John Singleton Copley, Lord Lyndhurst. 
 
 But there are two callings, which, in the end, will 
 arrest the attention of the world, and show the value of 
 education, above all others. The profession of arms, in- 
 deed, may, for a few years, be all-important, and its 
 heroes may stand highest in the world's opinion ; but it is 
 for a few years only. We ourselves, who are at this mo- 
 ment offering our richest treasure and our best blood to 
 the god of war, do so because we hope by these offerings 
 to secure generations wherein a free and united nation 
 may exercise the arts of peace. It is to Statesmanship 
 and to Literature that we must look to know if Cambridge 
 has done her part for England and the world. I have 
 already given proofs of her pre-eminence as a trainer of 
 politicians and authors in the earlier times ; but the annals 
 of her later age will equally show that she has never 
 failed to yield her quota of those who rule the state of 
 England, and form the mind of her people. 
 
 The greatest real statesman at the time of the English 
 revolution was beyond all question Sir William Temple. 
 It is not to be supposed that he understood all the turns of 
 an English parliamentary contest as well as Halifax or 
 Shaftesbury ; but he alone understood what was the true 
 position England should occupy in the family of nations, 
 and he alone had the adroitness to carry through a treaty 
 by which this position might be secured. He was too 
 timorous and too selfish to be a great man ; but when he 
 chose to forget himself in his country, or rather when he 
 could do his country service without endangering himself, 
 he performed services of really great value, without ruin- 
 ing her either by his ambition or his avarice ; and the side 
 he espoused has received the subsequent commendation of
 
 206 On the Cam. 
 
 all true patriots and wise men. He was a member of 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 
 
 But the next generation was to develope a race of 
 statesmen, perhaps even superior to Temple in ability, and 
 at all events, far before him in spirit, in generosity, in 
 energy. No statesman of the reign of William III, not 
 even Somers himself, showed such marvellous genius for 
 founding a new national glory on the ruins of the old as 
 Charles Montague. He was one of the earliest pupils of 
 Newton at Cambridge, and originally looked forward to 
 little more than the life of a college fellow or a country 
 rector. But the Revolution, that brought forward all the 
 talent of the Whig party, called Montague from his retire- 
 ment. His inventive genius, sharpened by the differential 
 calculus and the dynamics of a particle, threw itself into 
 the mysteries of finance with an energy that startled the 
 old exchequer-men. When the credit of the crown was 
 shaken to the utmost, and Louis XIV. was congratulating 
 himself that the last piece of gold must win, Montague 
 brought it up from the dust, by the then novel expedient of 
 creating a funded debt, and issuing treasury notes, an in- 
 teresting precedent for ourselves.* In a still darker hour 
 he created the Bank of England, an act alone entitling 
 him to the highest praise as a wise statesman ; and finally, 
 when the whole country was tottering under a debased 
 currency, his admirable system of recoinage revived and 
 strengthened it as it never had been strong before. And 
 here was shown the wisdom of the man ; he knew that the 
 best man at a college will, other things being equal, be 
 the best out of it, that he who can calculate the thickness 
 of a soap-bubble to the millionth of an inch, could calcu- 
 late how many million shillings the mint could issue in a 
 day ; and the complete success of the recoinage is chiefly 
 due to his filling the place of master of the mint by Sir 
 Isaac Newton. 
 
 * Highly; and we hope our cousins will never regret having fol- 
 lowed it. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 207 
 
 Just as Montague felt that the Parliamentary sceptre he 
 had earned so well and held so long was quivering in his 
 grasp, the House of Commons received a new member, 
 also from Cambridge, whose original ideas, like those of 
 Montague, had been to remain all his life a country cler- 
 gyman, with some assistance from his college. But the 
 death of his elder brother, and his marriage with the 
 daughter of a rich city magnate, procured him a seat in 
 Parliament. For a few years he was engaged in the in- 
 judicious prosecution of the foolish Sacheverell, and the 
 prominence he took therein never ceased till he became 
 Prime Minister, till he became all but sole minister, till he 
 had silenced opposition so long that men recurred to it 
 merely for variety, till having begun Parliamentary life in 
 opposition to Bolingbroke, he ended it in opposition to 
 Chatham ; till he and his great rival, Pulteney, having 
 had all eyes concentrated on their Titanic contests for 
 years, sank into the obscurity of high rank ; till in the 
 year that the Highlands and the Continent burst into one 
 furious blaze, the grave closed over Kobert AValpole. 
 
 In the year in which Walpole died, the Lord-Lieuten- 
 ancy of Ireland, one of the most important offices in the 
 gift of the crown, and attended with some privileges 
 known to no other, was given to another graduate of Cam- 
 bridge, Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. We are 
 accustomed to think of Lord Chesterfield only as a model 
 of politeness ; as the supercilious patron that excited the 
 enmity of Johnson ; as the author of a volume of letters 
 dictated apparently by fashionable infidelity. Such may 
 be all the legacy he could leave, but such is far too little 
 in justice to his life. The same sweet grace of manner, 
 the same soft tones of voice that captivated the drawing- 
 rooms, rose in Parliament to the very heights of eloquence ; 
 the same dignity which knew how to maintain the place of 
 a gentleman in all circles taught him how to hold high 
 office till the arrogance of the minister allowed it no 
 longer, and then to part with it only to receive it back
 
 208 On the Cam. 
 
 when Walpole was no more. And what may appear to us 
 through the mist of a century but the airs of a courtier, 
 were in truth the adroitness of a diplomat and the ability 
 of a statesman. It is enough glory for one man to be 
 considered the best lord-lieutenant of Ireland through all 
 the last century. 
 
 Chesterfield died at the age of seventy-nine, in the year 
 1773. In that same year a sickly boy of fourteen was 
 entered at Pembroke College in Cambridge. His feeble 
 frame, unable to bear the hardships of a public school, had 
 been scarcely sustained by inordinate doses of port wine, 
 not generally employed as a medicine by the Englishmen 
 of that period. At college he was not only unusually 
 skilled in mathematical science, but a consummate master 
 of ancient literature. Shy, retiring, implicitly regular in 
 his devotion to all college requirements, he seemed the 
 very man to end his days as tutor of his college, with per- 
 haps the prospect, if he lived long enough, of becoming 
 its master. But the feeble-framed youth strangely enough 
 resolved to quit this life of academic ease so well suited to 
 him, and study law. Nor did he appear to have made a 
 mistake. Some friends of his father's, particularly the 
 great Dunning, complimented him highly on the success 
 of his maiden pleas. Relying too much on his precocity 
 and his descent from an earl, he ventured such is the 
 audacity of youth to offer himself as a candidate for Par- 
 liament from the University of Cambridge, when only 
 twenty-one. It may be supposed such a demand was at 
 once rejected by the magnates of learning. How did they 
 feel when only three years later they saw the sickly boy, 
 at the age of twenty-four, Prime Minister of England, 
 and heard the whole nation ringing with shouts of praise 
 at the lofty eloquence, the acute management, the un- 
 daunted bearing of William Pitt the younger ! 
 
 Yes, Pitt is a true son of Cambridge. No mere nominal 
 member like Erskine, no unruly scapegrace like Thurlow, 
 no unwilling and disgusted student like Bacon, but faith-
 
 On the Cam. 209 
 
 ful, diligent, regular, till the licentious aige made his virtue 
 a laughing stock. It was from his Thucydides and his 
 Conic Sections that he learned to rule the Parliament and 
 encourage the nation. Poor, proud, haughty, youthful, 
 he secured the personal respect of all classes of English- 
 men, such as was never accorded to Walpole or Pelham, 
 or even his great father ; he defied the desperate fury of 
 France under Carnot, and the concentrated magnificence 
 of France under Napoleon ; his very name was for years a 
 mystical bugbear to the Jacobins, for generations a mythical 
 watchword to the Tories. And now that senseless hatred 
 and senseless love are alike passing away, the great son of 
 Cambridge shall shine forth year after year the parent of 
 reform, the abhorrer of the slave-trade, the friend of reli- 
 gious liberty, the splendid orator, the undaunted patriot, 
 the incorruptible minister. After not only Pitt had passed 
 away, but also the modern Hannibal himself, whose vic- 
 tory at Austerlitz had slain, together with thirty thousand 
 troops of the allies, the great Englishman whose counsels 
 moved them, Lord Byron, not politically a friend of Pitt, 
 pronounced on him and his great Parliamentary rival a 
 sentence which should be remembered by all who would 
 exalt the present at the expense of the past. 
 
 " Reader, remember, when thou wert a lad, 
 That Pitt was all, or, if not all, so much 
 His very rival almost deemed him such. 
 We, we have seen the intellectual race 
 Of giants stand, like Titans face to face, 
 Athos and Ida, with a dashing sea 
 Of eloquence between, which flowed all free 
 As the deep billows of the Mgean roar 
 Betwixt the Hellenic and the Phrygian shore. 
 But where are they, the rivals ? A few feet 
 Of sullen earth divide each winding sheet." 
 
 Nor can I, in closing this section of my lecture, omit to 
 call your attention to a son of Cambridge, who, called into 
 political life at the time of Pitt's death, continued in it 
 over fifty years with the respect of his rivals, the admira-
 
 210 On the Cam. 
 
 tion of his allies, the devotion and love of his friends, 
 who, such was the confidence in his abilities and his pro- 
 bity, was constantly included in the cabinet by special 
 preference, after all the offices were assigned ; who, gifted 
 with rank, with wealth, with talent, with power, won to 
 himself a yet richer glory by being the constant fosterer of 
 genius, the patron of literature, the friend of his country, 
 the loyal child of his University, and left, when he died, in 
 extreme old age, preserving his intellectual energy to the 
 end, no name more honoured in England than that of 
 Henry Petty, Marquis of Lansdowne. , 
 
 But it is to the devotees of literature, the essayists, the 
 historians, the poets, that every nation looks for her most 
 lasting honour, and every college for her brightest glory. 
 "When Milton died in poverty and obscurity, leaving his 
 great works to posterity, there was perhaps but one man, 
 and he a Cambridge man, who had both the ability and 
 the will to come to anything like a just appreciation of 
 their value. He could do it, because, though a loyalist, he 
 was no bigot, because, though a sovereign of literature, 
 he did not " bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne." 
 Above all, he could do it because he was a poet himself. 
 This was John Dryden, " Glorious John," as his con- 
 temporaries loved to call him, who still, though times and 
 manners and tastes have changed, must preserve the ad- 
 miration of all real lovers of stirring thoughts set forth in 
 sounding verse. I know his rhymed tragedies are fustian 
 and bombast, I know in the delineation of character he 
 falls far short, I do not say of Shakespeare, but of Nat 
 Lee, Southerne, Congreve, I know his religious poems 
 are more absurd than that of Lucretius, and his panegyrics 
 more fulsome than those of Southey. But let any one, 
 however prepossessed in favour of the ultra modern or 
 ultra antique poetry, read through nineteen of his lines, 
 with all their conceits, their bombast, their nonsense, and 
 the twentieth shall burst upon him, stirring his heart like 
 the sound of a trumpet, with its sonorous melody, its kind-
 
 On the Cam. 211 
 
 ling energy, its manly plainness, and above all by its 
 pure native nervous English. For in his management of 
 our noble old language, Dryden knew, as no other man 
 knew or knows, how to sound the deeps and mount the 
 heights of poetry, with scarce a line that a rustic could not 
 follow, or that a Bentley would not praise. When all the 
 nerveless jingle of the past age, and all the tortured vul- 
 garisms of the present are extinct in oblivion, the mighty 
 strains of Dryden shall still sound a clarion pealing through 
 the ages. There is no one from whom I could read to 
 you with more satisfaction than Dryden, but I must con- 
 tent myself with a very few lines, a part of his transla- 
 tion of the noblest passage in Latin poetry. Listen to 
 them, Americans, as addressed to you, for you are to 
 inherit the glory of the nations. 
 
 " But, Rome, 'tis thine alone with sceptred sway 
 To rule mankind, and make the world obey, 
 Controlling peace and war, thine own majestic way. 
 To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free, 
 These are imperial arts, and worthy thee." 
 
 Immediately succeeding Dryden are two poets, one the 
 most successful tragedian of his age, indeed the best since 
 Shakespeare, poor Otway, who finally died from the reac- 
 tion of a sudden supply of food arriving too late to save him 
 from starvation ; and Matthew Prior, who, with not half 
 the genius of Otway, was placed in several very important 
 diplomatic posts, and lived in the richest and best* com- 
 pany for many years. They were fellow-students at St. 
 John's College, Cambridge. 
 
 The best poem of Prior's is a satire on Boileau's bom- 
 bastic ode on the siege of Namur. In the next generation, 
 a son of Cambridge introduced, with exquisite humour, a 
 veteran of that siege as the prominent person in the finest 
 specimen of English prose wit that appeared between 
 Gulliver's Travels and the Vicar of Wakefield. And 
 
 * And worst. ED.
 
 212 On the Cam. 
 
 every year is adding new laurels and new plagiarists* to 
 the captivating works of Laurence Sterne. 
 
 In the year after the admission of Sterne to Cambridge 
 its gates opened to receive another guest, the painful side 
 of whose college life I have already portrayed to you, 
 Thomas Gray. I need not enlarge to an audience like 
 this on the merits of his poetry. The same fastidiousness 
 that disgusted him with the rude mirth of Peterhouse, 
 refined and polished his poems to the last pitch of elegance 
 and beauty. Tantalizing us by writing so little, and still 
 more by the lovely fragments that he left incomplete, he 
 has yet given to the world a few pieces absolutely perfect 
 of their kind, and I cannot resist reading to you his noble 
 description of academic duty and pleasure, the exordium 
 of the ode from which I quoted in my first lecture : 
 
 " Hence ! avaunt ! 'tis holy ground ! 
 
 Comus and his midnight crew, 
 And Ignorance, with looks profound, 
 
 And dreaming Sloth of pallid hue, 
 Mad Sedition's cry profane, 
 Servitude that hugs her chain ; 
 Nor, in these consecrated bowers, 
 Let painted Flattery hide her serpent train in flowers, 
 Nor Envy base, nor creeping Gain 
 Dare the Muses' walk to stain, 
 While bright-eyed Science watches round, 
 Hence, away, 'tis holy ground." 
 
 In the same year with Gray, there entered at Cam- 
 bridge his intimate friend, the celebrated Horace Walpole, 
 whose eccentric talent has preserved to us so much curious 
 and valuable information of his own time ; and in the year 
 after Gray's Elegy was published, the wayward genius 
 of Churchill sought admission at Cambridge, but he never 
 resided there. 
 
 Horace Walpole died in honour, wealth, and peace, con- 
 
 * We are somewhat at a loss to understand this allusion. The 
 opening chapters of " The Caxtons " form the only approach to an 
 imitation of " Tristram Shandy " that we can remember. ED.
 
 On the Cam, 213 
 
 siderably over eighty years of age, in 1797. In the next 
 year, the coronet of a long line of ancestors, whose fate 
 seemed a tissue of madness, slaughter, and sorrow, de- 
 scended upon that brilliant, wayward, ill-starred son of 
 Cambridge, George Gordon, Lord Byron of Newstead. 
 
 This is not the place for a discussion in full of the 
 character and writings of Lord Byron. The taste of the 
 immediate generation is turning from his poetry, as it does 
 also from that of Scott. But we cannot judge of a poet by 
 the taste either of his own age or that immediately following. 
 The time has doubtless ceased when Lord Byron is to be 
 the model for all young men to imitate in their manage- 
 ment of verses or reverses. But I trust the time has also 
 gone by when his poems are to be shelved contemptuously 
 as wanting in vigour, originality, and sweetness of diction, 
 or his character sent with a curse from society as his 
 statue was from Westminster Abbey. To those who spurn 
 alike the man and his works I have nothing to say. To 
 those who can love and forgive, I commend the last stan- 
 zas he ever wrote, composed on his thirty-sixth birthday, 
 on that distant shore where in less than a year he died. 
 They are all noble, but I select the last four. 
 
 " Awake not Greece she is awake ! 
 
 Awake, my spirit ! think through whom 
 Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, 
 
 And then strike home ! 
 Tread those reviving passions clown, 
 Unworthy manhood ! Unto thee 
 Indifferent should the smile or frown 
 
 Of beauty be. 
 If thou regret'st thy youth, why live ? 
 
 The land of honourable death 
 Is here ! Up to the field, and give 
 
 Away thy breath. 
 
 Seek out, less often sought than found, 
 A soldier's grave, for thee the best; 
 Then look around, and choose thy ground, 
 And take thy rest." 
 
 Two of the poets with whom Byron quarrelled all his
 
 214 On the Cam. 
 
 life, though he had more points of resemblance with them 
 than he would have allowed,* were sons of Cambridge, 
 William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The 
 life and the poetry of both are familiar to every one here, 
 but I cannot resist extracting a sonnet of Wordsworth's, 
 on the noble picture by Holbein of Henry VIII, in the 
 Master's Lodge at Trinity, for it is precisely the thought 
 that every loyal son of Cambridge has of the stern old 
 monarch. 
 
 "The imperial stature, the colossal stride 
 Are yet before me ; yet do I behold 
 The broad full visage, chest of amplest mould, 
 The vestments broidered with barbaric pride ; 
 And lo ! a poniard at the monarch's side 
 Hangs ready to be grasped in sympathy 
 With the keen threatenings of that fulgent eye, 
 Below the white-rimmed bonnet far descried. 
 Who trembles now at thy capricious mood? 
 'Mid those surrounding worthies, haughty king, 
 We rather think with grateful mind sedate, 
 How Providence educeth, from the spring 
 Of lawless will, unlooked-for streams of good, 
 
 % Which neither force shall check, nor time abate." 
 
 I should weary you, my friends, were I to attempt to 
 relate all the ingenious, the eloquent, the learned writers 
 that have gone forth from these ancient halls. Take one 
 of the last of them as a picture of what a great institution 
 can do, what a faithful pupil can be. In the same year 
 that Lord Byron closed his brilliant and fitful career. 
 Trinity College admitted into her society Thomas Babing- 
 ton Macaulay, and throughout his life he lost no oppor- 
 tunity, and who had more or better? of exalting the 
 name and honour of his dear Alma Mater. I cannot enter 
 
 * We wish that the lecturer had found an opportunity of illus- 
 trating this idea, which never struck us. Byron's best style is 
 startling, epigrammatic, and scornful ; Wordsworth's, soft, calm, 
 philosophic ; Coleridge's, weird, musical, and dreamy. En.
 
 On the Cam. 215 
 
 here into a discussion of his merits or quote from his works. 
 I cannot even, what I should gladly do, pronounce a 
 panegyric upon him. For when, after long, long years of 
 eager expectation, I was at last admitted to his acquaint- 
 ance, and to gaze on that face which seemed to have been 
 at my side from infancy, the interview, too short, though 
 he accorded to me his kindest words and his richest stores 
 of intellectual wealth, was but thirteen days before the 
 news fell upon England like a thunder-clap that he was no 
 more. Fellow-citizens, think what you will of the histo- 
 rian, set up, if you will, your knowledge against his, the 
 most vast and profound erudition of the age, but dare not 
 think that there ever lived a loftier intellect, a nobler love 
 of right and freedom, a purer soul, a tenderer heart, than 
 animated the clay that now lies at the feet of his beloved 
 Addison in the Poets' Corner. 
 
 Such, my friends, is a list, most fragmentary, most im- 
 perfect, of a few of the great men of Cambridge. Is not 
 such a line of sons an honour to any institution, and is the 
 institution that can send forth such sons not entitled to our 
 heartiest and warmest praises ? O, believe it ! Those 
 ancient halls still keep pure the sacred flame. The ap- 
 pointed ministers feed it with purest food and guard it 
 with unremitting care ; and year after year there go forth 
 from it the noblest children of a noble race, to strive, to 
 suffer, to conquer, in the cause of right and justice, for the 
 sake of the dear old mother, so kind, so true, so generous. 
 If you can bear, after hearing some specimens of the 
 finest poets of England, to listen to the feeble strains of 
 Apollo's humblest votary, let your hearts rise with mine 
 in a 
 
 SONG FOE CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 All hail, thou mother of our sires ! 
 Hail, home of learning, pure and free ! 
 Thou altar, whence the sacred fires 
 Have leapt to us across the sea !
 
 216 On the Cam. 
 
 E'en as they knew thee, still the same 
 Our hearts would know thee now ; 
 
 Still rest the glory on thy name, 
 The laurel round thy brow. 
 
 home, where Bacon's eagle sight 
 Saw realms of wonder from afar; 
 Whence Newton's lamp of heavenly light 
 Streamed through the ages like a star ; 
 Where seraphs brought the hallowed fire 
 
 That blazed in Milton's song, 
 Whence hosts have struck the prophet's lyre, 
 Or swelled the statesman's throng ; 
 
 halls where virtue's armies true 
 Have seen their fight with sin begun ; 
 Where freedom's flag, of gorgeous hue, 
 Is handed on from sire to son ; 
 Where ancient Honour ne'er shall fail 
 
 Though Shame and Falsehood frown ; 
 Where holy Truth shall aye prevail 
 To crush confusion down; 
 
 O take our greeting ! from the sons 
 Of those that left thee for the wild ! 
 Still in our veins the current runs 
 That kindled then each pious child. 
 And still for all thy triumphs past, 
 
 In all thy strife to come, 
 God's love and grace on thee be cast, 
 Our fathers' honoured home !
 
 X. 
 
 DRAWBACKS OF THE CAMBRIDGE LIFE. 
 
 Favourable Opinion heretofore expressed. Abuses and Extortions 
 by Servants. Expense of Living. Position of the Aristocracy. 
 Hardships of Average Men and Advantages of Specialists. 
 Strong Nationality of the University. 
 
 my lectures hitherto I have endeavoured to 
 describe to you the present condition, and, 
 as far as the mention of distinguished names 
 can indicate, some of the past history of the 
 University of Cambridge. We have gone 
 through the objects, means, and impulses of study, the 
 daily and exceptional life of its undergraduates, and the 
 history of some of its more celebrated pupils. If you were 
 actually with me at Cambridge, we should very probably, 
 after such a walk round the colleges as I described to you 
 in my seventh lecture, retire to my rooms in the Old Court 
 of Trinity, and, while the fountain plashed unceasingly, 
 and the old clock struck out every quarter of an hour, sit 
 down and talk over what we had seen. We may very 
 appropriately do something of the same kind here, and 
 having passed nine evenings together in using our eyes 
 about Cambridge, employ three to think over what and 
 where she is in her relations to England, to the world, and 
 to the general interests of Truth and Learning. 
 
 But in the same way that, in taking a real walk, we 
 do not confine ourselves to the mere contemplation of the
 
 218 On the Cam. 
 
 objects, but likewise to the discussion of them, it has been 
 impossible for me to avoid interspersing my description of 
 Cambridge institutions with some reflections on their-value. 
 Nor have I been careful in this matter to refrain from 
 hearty commendation. I have lived at Cambridge not as 
 an outsider, but a member of its very inmost system, 
 and I could no more give you a cold, uninterested account 
 here, than I could take a walk through its halls with you 
 like another stranger. Nor would you expect it. You 
 would not think it right, that any man should, of his own 
 choice, against the wishes and preferences of many friends, 
 deliberately connect himself for over three years with an 
 institution, and leave it with no more respect and love than 
 a stranger. 
 
 Hence I do not seek to excuse or defend the praises I 
 have at various points in these lectures accorded. I do 
 believe that the Cambridge studies have been well selected 
 originally, and added to judiciously, that the means of 
 study are in their design wise, and in their operation 
 thorough, that the course pursued with the different 
 classes of undergraduates is far superior to that at most 
 other Universities with which I am acquainted, that 
 the estimation in which scholarship and the rewards and 
 incentives to scholarship are held, is more philosophic in 
 theory and infinitely more generous in practice than that 
 to which we are accustomed. For the life of the young 
 men, I do not know that it is more thoroughly enjoyed 
 than college life is anywhere else.* I suppose the un- 
 
 , * If students at Oxford or Cambridge have a joy unknown to 
 the American, it probably consists in that air of romance and 
 poetry which clings to the old cloisters, converts the rooms into 
 something different from all other apartments, divests the com- 
 monest things of their vulgarity, gives a peculiar zest to pleasure, 
 and robs work of half its sting. The freshman feels, on first going 
 up, as if he were a character in one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, 
 and the sensation is indescribably pleasant. But alas, it soon 
 wears off with use ; and work proves to be work, though medieval
 
 On the Cam. 219 
 
 dergraduate always has the perfection of enjoyment as 
 far as a mortal can look for it. But I do helieve that at 
 Cambridge it proceeds on a more rational basis, and is 
 tempered with far less jealousy and heart-burnings than 
 that life we are so proud of at our colleges. In particu- 
 lar, I think that the whole problem of the proper combi- 
 nation of study and exercise has been better solved, though 
 not perfectly, than anywhere else. Lastly, I believe that 
 the character of the graduates at Cambridge, who have 
 distinguished themselves in public or private life, speaks 
 in the highest terms for the quality of the education given 
 there, and more particularly for the spirit of liberality and 
 progress which they seem to draw in from the thick and 
 dank atmosphere of the Cam. 
 
 If I were to rest my judgment here, if I were only 
 to give you such opinions of a commendatory strain, with 
 occasional touches of the ludicrous, as have presented 
 themselves in the course of our examination, I should 
 leave you with a most incorrect idea of what I thought, 
 and probably a very erroneous view of the subject itself. 
 I have urged the merits of Cambridge, and I hope to 
 have a still further opportunity to urge them the more 
 strongly, because I know that there are certain faults in 
 its system, which it would be alike unjust and ungenerous 
 to other institutions to slur over or omit. It was my hap- 
 piness, before going to Cambridge, to pass four years at 
 our own matchless college, and hence, having an equality 
 of filial interest at the two Cambridges, I am impelled to 
 seek out the virtues of either as having belonged to it, 
 and the faults of either as having belonged to the other. 
 I should be very sorry to have you think I endorsed an 
 institution in which I constantly found much to reprehend, 
 and in particular, I should be exceedingly sorry if any 
 
 scholars did undergo it in the same room ; and bad wine gives you 
 a headache in the morning, whether you drink it in an old oak 
 panelled apartment at Cambridge, or an unstable villa in Brompton. 
 Bo.
 
 220 On the Cam. 
 
 young American, actuated by my own enthusiasm, should 
 rashly connect himself with an English University without 
 knowing something of the difficulties he would have to 
 encounter. 
 
 The most agreeable part of English University expe- 
 rience, beyond a doubt, is the undergraduate life that I 
 described to you in my fifth and sixth lectures. The 
 difficulties of prosecuting a successful course of study are 
 obvious, from the intensity of the competition, and the 
 high standard of the examinations, and in the case of a 
 foreigner there is added to this, his inexperience in the 
 previous training of the young men, so peculiarly English 
 in its character. But the amusements, the convivialities, 
 the enjoyment of all kinds of the undergraduate life, seem 
 beset with no such thorns, and in point of fact, many who 
 cannot, by hook or by crook, work themselves up to any 
 understanding or appreciation of the system of study, sKp 
 easily, with hardly a previous acquaintance, an element of 
 prestige, or an hour of exertion, into the pleasantest rut of 
 Cambridge life. 
 
 Now it is just in this bed of roses that the sharpest 
 prickles are found ; and I feel it, therefore, my duty to 
 allude, first of all, to the faults of Cambridge as exhibited 
 in its daily life. 
 
 The first drawbacks which any resident at Cambridge, 
 but especially an American, must feel very keenly, are the 
 vested rights, privileges, perquisites, with which he is 
 surrounded as in a perfect network, I have said every- 
 body is left free to choose his own way of spending his 
 time. So he is by his compeers, but not by his infe- 
 riors, not by those appointed to wait on him and help 
 him. There is connected with an English college a per- 
 fect army of servants, marshalled in corps d'arniee, divi- 
 sions, regiments, and battalions, and all with an amount 
 of vested rights enough to stifle one with the bare enume- 
 ration. In the first place, there are the bedmakers ; 
 nominally, there is one assigned to every eight rooms, and
 
 On the Cam. 221 
 
 she has one assistant under her. Practically, a person 
 once appointed to this seriously lucrative and responsible 
 place 'never gives it up, although utterly superannuated, 
 toothless, and tottering. Accordingly her one assistant 
 will grow into two, and the two will have three or four 
 extra miscellaneous ones generally floating round, to do 
 everything that their chiefs are too lazy to do themselves. 
 On my own staircase, the bedmaker in chief, a hearty 
 young woman of thirty-five or six, employed her old father, 
 at least seventy-seven or eight years old, to do all her 
 hardest work, in the way of drawing water, &c. Now, 
 these good ladies are much more in possession of your 
 premises than you are yourself. They have a key to get 
 into your room at all hours, even when, as in some cases 
 of peculiar locks, the regular custodian has not. Accord- 
 ing to their taste or fancy they are more or less on the 
 staircase ; but generally, you are sure to see them from 
 early dawn till noon, from four till six, and a good bit in 
 the later evening. They constitute themselves inspec- 
 tresses-general over all your belongings and arrangements, 
 and know all about you much better than you do your- 
 self. You are hopelessly in their power, and have your 
 choice of submitting quietly to their ultra-despotic rule, 
 or of carrying on a constant warfare. In this you have 
 only one advantage, a superior command of language, for 
 the population of Cambridge is very slow of speech, and 
 wholly uninventive. But as they have the whole charge 
 of everything, as their places are very valuable, and they 
 are exceedingly ready to perform extra services for extra 
 pay, they can make you very comfortable or uncomfortable 
 if they will. For instance, they attend to setting out the 
 breakfast and tea in your rooms. For this they order from 
 the butteries every day about twice as much bread and 
 butter as a man wants, and at the end of the day all that's 
 left goes to them, by immemorial custom, as perquisites. 
 And any meats left from a dinner, breakfast, <fcc, unless 
 specially mentioned by you, go to them as perquisites ;
 
 222 On the Cum. 
 
 and so on. You not only are charged a handsome sum 
 in your bill for their care of rooms, but another separate 
 charge for their beer money ; and over and above all 
 this, every undergraduate, not professedly a beneficiary, is 
 expected to pay a good sum more at the end of every 
 term as a pure gratuity. They form an immense body, 
 several score, all banded together by common interest, 
 grown old in the college, and handing down their power 
 and property to their nieces and daughters, so that they 
 come, no doubt, to regard it as a perfect family mansion, 
 and hold the undergraduates, and fellows too, completely 
 in subjection. Their honesty is quite above suspicion 
 in some cases.* 
 
 Strictly allied to the bedmakers by tenure of office, by 
 identity of interest, and often by real affinity or consan- 
 guinity, are the gyps. I have already explained this word 
 to be from the Greek yi/4/, a vulture. The gyps form a 
 principal division of the grand army. They are engaged 
 in waiting at the high, and some of them at the low tables 
 in the hall, though the body of the waiters are of a lower 
 grade, and each one of them acts as servant to as many 
 undergraduates as choose to engage him. The principal 
 duties which we conceive as belonging to a servant in 
 college, viz. making fires, bringing water, and blacking 
 boots, are performed, the first two by the bedmaker, the 
 last two by the brigade of college boot-blacks. The gyp 
 calls you in the morning, brushes your clothes, cleans 
 your lamps, runs your errands, and waits at your enter- 
 tainments. The last two duties he performs when you 
 can get him to, when some other of his multifarious duties 
 to other masters does not call him off. For all this you 
 pay him a regular sum, pretty high when you consider 
 how many masters he has, and for any extra demands on 
 
 * One can easily imagine how a foreigner would be annoyed by 
 these little tilings, just as English travellers are by the vagaries of 
 Yankee " helps ;" an American undergraduate would certainly be 
 more comfortable in lodgings. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 223 
 
 him you are expected to pay him extra. You are not at 
 Trinity obliged to employ him if you think you can dis- 
 pense with his services, but at some other colleges the 
 gyps, like the Oxford scouts, are attached to particular 
 sets of rooms. The character of the gyps is still less 
 honest and acceptable than that of the bedmakers ; most 
 of them are either entirely too old and worn out, or young, 
 impudent, and thievish. I had three, one who was tre- 
 mendously passionate, and all but unmanageable, though 
 a good servant; another so wholly old and fussy that 
 nobody could do anything with him ; and the third one 
 fine day was dismissed on a charge of assisting some of his 
 masters in disreputable practices. The whole set may be 
 defined as leeches. 
 
 After the gyps come the porters. Of these there are 
 five employed at Trinity, who have an interesting tax ap- 
 propriated peculiarly to themselves. The government of 
 England undertakes, in consideration of the established 
 rates of postage, to deliver all letters to their exact address. 
 Each college in Cambridge is regarded, very properly, as 
 one dwelling, at the gate of which the government would 
 naturally agree to deliver letters. The porters then, at 
 the monstrous charge of a halfpenny apiece, half as much 
 as the whole postage on any ordinary letter from one end 
 of England to the other, agree to deliver each one at your 
 rooms. In case you should wish to avoid this portentous 
 and illegal tax, and desire to have your letters left at the 
 porter's lodge, or the post-office, you can't do it, for the 
 porter goes every mail to the post-office with his bag, and 
 by immemorial custom takes all the letters addressed to 
 your college, and you can't get them except through his 
 hands. And this extra postage all goes to the porters. 
 
 We have also the boot-blacks, who, in their blacking, 
 cut your boots to pieces with a knife,* the window-cleaners 
 
 * We give up the shoe-blacks, who are drunken vagabonds, some 
 of them, though they do not habitually carve one's boots. ED.
 
 224 On the Cam. 
 
 and glaziers, and an army more.* There are several ser- 
 vants belonging to the college somehow whom the officials 
 don't know what to put to. I saw one day an old crea- 
 ture performing the very tedious process of scraping out 
 the grass and weeds from between the paving-stones of the 
 court, with great labour and to very little purpose, as the 
 scraping turns up the earth, and fertilizes it for the recep- 
 tion of new weeds. I asked a friend in authority why 
 they didn't employ some of the chemical destructive agents, 
 with which agricultural science is teeming, which would do 
 the work in a few hours, and with much more lasting 
 effect, and save all this tedious picking. " Why," said 
 he, " that's just what we don't want to save ; we've got 
 these men on our hands, and we must give them some- 
 thing to do." 
 
 And this is the way an English college is eaten up. At 
 every stage of your course, bed, board, chapel, amusement, 
 you are beset by a crowd of servitors, who, under the name 
 of waiting on you, while they are officiously pressing on 
 you a hundred comforts you don't want, bar you of the 
 greatest comfort, your liberty, and fleece you in a thou- 
 sand ways. You cannot have anything done, your boots 
 blacked, your clothes washed,* in your own way, but in 
 
 * The lecturer would have sympathized with a friend of ours of 
 independent tastes and a dry humour, who resisted the tone as- 
 sumed by the washerwoman who came for his linen when he first 
 entered college, and flatly refused to employ her. 
 
 " But you must/' said the washerwoman ; " it be the rule of the 
 college." 
 
 " Wait a bit," said the Freshman ; and catching up his cap and 
 gown, he rushed across the court to his tutor's rooms. 
 
 " Well, Mr. F., what is it ?" 
 
 "If you please, Sir, will you kindly inform me whether there is 
 any statute which obliges me to employ any particular washer- 
 woman?" 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 "Would you mind giving me a certificate in writing to that 
 effect ?" 
 
 After some hesitation the tutor complied with his request, and
 
 On the Cam. 225 
 
 some special, immemorial, conventional way, which, for 
 aught I know, is in King Henry YIII.'s original grant. 
 And for every service, real or nominal, thus rendered, you 
 have not only to pay well, but to sweeten it in a thousand 
 ways. Three or four times a term comes a loud knock at 
 the door. " Come in." A stalwart man enters, deposit- 
 ing your boots, which he usually leaves outside your door. 
 " Thank you for a drop of ale, sir. The boot-black, sir." 
 And this little means of washing down the disgusts of 
 labour you are expected to furnish all the time to all sorts 
 of people, the bedmaker, washerwoman, and waiter in hall 
 having a special charge of beer money made on the bill. 
 If you are unfortunate enough to take a scholarship, or a 
 distinguished degree, every servant, or a deputation from 
 every class of servants, calls upon you with this sort of 
 speech : " The porters, sir, wish to congratulate you on 
 getting your scholarship ;" and that means money, hard, 
 sterling coin, in silver, aye, or gold, according to the rank 
 of the official : and when five or six select committees thus 
 congratulate you, it becomes no slight tax to a poor young 
 man, who, perhaps, is dependent upon this very scholar- 
 ship for support. I once dropped a gold ring in chapel. 
 I knew exactly its place, but did not want to stop and lift 
 up the hassock myself; so I asked the chapel clerk, whose 
 business it is to clean out the chapel, and who gets capital 
 pay therefor, to get it for me. Before I had well got to 
 my room, it was brought ; and before I had well put it on 
 my finger I was asked for some money to compensate a 
 man for looking where I told him to. This spirit of treat- 
 ing a gentleman like a milch cow, to use Sir Walter Scott's 
 expression, is too common all through England, but espe- 
 cially in the country near Cambi'idge. It is said that an 
 
 wrote the following, which the Freshman placed in a gorgeous 
 frame, and hung up in his room : 
 
 " I hereby certify that Mr. F. is at liberty to have his dirty 
 linen washed by any laundress lie pleases. 
 
 (Signed) " ."
 
 226 On the Cam. 
 
 undergraduate, out on a walk, saw a small child tumble 
 into one of the deep, wide, and slippery ditches that stag- 
 nate all round Cambridge. At the risk of his life, he 
 fished it out, took it home to its mother, who overwhelmed 
 him with blessings, and went back to college, like Dr. 
 Holmes's clerk, " with a glow in his heart and a cold in 
 his head." The next day enter the child's father, full of 
 the most profuse and choice benedictions. The student 
 stopped the flood, assured him he wanted nothing said 
 about it, and was rejoiced the child was safe. The father, 
 instead of moving away, pulled his forelock again, and 
 observed, in the inimitable Cambridge grunt, " Haven't 
 you got half-a-crown, sir, for a poor man to drink your 
 honour's health in ?" 
 
 I fear I have failed to describe accurately this system of 
 extortion and small presents going on all the time at the 
 University ; it will probably appear to you a very trifling 
 matter. But if you consider that it is universally prac- 
 tised, that some sixty or seventy persons, much more 
 intimately and indissolubly connected with the college than 
 yourself, are interested in keeping it up, that you are 
 dependent on them for a great variety of services, and that 
 these services, and the extortions they lead to, are made 
 almost absolutely necessary by a rigid chain of custom, 
 drawn round you by the force of centuries of tradition, 
 that if you want the slightest variation, anything done in 
 your own way, you must have a hand-to-hand fight for it, 
 on each separate occasion, you will see that there is a 
 never-ending outrage on that feeling of pure independence 
 which a young man in America so thoroughly enjoys. The 
 life at Cambridge is like walking in a great and elegantly 
 kept park or pleasure-ground. You may see and smell 
 the flowers, but you cannot pick any of them ; the foun- 
 tain will play, but only just so, and at such times. You 
 must only walk on the paths, or, perchance, must submit 
 to be taken the grand round, from which you cannot de- 
 viate ; so that, after getting through all the countless
 
 On the Cam. 227 
 
 wonders and glories, you long for a ramble through a 
 tangled forest, or a scour over a breezy heath, or a lounge 
 by some wild-wood brook, where the beauties are infinitely 
 less varied, less rare, less elegant, but where you are free 
 to enjoy everything your own way. 
 
 I pass from this annoyance, which is soon lessened by 
 use, and the really delightful character of the University 
 life, to another much more serious trouble, the expense 
 of living at an English University. I have explained that 
 there is at Cambridge a large class of young men, not at 
 all engaged or supposed to be engaged in study or compe- 
 tition for rank, whose time, for almost the whole of their 
 University career, is wholly at their own disposal, but who 
 are obliged, like all the other students, to pass their time 
 in Cambridge. There is no restraint on their indulging 
 in any sort of luxury. They can have the most costly 
 dinners and suppers, by virtue of a tutor's order, from the 
 College kitchens, they can keep horses at the College 
 stables, where many of the fellows keep theirs, they are 
 only sixteen miles from Newmarket heath, where there are 
 more races in the course of the year than at any ten other 
 places put together. They have therefore every temptation 
 and every opportunity to exercise freely all the most ex- 
 pensive tastes, and have not the opportunity to indulge 
 them in the metropolis, or anywhere but in Cambridge 
 itself. They are the sons of the richest men in England, 
 noblemen, country gentlemen, rich merchants, who send 
 them there to live, not expecting, perhaps not wishing 
 them to study, and indulging them in every sort of luxury. 
 Their leaders are a few noblemen, young men of indepen- 
 dent fortune, or the eldest sons of such, who have no motive 
 for economy of any kind. These have a sort of right to 
 spend money freely. They set the fashion for those of 
 kindred tastes who are dependent on their parents. There 
 is thus formed a considerable set in the University, none 
 of whom spend less than four hundred pounds a year, and 
 so on up to one thousand, or even more. All this great
 
 228 On the Cam. 
 
 expenditure, not at home, not in London, but in the very 
 heart, the daily life of the University, raises the standard 
 of Cambridge expenses immensely. The young men who 
 merely wish to live a respectable, comfortable life, tind the 
 price of their respectable comforts very much raised by the 
 concomitant demand for luxuries, and by the necessity the 
 tradesmen are under of making up for the bad debts of 
 these gay young noblemen and gentlemen. For this 
 system of very extensive orders in all the departments of 
 elegance has created a corresponding system of credit. 
 It is all very well to make a resolution to pay ready 
 money, but it is very difficult, when you want in a hurry a 
 new text-book, or a pound of coffee or sugar, or to replace 
 a broken teacup, or to hire half a dozen forks and spoons 
 for a dinner, to pay down, when you find that any wish 
 can be supplied at once on credit. Moreover, almost all the 
 tradesmen are obliged to send their bill to the tutor for his 
 inspection, if not paid on the spot, and all under a certain 
 amount are paid through him, and put down on his account 
 together with the items as legitimate college expenses.* 
 This is a great temptation to expenditure, as the students 
 know that the authorities at home will not refuse to pay 
 what appears on the tutor's account. And so, one thing 
 with another, the standard of expense is raised beyond 
 measure. Englishmen are not an economical race. They 
 can live in great straits, many of them habitually do, 
 but an English gentleman who allows himself any luxury 
 or comfort at all must have it of the very best. The 
 result of it is that at the University the beneficiaries live 
 in extremely modest style, their needs are supplied by the 
 college, and in return they are restricted from certain 
 other expenditures. They work all the time in college, in 
 the hope of a fellowship or similar assistance at the end. 
 
 * Not necessarily ; a man mav have all his bills sent in to him- 
 self if he likes: we personally never had a tradesman's bill paid 
 through the tutor. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 229 
 
 All those who rise above this very reduced standard are 
 obliged to spend more for every article than it is worth, 
 more than even London prices, and constantly be in the 
 position of renouncing their natural associates, or just 
 keeping on the verge of debt. For the necessity in all 
 the college sets of giving entertainments, joining clubs, 
 fec, to which you are driven by the immense esprit de 
 corps and love of good-fellowship that exists among 
 English young men, and for which there is so much more 
 licensed opportunity than here, makes it impossible for 
 one to live modestly and by himself unless he sinks to a 
 mere anchorite or eleemosynary. 
 
 I do not think the undergraduates themselves are con- 
 scious of this. I do not doubt that many of them, if they 
 heard me, would reclaim indignantly against the exagge- 
 rated picture I have drawn of the necessity of living hand- 
 somely. But I think their fathers would agree with me.* 
 I have mentioned the advantage the young noblemen 
 and sons of noblemen have over the others in the matter 
 of expenditure. I shall probably be asked if they have 
 not a very great advantage over all the others in every 
 way, if there is not a perfectly revolting system of 
 toadying and courting them, if they are not allowed all 
 manner of liberties not accorded to the others. I answer, 
 certainly not to the extent supposed here. The general 
 opinion of Americans as to the exaltation accorded to the 
 nobility in England is perhaps not exaggerated, but it 
 supposes them exalted in a very different way from what 
 they actually are. In general, they are important, not 
 from their rank, but their wealth, and the hereditary aris- 
 tocracy continues to be an important part of the governing 
 power, because it is a moneyed and a lauded aristocracy, 
 an elevation, I fancy, not peculiar to England. But this 
 is in general. With regard to the position of the young 
 nobility at school and college, let us go a little deeper. 
 
 * See further in the Appendix to this book.
 
 230 On the Cam. 
 
 And in the first place, at the great public schools, at Eton 
 and Harrow, a hoy of noble birth, even though he were 
 a duke, is treated exactly like another. If bright and 
 handsome he is petted, if stupid he is laughed at, if 
 unruly he is whipped, if insolent he is kicked. There is 
 a story told in diiferent terms of a great many scions of 
 aristocracy, among others of the late Lord Aberdeen, on 
 their first entrance at school. The fullest form is that a 
 hoy, who had always been petted at home, and at some 
 foolish private school, soon after arriving at Eton, heard a 
 gruff voice shouting the usual question, " I say, you new 
 
 fellow, what's your name ?" " Lord John H , son 
 
 of the Marquis of B ." " O, indeed, then there's one 
 
 kick for my lord and two for the marquis." In other 
 words, there is no difference made between the young lords 
 and the young louts ; very often the two are identical. At 
 the University, there is not this absolute equality among 
 the young men. The young noblemen are at once selected 
 for certain clubs, but I do not know that they are more 
 certainly selected than others of equal wealth and equal 
 notoriety. The son of a man distinguished in any way is 
 always eagerly looked out for at the University, and at 
 once adopted into whatever circle seems best suited to him, 
 whether his father's distinction is a peerage or not. As 
 far as I could see, a good deal of attention was shown to 
 the young nobility, but no unusual deference ; and the 
 extra notice was very soon forfeited, unless it continued to 
 he deserved by personal qualities. The noblemen derive a 
 little additional favour from the authorities, some of them 
 of specially high rank are obliged to pay the extra fees 
 and sit at the high table, this brings them naturally into 
 the acquaintance of the fellows, dining with them everyday.* 
 
 * The sound sense and keen observation evinced by these re- 
 marks must astonish every public school and University man who 
 reflects upon the limited period of Mr. Everett's residence in 
 England. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 231 
 
 I have no doubt that they, in common with all the fellow- 
 commoners who avail themselves of this expensive privilege, 
 are treated more leniently in respect to chapels and lec- 
 tures. Sometimes, if a young nobleman of very high rank 
 becomes a member of the college, there are seen peculiar 
 evidences of affection, but chiefly on the part of a few fel- 
 lows, despised by their associates and inferiors. 
 
 The following story was told as happening while I was 
 in college, of one of the proctors. He met two young 
 men without caps and gowns one evening, and put the 
 usual question to one of them, " Your name and college, 
 Sir, please." " The Duke of - "I beg your 
 
 Grace's pardon," interrupting him, " good night." This 
 was told me in the presence of the Duke's companion, and 
 he confirmed it. It is just one of those things which a 
 servile man might do in any country, and which tells no- 
 thing of the University one way or the other. I am in- 
 clined to think that the proctor recognized the Duke when 
 he heard his name, and let him off, as he might any 
 young man he knew personally to be of regular habits. 
 The tradesmen, of course, pay intense court, and show 
 intense favour to the nobility. I got out from the train 
 once at Cambridge, in company with a young nobleman, 
 carrying our bags, if I remember rightly. At the door of 
 the station is always a great concourse of omnibuses and 
 flies, as hackney carriages are called in the country. Ordi- 
 narily the drivers are content with standing and calling, 
 " Fly, Sir," This way, Sir," " Trinity College," " Lion 
 Hotel," " St. John's C ollege," &c. &c. On this occasion, 
 however, the rush to secure the nobleman was terrific, 
 significant whispers round among the flymen, " It's Lord 
 
 H , Lord H ," for his face was well known. 
 
 " This way, my Lord, here, my Lord, does your Lordship 
 want a fly ?" &c. &c. It is a good thing, by the way, for 
 Americans travelling in England to remember that a gen- 
 tleman, after the first introduction, never says, " My Lord," 
 or, Your Lordship," or, indeed, " Sir," except to a person
 
 232 On the Cam. 
 
 of royal blood. But the servants and tradesmen " My 
 Lord" the unfortunate noblemen all the time ; they over- 
 whelm them with attentions, and make them pay most awful 
 prices. I remember once dining with a young nobleman of 
 high rank at a restaurant, and he asked my permission to 
 order the dinner in my name, as the announcement of his 
 own rank would have subjected him to the greatest annoy- 
 ance under the name of attentions. 
 
 I do not think, therefore, that any gentleman need fear 
 competition with the proudest peer of England at the Uni- 
 versity. In particular, an American is with Englishmen 
 so much more of a lion than any countryman that he need 
 never fear that he will be in obscurity. 
 
 But if in society the great man does not lord it over the 
 average man, he does in i-espect to study. The system I 
 was at such pains to explain, dispensing with a fixed course, 
 with daily recitations, with a current scale of rank, de- 
 pending for instruction entirely on private tuition, and for 
 stimulus on examinations at long intervals, is admirably 
 calculated to make a select body of distinguished scholars, 
 but is not nearly as well adapted for the cultivation of 
 average intellects. In the first place, the examinations are 
 made of exceeding difficulty, difficult even for the very best. 
 In the mathematics, for instance, are certain papers of ques- 
 tions called problems, which are not at all what we mean 
 by problems, but are new developments of the principles 
 contained in the books already, and may require for their 
 solution eight or ten different branches of mathematics all 
 at once. To do one third of the problems in the last 
 papers of an examination is a very rare achievement, and 
 to do a single one correctly will often put a candidate many 
 places higher than he would have been without it. 
 
 It is plain that these papers are exceedingly discou- 
 raging to inferior minds. Then the stimulus, though very 
 intense for the superior scholars, is very small for a man 
 of moderate powers ; what he wants is a constant stimulus, 
 a daily stimulus, little successes day by day, a good reci-
 
 On the Cam. 233 
 
 tation here, a neat exercise there, to keep him along and 
 mark his improvement ; he cannot bring himself to the 
 lofty point of resolution which will work unflinchingly for 
 a prize three years oif. 
 
 Then the system of instruction, giving an hour at a 
 time to each individual pupil, manifestly comes hard on the 
 inferiors, who want the excitement and assistance of ten 
 or a dozen in the same predicament, and who cannot do 
 enough, nor do it well enough, to make it worth while for 
 a distinguished teacher to be spending his time on them, 
 when he might be giving it to a first-rate scholar. The 
 rewards and incentives are not for them. At the largest 
 and richest college there are about thirteen scholarships, 
 and four fellowships in every year, manifestly unattainable 
 by the good young man of faithfulness, but of no great 
 ability, who expects to be about twentieth with hard work- 
 Nobody encourages him, nobody helps him, nobody in- 
 structs him, nobody talks about him. He must get his 
 lessons alone, with no friend among the authorities to ex- 
 plain his little difficulties, to go over his little points, to 
 answer his little questions, things insignificant in them- 
 selves, doubtless, but very great and real to him. They 
 are all occupied with the wranglers, and the first class in 
 classics, and the University scholars, and the Senior medal- 
 list. Yet he wants to learn, he loves to study, he delights 
 to cheer his parents with a little success at college ; but 
 all he can do in the headlong, furious competition is just to 
 fail of the second class in the college examination ; and as 
 he rather looked forward to a first, a friend sees him and 
 says, " I tell you what, Jones, a man as strong as you ought 
 to row, he oughtn't to undertake to read." In this way, 
 many a young man has absolutely been driven to make 
 boating or cricketing his regular occupation, because there 
 he can excel, and consequently will find attention and en- 
 couragement, while in the studies that he is perfectly wil- 
 ling to pursue, everybody is concerned with the great men 
 whom he has neither the power nor the wish to emulate,
 
 234 On the Cam. 
 
 and who are entirely able to take care of themselves, and 
 nobody is ready to take daily care of him, which might 
 make a much better scholar of him, poor as he is.* 
 
 And this is true, not only in the means, but in the ob- 
 jects of study. The concentration of the interest at Cam- 
 bridge on a few branches only, and even when these are 
 counted as many as possible, the pains taken to secure 
 proficients in each by itself, is wholly inimical to bestowing 
 general information. It is not true that there is no provi- 
 sion for any but a few old-world studies. There are pro- 
 fessors in almost every department of knowledge, except 
 the modern languages and, curiously enough, Latin. And 
 there is an examination not only in Classics and Mathe- 
 matics, but in Natural Science, in Moral Science, including 
 History and Political Philosophy, in Law, and in Theology. 
 But whoever studies any of those is expected to devote him- 
 self to it altogether. The double men, as they are called, 
 men, that is, who enter the competition in two or more de- 
 partments, are getting fewer and fewer every year, and are 
 always discouraged from attempting so much by their 
 guardians and instructors. 
 
 The defence of this system is obvious. It is said they 
 want to make fine scholars in each branch, not superficial 
 jacks-of-all-trades. Very well ; but how if a man cannot 
 be a first-rate scholar in any one branch ? How if his 
 mind is essentially superficial and mediocre ? AVhich is 
 better, that in the vain struggle to be first or second in one 
 subject, he should end by being thirtieth, or that he should 
 be encouraged to take a good position in several subjects, 
 and make up in width what he wants in depth ? How is 
 it in life? One great divine confines himself to the criti- 
 
 * A man of this calibre would be better off at one of the 
 smaller colleges : we could mention one or two where the autho- 
 rities take immense pains with honest, industrious, plodding men, 
 of moderate ability, encouraging them in the unequal race ; not 
 cruelly exciting hopes which can never be realized, but telling them 
 what they can do, and urging them to do it. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 235 
 
 cism of the Scriptures, another is the first of pulpit 
 orators, and a third lives in the love of thousands, and 
 dies in the odour of sanctity from his marvellous gifts as 
 a parish pastor, without either depth of knowledge or power 
 of oratory. But the ordinary, the average minister of the 
 Gospel, is content with what his powers allow him ; he can 
 solve the ordinary difficulties of the Bible, without attack- 
 ing its higher problems, he can preach an interesting, not 
 an amazing sermon, and he can be loved by his parishioners 
 without being idolized. It is the same in law and in medi- 
 cine. The great lights elaborate a single specialty, the 
 average men know a little of everything, because they can- 
 not know more than a little of anything. Therefore I think 
 the plan pursued at our colleges of giving the inferior minds 
 a chance to gain all the knowledge they can, be it wide and 
 superficial, or narrow and deep, is well, and I am con- 
 scious that many a young man in England feels the want 
 of a general course, where his attention shall be attracted 
 to as much as he can master of all valuable branches at 
 once, without being forced to make a selection of some 
 one, for which, perhaps, he cares no more than for any 
 other, and strain his mind in the vain effort to reach an im- 
 possible elevation. 
 
 There are other faults at an English University, which 
 you would come across every day if you lived there, but 
 which it is rather difficult to describe to a foreign audience ; 
 but I believe these three are the main ones. First, the 
 want of liberty, or rather independence, everything being 
 beset with a series of immemorial customs and vested 
 rights, often of indefensible extortions ; second, the great 
 expense, which, though not heeded by the richer, and not 
 encountered by the poorer students, comes very hard on 
 the average, or rather on their parents ; and third, the 
 constant preference shown to those of superior ability, to 
 such an extent as to prevent those of more moderate intel- 
 lect from gaining that superficial but wide stock of inform- 
 ation, which is all they can master and all they will need.
 
 236 On the Cam. 
 
 Let us devote a few minutes to the consideration of how 
 these faults are accounted for and whence they originate. 
 
 The first, the supremacy of custom, is a natural result 
 from the constitution of the place. The English Univer- 
 sities are shut up, isolated, their members do not mix 
 much with the world; in their long vacations they lay 
 aside their University completely, in their term time they 
 equally forget all that is outside. Hence they run natu- 
 rally into the same rut, they have no outer influences to 
 suggest new ways. Each new set on entering is com- 
 pletely swallowed up by the much greater number it finds 
 there, and in the case of a University six hundred years 
 old, everything gets as solid and unchanged as the pyra- 
 mids. The various servants, fees, &c, originally ap- 
 pointed, it is likely, for some specific occasion at some 
 peculiar epoch, became rooted and could not be pulled up. 
 I do not think they would deny this themselves. How it 
 all began they cannot tell, it was before their memory, 
 they found it so, and whatever is, is right. 
 
 The second and third faults, I think, are to be attri- 
 buted to the state of England. England is a rich country, 
 an expensive country, and an over-stocked country. The 
 poorer classes are very poor, and they have no very great 
 ambition to rise above their poverty ; millions live con- 
 tented from year to year in a state that no American will 
 voluntarily submit to. But this state once past there is a 
 tendency growing rapidly to live in great comfort, and 
 have everything of the best. This may be seen in the 
 country. There are there no small compact gentlemen's 
 houses of a dozen rooms and an acre and a-half of ground 
 about them, surrounded by a dozen more, inhabited by his 
 tradesmen, of much the same size and appointments. 
 There are palaces and hovels. It is only when some 
 truly wise proprietor forces his tenant labourers into bet- 
 ter houses, or in the great manufacturing towns, where 
 the liberating influences of commerce and manufactures 
 are forcing a juster style of living on the people, that you 
 see a mode of life that is neither poverty nor luxury, but
 
 On the Cam. 237 
 
 true decency. But England generally is a very expensive 
 country, and the Universities being frequented by those 
 brought up in the most expensive tastes, and with the 
 means to gratify them, carry the national peculiarity to 
 exaggeration. Cambridge only represents England in 
 giving you the power of scraping or the power of spend- 
 ing, but not the power of economizing.* 
 
 And so with the third fault, the difficulties in the 
 way of the average man. England is not a country for 
 average men ; every profession is over-stocked, and the 
 only chance is for the man of superior agility and address 
 to climb to a lofty position over the heads of a hundred 
 others. They do need a race of scholars and special- 
 ists. There is a place in such a large and crowded popu- 
 lation for leaders in every department, be it the study of the 
 Greek propositions or the development of the lemniscate 
 curve. But they do not want any man of average intel- 
 lect, who knows a little of everything. There is no call, 
 as there is in our western country, for a man to go out 
 prepared to be a lawyer, a lecturer, a member of Congress, 
 a president of an insurance company, and a deacon all at 
 once.f In every one of these departments they can find 
 twenty who have made it and it alone their specialty, and 
 therefore they will, as each new need occurs, fill it up in 
 the best manner. If Cambridge, therefore, were to seek 
 to educate the average man instead of the extraordinary 
 man, if, instead of giving all her attention to a senior clas- 
 sic who can't solve a simple equation, and a third wrangler 
 who doesn't know the veins from the arteries, she drew up 
 a careful course of study, wherein every student should in 
 one week recite in Greek, Latin, mathematics, chemistry, 
 rhetoric and French, she would simply be producing what 
 
 * There seems to us to be exaggeration in all this. Scores of 
 men manage to spend their time at college in respectable comfort, 
 without meanness or extravagance. But it is impossible quite to 
 understand a foreigner's standard of such matters. ED. 
 
 f We do not know what " call " there may be for such a genius, 
 but we do not believe that he answers in any country. ED.
 
 238 On the Cam. 
 
 there is no demand for, and neglecting what is loudly 
 called for every day. 
 
 Therefore, I think we bring it to this, that Cambridge, 
 although her system of instruction and her daily life are 
 peculiar, still cannot resist the natural influences of the 
 country in which she is placed. English of the English, 
 her students, when they enter, are as much Britons as 
 ever, and three, five, ten years' constant association with 
 their countrymen cannot make them less so. All the 
 water that is in Cam cannot wash their English blood out 
 of their body. 
 
 Nor should we wish it otherwise, for a great institution 
 like Cambridge is bound to consider the education of the 
 people as its first duty. If the scholars and philosophers 
 of Cambridge were ever so brilliant and so accurate in the 
 eyes of the world, and yet failed to prepare a set of men fit 
 to take their part in the daily work of England, they would 
 soon cease to be intrusted with the cai'e of young English- 
 men, and so go to decay. It is thus that the great Uni- 
 versities of Italy and Spain decayed, because, with all the 
 instruction they gave in all branches of learning, their 
 members shut themselves up from the world, their country. 
 They thought of medicine, not of Italy ; of theology, not 
 of Spain. But the opposite of this, the feeling of each 
 and all that in their academic retirement they belonged to 
 their country, this it is which, on the contrary, makes 
 the German Universities the rallying grounds of liberal 
 principles in that tyrant-ridden country ; it is this that 
 makes Cambridge and Oxford the homes of generous, brave, 
 truthful Englishmen ; this that sent the sons of Harvard to 
 plead and die for the Union. 
 
 I propose, therefore, to devote the remaining lectures to 
 a consideration of the relations of Cambridge to England, 
 and some questions arising from them. There are two 
 aspects in which England may be regarded, its Church 
 and its State ; and as the Universities are most intimately 
 connected with the Church, I propose to make that connec- 
 tion the subject of my next lecture.
 
 XI. 
 
 RELATIONS OF CAMBRIDGE TO THE 
 ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Character of the Colleges. Attendance on Chapel 
 and other Religious Duties. Act o/1662. Theological Exa- 
 mination and other Requisites for Ordination. Parties in 
 the Church. Oxford the Seat of Extremists, Cambridge of 
 Broad- Church Divines. 
 
 EXTER this evening upon one of the most 
 difficult and important branches of my sub- 
 ject ; important, because the connection of 
 the Universities with the Church of Eng- 
 land is intimate and peculiar to a degree 
 that our theocratic fathers might have conceived, that 
 Jonathan Edwards might have appreciated, but which we 
 can scarcely realize ; and difficult, because the candid con- 
 sideration of any question where religious or ecclesiastical 
 questions are involved, never can be of that entirely in- 
 different and open nature to all persons, that is, the mere 
 description of life and studies and history. I wish, there- 
 fore, in this present lecture, particularly, not to be misun- 
 derstood. My feelings, personally, to the Church of 
 England and its ministers, are of an entirely friendly and 
 respectful nature. I might say, as Francis Higginson did,
 
 240 On the Cam. 
 
 that I am no separatist from her. Going to a University 
 where her influence was more deep-rooted and more wide- 
 spread than anywhere in the world, except at the sister Uni- 
 versity of Oxford ; going there with views avowedly as far 
 removed from the Church's Articles as a Christian's views 
 can be, I was uniformly treated, in my constant associa- 
 tion with actual or expectant divines of her communion, 
 with courtesy, with liberality, with kindness. She ap- 
 peared to me in the light of a truly Catholic Church. She 
 accepted as a test of fitness to her communion merely that 
 a man should profess and call himself a Christian ; and on 
 one occasion, when I was absolutely brought into collision 
 with a religious requirement, and stood out against it, the 
 consideration of all concerned was truly affecting. In all 
 I may say to-night, therefore, I desire to deprecate in 
 advance any thought of disrespect or unkindness. "What- 
 ever I have to reprehend in the ecclesiastical associations 
 of Cambridge, I do, because I believe it to be alien from 
 the true spirit of the Church that her Eidley died to found, 
 and her Tillotson in vain strove to purify. 
 
 There is, I think, a pretty general belief that the prin- 
 cipal colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were founded on 
 the basis of religious houses. This is hardly correct. On 
 the contrary, as I stated in my second lecture, they were 
 founded to give literary men a snug harbour without enter- 
 ing a convent. But in their institution a good deal was 
 borrowed from the monastic forms. This is shown, first, 
 in. the dress. The long-sleeved gown, of a different cut 
 from that of the burgher or the nobleman, and entirely be- 
 yond the tunic of the peasant ; the round, close-fitting cap, 
 covering the part bared by the tonsure ; the hood of fur or 
 silk, hanging down the back like a cowl, and perhaps at 
 first drawn over the head, all these, in their form, speak 
 of a clerical or monastic origin.* But the resemblance 
 
 * The bachelor's hood hns a long purse at the bottom of it, for 
 the reception of the mediaeval coppers of the charitable. ED.
 
 On the Cum. 241 
 
 which is merely in the outward show is nothing to the 
 evidently monastic character of the corporations them- 
 selves. The fellows of the colleges are, according to the 
 old constitutions, only another kind of monks. They are 
 interdicted from marrying ; and they are obliged, after 
 holding their fellowships for a certain length of time, to 
 forfeit them, unless they take priest's orders in the Church 
 of England. It was thus clearly the design of the founders 
 of the colleges to afford a regular increase of the celibate 
 clergy. And the very character of the colleges is monastic. 
 They have their own chapel, and hall for dining ; their own 
 treasurer, steward, chaplains, and officers of every kind ; 
 the whole organization being clearly borrowed from that 
 of a convent, and recurring in their cloisters, gardens, but- 
 teries and kitchens, &c. This whole matter of the stu- 
 dents gathering into select bodies, governed by ecclesiastics 
 formerly of their own number, and having regular hours, 
 studies, and systems of discipline, is not found in Univer- 
 sities established in Europe since the monastic times, and 
 has existed, more or less, in our colleges, because the first 
 of them were founded by members of the English Univer- 
 sities at the time when the monastic institutions had scarcely 
 become extinct. 
 
 We start, then, with an essentially ecclesiastical con- 
 stitution of the colleges, the governing body, fellows and 
 masters, being all priests of the Church of England.* 
 Let us now see how far there is a constant religious or ec- 
 clesiastical influence brought to bear on the undergradu- 
 ates and Bachelors of Arts. 
 
 I cannot find that any subscription of the articles of the 
 Church of England was ever required on entrance into the 
 University of Cambridge. It was at Oxford, as is well 
 known to us by various jokes. That requirement, how- 
 
 * In some colleges, chiefly those where medicine or the civil 
 law is studied, the masters need not be clergymen; e. g. Caius 
 and Trinity Hall.
 
 242 On the Cam. 
 
 ever, has been recently repealed there as well. Any per- 
 son, whatever his religious views, is free to enter. Once 
 entered, the first question will be as to attending chapel. 
 The frequency and length of the chapel services will vary 
 at different colleges. At Trinity, there are three services 
 on Sunday, and two every week-day, making fifteen in all. 
 Of these, every undergraduate is nominally required to at- 
 tend eight ; that is, a little more than half, of which two 
 must be on Sunday ; but this eight really means six, and, 
 to all above the rank of freshman, five. Many keep, as it 
 is called, four and five in alternate weeks, getting a repri- 
 mand for four ; then five the next week, to avoid a second 
 censure ; then four again, and so on. The service is, of 
 course, that of the Church of England. Every day, 
 Morning and Evening Prayer; Sundays, Wednesdays, 
 and Fridays, the Litany, in addition ; on Sundays and 
 Saints' Days, the Ante-Communion service ; and on Sun- 
 days only, a sermon. At some colleges, the service of 
 Morning Prayer is omitted on the Litany days. The re- 
 quirement to attend these services extends to all students, 
 whatever their religious views may be. Everybody in 
 England is supposed to belong to the Church of England. 
 By the present laws a dissenter is allowed to worship else- 
 where, if he will ; but he cannot be excused from attend- 
 ance at the required services if he comes to college. In 
 my time, considerable excitement was caused by the son of 
 a rich Jewish banker, who came to Trinity, and sought to 
 be excused from attending chapel ; but it was peremptorily 
 insisted on. He ascertained, however, that at Christ's 
 College they were not so strict ; and threatened to mi- 
 grate. Whereat he was allowed to stay in Trinity, and 
 the obnoxious requirement relaxed. But no Christian 
 dissenter, Protestant or Catholic, can be exempted. Also, 
 you will observe that there is no distinction made between 
 college chapel services and church on Sunday. And as 
 the services are exactly the same, there is no reason why 
 there should be. If any one prefers to hear the sermons
 
 On the Cam. 243 
 
 in one of the parish churches, he can ; but he must do it 
 so as to be present also at all required services in the col- 
 lege chapel. Generally, no one would prefer it: the 
 preaching in those of the college chapels, where there is 
 preaching, is generally far superior to any in the town. 
 
 The one required service from which nobody can exempt 
 himself is the Trinity, and I believe in several other col- 
 leges, that on Sunday evening, and on this occasion the 
 chapel is crammed full ; the five hundred and odd under- 
 graduates, and sixty or seventy graduates, being swelled 
 by a crowd of ladies and gentlemen of the vicinity, who 
 have secured admission to hear the splendid choral service, 
 which is, I own, very well-performed and interesting. 
 
 This attendance of five or six chapels a week is all an 
 undergraduate will hear on the subject in the first year or 
 two of his college course. But let us suppose he is intel- 
 ligent or fortunate enough to get a foundation scholar- 
 ship. In this case he will be required to do in Trinity 
 what he would at any rate in some other colleges, scholar 
 or not, namely, to read the chapters, or lessons as they 
 are called, from the Bible, in the chapel services. Two 
 scholars are detailed for this purpose every week, who are 
 required either to read themselves, or get substitutes. They 
 will take their places at the end of the scholars' seats, 
 close to a reading-desk, corresponding to the one where 
 the chaplain conducts the rest of the service. They are 
 required, when delegated to read the lessons, to wear sur- 
 plices, though everybody else but the chaplain wears the 
 ordinary gown. In general the scholars are interested in 
 the lessons, and do not avoid the work, except that it is 
 sometimes very disagreeable to turn out to read at morn- 
 ing chapel, when you wouldn't be otherwise obliged to go. 
 I ought, by the way, to have made it more clear before, 
 that morning chapel is at seven all the year round, and 
 evening at six. On Sundays, morning services at eight and 
 eleven, evening at six and a quarter, which is also the hour 
 for evening chapel on Saturdays, Saints' Days and their eves.
 
 244 On the Cam. 
 
 This applies to Trinity, but nearly every college has its 
 own hours for chapel, and by good management one can 
 go to six or seven different services on Sunday, if he wish. 
 But to return to the requirements on the scholars. They 
 are obliged to keep six chapels every week, on pain of losing 
 their week as it is called, and so the term, an operation 
 explained in my sixth lecture, and if they can bring 
 themselves to eight services a week, they are rewarded in 
 a peculiar way by having no charge made in that week for 
 their dinner in hall, which reminds one of the little boy 
 iu "Jane Eyre" that received two ginger nuts for his 
 piety, and makes every chapel worth a little less than two 
 shillings to them. 
 
 But this is not all. The two scholars who read the les- 
 sons of the Bible every week have another duty to per- 
 form ; namely, to read the Latin grace after meat for the 
 fellows' table. Long after the scholars themselves have 
 finished their dinner and gone out ; long after the under- 
 graduates have equally concluded, and about as soon as the 
 Bachelors of Arts have ended, the steady gorging which 
 has been kept up at the high table for three-quarters of 
 an hour, comes to an end. The fellows at last are ready 
 to retire to what is called the combination room. This is 
 a handsome room, where all meetings of the fellows are 
 held, as well those for fruit and wine after dinner, as for in- 
 flicting punishment and praise on their subjects. The old, 
 white-headed porter, looking through the door, sees the 
 equally white-headed waiter raise his hand from the vicin- 
 ity of the table, with a paper in it. He signals accordingly 
 to the two scholars, who have all this time been kept from 
 their wine parties, their newspapers, their everything. 
 They walk in, and the fellows rise. The waiter hands to 
 one scholar the paper he used to signal with, which con- 
 tains the Latin Grace printed. It is truly a portentous 
 document. The first scholar, or primo basso, reads the as- 
 cription to the Trinity; then eightsentencesofgeneralprai.se 
 and thanksgiving are read by the two alternately, and the
 
 On the Cam. 245 
 
 primo basso ends with three long prayers, one of thanks for 
 the dinner he has not eaten, one of thanks for the 
 founders of the college, which, I presume, was origin- 
 ally a prayer for their souls, and one for the Queen, Eoyal 
 family, and whole Church ; and then the scholars quit the 
 hall as fast as possible. This duty, coming in just as 
 everybody wants to be about his own business, is exces- 
 sively tedious, and is shirked in every possible way. In 
 the long vacation, the two scholars never are both present, 
 it being justly thought a pampering of the fellows to treat 
 them to a responsive grace in vacation ; and not un- 
 frequently both are absent. In this case, the porter at the 
 door replies to the waiter's signal by a shake of the head. 
 The absence of scholars is communicated to the presiding 
 fellow, who rises and returns thanks, literally in two 
 words, " Benedicto Benedicatur, " as a substitute for the 
 long grace of ordinary days. 
 
 Eepeated negligence to read grace on the part of the 
 delegated scholars is punished by discommonsing, or de- 
 priving the undergraduate of all supplies of food and 
 drink from the college, till repentance or softening on 
 either side. I believe technically any tradesman in the 
 town supplying him with food might be severely punished 
 also, but the expense would be quite enough. 
 
 We have now followed our undergraduate till he takes 
 his Bachelor's degree. This formerly involved signing 
 the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, that is, renouncing 
 all authority over the English Church of any but the 
 Queen, and a declaration that the candidate for B.A. 
 was a bond fide member of that Church. This of course 
 prevented all foreigners and dissenters from taking a 
 degree, though they might pass the examination. Mr. 
 Sylvester, recently elected to the French Institute, In- 
 structor in Mathematics at the Eoyal Military Academy 
 of Woolwich, and formerly in the University of Virginia, 
 at Charlottesville, universally acknowledged one of the 
 first mathematicians in the world, was second wrangler in
 
 246 On the Cam. 
 
 1837, but could not take his degree of Bachelor of Arts 
 because he was a Jew. But in the year 1858, I think, 
 this requirement was removed, and now the bachelor's de- 
 gree may be taken at either University without subscrip- 
 tion or oath. 
 
 Our undergraduate, then, has taken his degree, and 
 is a Bachelor of Arts. "NVhat are his relations to the 
 Church, and to religious exercises ? Ordinarily speaking, 
 although he is by no means wholly a freeman, although 
 for the next three years the University exercises certain 
 restraints upon him, yet they are not of a religious cha- 
 racter. If, however, he is a scholar, for the scholarships 
 are held till the master's degree is taken, he has still 
 some concern with them. He has now to read the lessons 
 in chapel on Saturday evening, and on Sunday. This he 
 does, not by regular rotation, but purely by accident. The 
 bachelor scholar, who at these services happens to occupy 
 the end seat, goes up and reads. In connection with this, 
 I was once placed in an awkward position. The large 
 Bible is always open on the reading-desk, and plenty of 
 small hand Bibles are scattered about the seats. I was too 
 near-sighted to distinguish the letters in the great Bible, 
 without bending down in a painful way, so generally used 
 to take up a little one from the seat. On one occasion, 
 I found myself elected by chance to read, and all the little 
 Bibles had got carried off. It was rather awkward, as no 
 other scholar was sitting near to take my place. The 
 chapter was the familiar one 2 Cor. iv. I went up, got 
 one or two glimpses at the big Bible, and repeated the 
 rest of the chapter from memory, rather a dangerous 
 experiment. 
 
 The bachelor scholar naturally competes for a fellow- 
 ship. He may be a successful candidate for this, and 
 there is nothing in the college statutes requiring him to 
 sign anything in the way of a religious test, nor is there 
 in the rules' of the University. But here come in the acts 
 of Parliament, the old acts of uniformity, and the first col-
 
 On the Cam. 247 
 
 lision of freedom of thought and the requirements of the 
 Church. 
 
 When the rule was rescinded, obliging Bachelors of 
 Arts to declare themselves members of the Church, the 
 question came, what shall be the position of the Masters of 
 Arts ? The Masters of Arts have the government of the 
 University, they choose the Vice-Chancellor, Professors, 
 Proctors, and all other University officers, and the mem- 
 bers of Parliament who represent the University. They 
 have two bodies, a Council and a Senate, wherein their 
 affairs are decided, and a number of committees, called 
 syndicates, on the library, museums, branches of study, 
 &c. The moment a man is a Master of Arts, and entitled 
 to wear the full-sleeved black gown and tall hat, he is 
 exempted from all restraints whatsoever, can appear with 
 or without his academic dress at all times, and is eligible 
 to University offices. 
 
 The question then arose, whether all these rights, which 
 are in Cambridge and Oxford very considerable, should be 
 bestowed on all religious professions alike. It was finally 
 decided that at Cambridge a dissenter from the Church 
 of England might take his master's degree as a non-de- 
 clarant, that is, without the declaration that he belonged 
 to the Church ; this would exempt him from all academic 
 restraints, give him the right to wear the M.A. dress, 
 and make him, I believe, eligible to all offices to which it 
 was merely specified that an M.A. should be chosen. If, 
 however, he desired to be a member of the Senate, that is, 
 the great ruling body of the University, to vote at elections 
 and meetings, and have a share in the government, he must 
 declare, he must sign the declaration, that he was bond fide 
 u member of the Church of England. And here comes in the 
 collision. By the college statutes, a person chosen a fellow 
 must proceed in due course to his M.A. degree. The 
 majority of graduates are content as here with their first 
 degree, and go no further. But a person chosen fellow 
 cannot remain a Bachelor of Arts all his life, he must
 
 248 On the Cam. 
 
 qualify himself to assist in controlling the college and 
 University. And the University insists, that when a fellow 
 becomes an M.A. it must be as a member of the Senate, a 
 declarant. And this it does in virtue of the bloody Art 
 of Uniformity in 1662 ; the act that turned two thousand 
 non -conformist ministers of the Gospel out of their parishes. 
 Before that act. quantities of fellowships had been held in 
 all colleges, and both Universities, by persons who never 
 had sworn allegiance to the Church of England. But this 
 act prescribed that every person engaged in any office of 
 teaching or preaching, public or private, must conform 
 bond fide to the Church of England, by signing this decla- 
 ration. It literally included all classes engaged in reli- 
 gious or secular instruction, from the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury and the Master of Trinity, to the poorest curate in 
 Westmoreland, and the humblest private tutor or grammar- 
 school master ! The provisions of this sweeping act were 
 one by one softened, but no power has yet prevailed to 
 remove the requirement that fellows of a college in Oxford 
 or Cambridge should declare themselves members of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 You may suppose that this declaration is signed by many 
 who have the slightest possible regard for the Church of 
 England. Indeed, I was told that Lord Loughborough, 
 who, as Chancellor of England and Keeper of the King's 
 Conscience, ought to understand the matter, put a purely 
 negative interpretation on the whole matter. A young 
 relative of his entering Oxford, wrote to protest against 
 his being obliged to sign the thirty-nine articles. " O," 
 wrote back the Chancellor, " it isn't supposed that you be- 
 lieve them, it is only a pledge that you don't hold to any 
 other of the world's superstitions." I should think that 
 the Chancellor's explanation was very commonly received 
 in England. A tremendous effort was made to get this 
 requirement removed, as to the fellows, in the last year or 
 two, but it failed. 
 
 I have already said that by the old constitution of the
 
 On the Cam. 249 
 
 University, the fellows in most of the colleges were obliged 
 to take priest's orders in the Church of England, or for- 
 feit their fellowships after a certain length of time. This 
 has been, in many of the colleges, extensively modified ; 
 particularly in Trinity it has been determined, that a 
 fellow who takes part in the active instruction of the col- 
 lege for ten years, may retain his fellowship for life, or 
 till marriage, and yet remain a layman. 
 
 The lessons in the chapel on Saints' Days are read by 
 the fellows, and, in certain cases, by the head of the col- 
 lege ; so also the grace before meat every day in the hall. 
 
 It is peculiar, by the way, the history of this require- 
 ment as to the celibacy of the members of the college cor- 
 porations. In some colleges it is wholly broken up, and 
 the fellows may marry ; in others, any fellow who is chosen 
 to a University office as well, such as professor, or libra- 
 rian, may marry, and retain his fellowship. The story is 
 told of a college Bellow, who settled down in a country 
 parish, married, and never told anybody of it ; so that the 
 emoluments of his fellowship, which he by rights forfeited 
 at his marriage, continued to be paid him ; and the first the 
 college heard of there being anything wrong, was by re- 
 ceiving a letter from his widow, hoping that they would con- 
 tinue to her the little annuity they had so kindly paid her re- 
 cently deceased husband. 
 
 There is another motive for the fellows entering the min- 
 istry of the Church of England. All the colleges at Oxford 
 and Cambridge were endowed by their founders and subse- 
 quent benefactors with the right of presenting clergymen to 
 livings and benefices all over the country. The general 
 course of things, therefore, for the fellow of a college is to 
 wait till the incumbent of some parish in the gift of the 
 college dies, then resign his fellowship, step in, and settle 
 down as a parish minister for life, or until he gets a better 
 living or a bishopric. Many of the fellows become engaged 
 to be married on the chances of a college living falling- 
 vacant. Some atrocious instances are known of fellows,
 
 250 On the Cam. 
 
 wholly unfit to instruct, holding on and on, keeping their 
 undergraduates waiting for their fellowships, and their in- 
 tendeds for their hands, because the old clergyman will not 
 die, that holds that rich living they are waiting for.* 
 
 This terminates, I believe, the first part of my subject ; 
 namely, the immediate connection of the University with 
 the religious establishment of England. The next point to 
 be considered is the position it occupies as a training school 
 for clergymen of the Established Church. 
 
 Formerly, the Universities, Oxford, Cambridge, and 
 Dublin, had a monopoly of candidates for holy orders. It 
 was necessary to be a graduate of one of them to receive 
 Episcopal ordination, unless in very peculiar cases. It 
 was to afford young men, especially from the North, a 
 cheaper, yet equally legitimate passage to the Church, that 
 the University of Durham was established. Of late, how- 
 ever, this privilege is removed ; and the bishops are au- 
 thorized to admit to holy orders persons who, though not 
 University men, yet appear, on scrutiny by the examining 
 chaplains, to be well educated, or. as the phrase is, " literate 
 persons." The term " literate " is easily corrupted, in the 
 mouths of University men, into another, not quite so com- 
 plimentary^ but more often true. 
 
 But still the majority of young men who seek to become 
 ministers of the Church of England, enter one of the Uni- 
 versities. Formerly, the only divinity instruction was that 
 given by the lectures of the divinity professors, and by a 
 little Greek Testament, and other theological branches in- 
 troduced into the regular college and university examina- 
 tions. In this way, candidates for holy orders, who were 
 too lazy to attend the professors' lectures, presented them- 
 selves for ordination miserably qualified for their holy office. 
 
 * " Atrocious " is strong. What is a man to do who has no 
 source of income but his well-earned fellowship, or the expected 
 living ? The fault lies with the moribund incumbent, who is some- 
 times most repreheusibly tenacious of life. ED.
 
 Gn the Cam. 251 
 
 To stimulate theological study, the University of Cambridge 
 instituted some time ago a voluntary theological examina- 
 tion, in two parts, one harder and one easier, the honour and 
 the ordinary examination, and extending over all the sub- 
 jects of a divinity education. All persons desirous of en- 
 tering this must previously have attended a course of divin- 
 ity lectures, at some time in their college course. The 
 establishment of this examination at the University has 
 been attended with good effects. It has been accepted as 
 a test of theological training all over England. Thus, you 
 constantly see in the theological journals advertisements 
 like this : " The Bishop of London will hold his next ordi- 
 nation on Trinity Sunday, June 8th. Candidates should 
 apply to his Lordship's Examining Chaplains, the Kev. 
 Canon Stanley, Christ Church, Oxford, or the Rev. Pro- 
 fessor Lightfoot, Trinity College, Cambridge. Candidates 
 from Cambridge are required to have passed the Theological 
 Examination." Almost all the bishops have thus adopted it. 
 Hence at the time of the theological examination there is a 
 great rush of young graduates to Cambridge, who have got 
 to pass their " voluntary," as they term it, though it is 
 now not really voluntary but obligatory. The professors' 
 lectures are very good. There are four divinity professor- 
 ships besides those of Hebrew and moral philosophy. Of 
 course the instruction is entirely to prove the Church of 
 England theology perfect and unassailable. In the exami- 
 nations, which are very thorough, the same end is strictly 
 kept in view. There is, I believe, no instruction in pulpit 
 oratory. Eloquent sermons are discouraged in the Church 
 of England.* Otherwise, the theological instruction to be 
 acquired at Cambridge is for that body most excellent. 
 There is one other requirement before a member of the 
 
 * Hardly ; that would be unnecessary. But people differ very 
 much in their estimation of what is eloquence ; and there are cer- 
 tainly many, especially old ladies, who, if they hear a practical 
 sermon, fear " that it is not the Gospel." ED.
 
 252 On the Cam. 
 
 University can be admitted to orders in the Church of Eng- 
 land. He must bring testimonials from his college to his 
 moral character. I have seen one of these certificates. It 
 was signed by the master and eight senior fellows, who have 
 the government of the college in their hands. It bore the 
 most emphatic testimony to the entire fitness of the young 
 candidate in character and learning, for his high and sacred 
 office. Now these nine gentlemen who signed it, were of 
 all men those least likely to know anything about it. They 
 were not the young man's instructors, not his acquaint- 
 ances, and had had less to do with him than any officials in 
 the college. How, then, does he obtain such a full and 
 glowing certificate from them? He suspends a formal 
 notice on the hall doors that "Domimis" i. e. graduate 
 " so and so requests the college testimonials for orders." 
 He then gives 7s. Qd. to the chapel clerk, who procures him 
 this certificate, all signed and sealed as a matter of course, 
 if he has complied with the formal requirements necessary 
 for obtaining it. What are these formal requirements? 
 That three times in the whole of his previous college course, 
 as undergraduate or graduate, he should have partaken of 
 the communion in the college chapel ! On that footing, if 
 his name appears three times on the marker's list as having 
 stayed after the monthly service to the communion, he re- 
 ceives no matter what his character the testimonial of 
 the governors of his college to his perfect fitness in moral- 
 ity and learning for the highest office a man can hold. 
 Every now and then you see men whom you know to have 
 graduated some time since coming to Cambridge for no 
 apparent reason ; they appear in chapel the next Sunday, 
 and you understand then that they have come to fill up 
 the number of these attendances at communion, or, as the 
 phrase is, to keep their sacraments.* I saw many tilings 
 
 * The authorities of the college only take tlie ordinary test 
 common throughout the country. To become a communicant is to 
 profess yourself not only a sincere believer, but, to the best of your
 
 On the Cam. 253 
 
 in England that pained me as to their estimation of sacred 
 things, but never anything like this gross levity as to the 
 communion. The rite of confirmation, which admits to a 
 participation in it, is usually administered to boys at school. 
 The Bishop comes down to Eton, or Harrow, or Rugby, 
 and confirms boys by the score. I have repeatedly heard 
 the story of this administration told, and it seemed to be 
 always the same, a little fluttering and temporary seri- 
 ousness, and then the whole thought of afterwards as. a 
 matter of course ; a thing to be gone through, that often- 
 times had a great element of the ludicrous in it, such as 
 stories of how the Bishop's hand felt on the head, and yet 
 more irreverent and revolting details. When this is the 
 preparation, what must be the performance? At Cam- 
 bridge it is administered in a very wholesale manner, and 
 the young candidates for orders seem to look on it as no- 
 thing more than a formality which three times performed 
 gives them a certificate of morality. 
 
 I speak, of course, only of a portion. There are those, 
 and perhaps the majority of Cambridge young men, who 
 deserve any certificate that could be given them ; whose 
 attendance on all the rites of the church is constant, reve- 
 rent, devout ; who would die rather than regard the holiest 
 as a formality, or a substitute for a pure life. But why- 
 are not all so ? Why is it that every year, in counting up 
 those of your college acquaintance who are certainly study- 
 ing theology, the majority are of a dissolute life, of which 
 Thackeray has given us such a terrible picture in Bute 
 Crawley ? It is because they can get this easy substitute 
 
 ability, a good and moral. liver. Bad wives, undutiful children, 
 ladies who destroy their neighbours' characters by scandal, often 
 make this profession ; but a clergyman has no other sign to go by, 
 and if he were asked for the character of a parishioner of whom he 
 knew no ill, and who " stayed, " as the phrase is, regularly, he 
 would not hesitate to give him a good one. If a man or a woman 
 will be a hypocrite, neither the parish clergyman nor the college 
 dean can help being taken in. I'D.
 
 254 On the Cam. 
 
 for a high character, it is because thrice attending the 
 communion will give them a testimonial to conduct to 
 which their whole college life gives the lie. It is above 
 all, from the English system of appointment to the offices 
 in the Church. You are aware that in England it is very 
 rare that the parishioners in a church choose their own 
 pastor. The appointment to the living, as it is called, is 
 attached to some family or office or institution. Almost 
 every wealthy country family has one or more of these 
 livings, which are saved as a provision for the younger sons. 
 A young man goes to college, lives the freest and most 
 vicious of lives, and stints himself all the less, because " he's 
 going into the Church, and they're keeping a living for 
 him at home." Nay, after he has been pursuing theolo- 
 gical studies for years, after he is ordained, after he is 
 licensed to preach, he will return to Cambridge to see his 
 old friends, and rush into all the old orgies, and excuse 
 himself by saying that " he has not been inducted into his 
 parish, and when he is, he'll turn over a new leaf."* As 
 long as this system of family presentation continues, the 
 Church will never be free from a set of lazy and vicious 
 youths, who sow their wild oats up to her very doors, and 
 pursue their course of dissipation with the greater license 
 because she will give them a support, and three perfunc- 
 tory attendances on her holiest of rites will secure them 
 lying testimonials to learning they never studied and vir- 
 tues they never practised. 
 
 It is a sickening picture which I certainly do not love 
 to contemplate. Let us rather turn to Cambridge as one 
 of the great nurseries of the Church of England in its best 
 form ; one of the twin homes from which have issued, for 
 
 * Of course, the fact of Church livings being in the hands of 
 laymen is an anomaly ; but, like many other anomalies in the Eng- 
 lish Constitution, it works very fairly on the whole. It draws and 
 reforms a few rakes, who cry, " Give me one of the priests' offices, 
 that I may eat a piece of bread;" but if you could get behind the 
 scenes of any church, or any religious sect, would you not find an 
 equal number of careless and hypocritical ministers? ED.
 
 On the Cam. 255 
 
 hundreds of years, all the real strength, learning, and piety 
 of that great institution. I gave you some description, in 
 my ninth lecture, of the eminent divines of Cambridge in 
 the last two centuries. It is now, therefore, important 
 rather to describe her present position in the Church of 
 England, with reference to its parties, its power, its influ- 
 ence, its prospects. 
 
 The two Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, strictly on 
 an equality as they are in so many points, are so in none 
 more than in the proportion of divines they supply to the 
 Church. A minister of state would be thought exceed- 
 ingly partial who did not fill all vacant bishoprics equally 
 from graduates of the two Universities. But with reference 
 to the position they occupy as to the parties dividing the 
 Church, very great distinctions must be drawn. 
 
 There are at present three very distinct divisions in the 
 Church of England, viz. the High, the Low, and the Broad 
 Church parties, to which we may add the Revolutionists. 
 The High Church party are sometimes collectively known 
 as Puseyites, but this properly belongs only to an extreme 
 wing of them, and, like Tractarians, is a name which gene- 
 rally disappeared with the controversy that caused it about 
 twenty years ago. The High Church party has several 
 shades. Its members range from the " good Church- 
 men," who are very proud of this name, and talk a great 
 deal about the Church and inveigh against the dissenters, 
 but show no fondness for the Church of Eome, through 
 the High Churchmen proper, up to the Anglicans and 
 Anglo-Catholics. As you get higher and higher, you find 
 an increasing love for vestments, rituals, choral services. 
 and turnings to the East. Miss SewelPs novels are a very 
 good type of the average High Church party views, Miss 
 Yonge has rather fallen off, but both are still very strong 
 on the sacramental doctrines, the distinguishing mark of 
 the High Churchmen. The Bishop of Oxford is a good 
 specimen of them. 
 
 The Low Church party, of which Lord Shaftesbury was 
 long considered the greatest layman, and Canon McNeile
 
 256 On the Cam. 
 
 and the Bishop of Kochester are among the leading cler- 
 gymen, call themselves the Evangelicals. They hold very 
 strongly to the articles of the Church, which, as Pitt said, 
 were Calvinistic, while her ritual was Popish. They insist 
 on doctrinal points, all hold the literal doctrine of verbal 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, and rather hold out the left 
 hand of fellowship to the Protestant dissenters, they do 
 not talk much about the Church, and insist very little on 
 sacramental ordinances. Both they and the High Church 
 party, however, join in attacking the Broad Church, whose 
 name sufficiently explains its nature, standing between the 
 other two, hating the extremes of both, neither insisting 
 on daily services nor on verbal inspiration, but striving to 
 raise the Church of England in the opinion of all its mem- 
 bers as a universal church. An old joke declares that the 
 difference between the High and Low Church, or the 
 Puseyites and Evangelicals, is the difference between Pus- 
 syism and Catechism. A still more complete one classes 
 the High Church with its postures and genuflexions, the 
 Low with its interminable sermons and literal comments, 
 and the Broad, thus : High Attitudinarian ; Broad 
 Latitudinarian ; Low Platitudinarian. 
 
 From all these stand out the Revolutionists ; I mean 
 the men who are convinced that the Church of England 
 must submit to some change. As against the High Party, 
 that not only are her services and sacraments not vital, but 
 too long, too unchangeable, too antiquated ; as against the 
 Low, that the Athanasian creed, and the doctrine of verbal 
 inspiration, must be struck out of the prayer and preach- 
 ing of the Church ; as against the Broad, that these things 
 must be done, and not merely talked about, that it will 
 not do merely to put the extremists aside in silence, and 
 dwell on what is acceptable to all, but that the Church 
 must cease to reprint, to republish, to reassert, to uphold, 
 day after day, things that the common sense and common 
 conscience of millions in England resist and deny every 
 day ; in short, that the extension which Tillotson and 
 William III. sought to make in the pale of the Church,
 
 On the Cam. 257 
 
 one hundred and fifty years ago, must be made now ; or 
 else the outsiders will rush in and break down the whole 
 paling, and, instead of being let in by tickets duly signed and 
 countersigned, will take the kingdom of Heaven by force ! 
 I have called this class of divines Revolutionists, be- 
 cause I think it expresses most nearly the state of thought 
 and action to which their views tend. You may give them 
 what name you will, descriptive, laudatory, censuring; 
 they may be stigmatized as Rationalists, extolled as men 
 of progress, or merely named as Essayists and Reviewers. 
 But, call them what you will, think of them as you will, it 
 cannot be denied, it cannot be overlooked, that there is a 
 great force now working both inside and outside the Eng- 
 lish Church which cannot be resisted. At a time when 
 every other branch of human knowledge and experience is 
 advancing tenfold in a year, for what it once did in a cen- 
 tury ; at a time when all the helps to Scripture criticism 
 are of tenfold keenness and polish, men cannot go on 
 accepting without question the same results that satisfied 
 Augustine or Calvin, Edward VI. or Charles I. It is the 
 aim, the plea, the cry of these men, that the work of pro- 
 gress, of truth, of casting off the senseless shackles of tra- 
 dition and superstition may come from within the Church ; 
 that she may look in time, not only to her battlements and 
 pinnacles, her carved work and her silken hangings, but 
 to her lower walls and her foundations. Let her be sure 
 that her mortar is not untempered, that no quicksand lurks 
 in the hollows of the rock whereon she boasts to stand; for 
 the clouds are gathering in the heavens, the rivers are 
 swelling high, the wind is sighing from the forest ; and, 
 when that rain does descend, that flood does come, that 
 wind does blow, and beat upon her house, if there is 
 treachery in that boasted foundation of Articles, and Creeds, 
 and Ritual, great will be the fall of it.* 
 
 * We think that men of all shacks of opinion will agree in 
 esteeming this short summary of the parties which divide the 
 Church of England as very ahle. ED.
 
 258 On the Cam. 
 
 Now with regard to these parties, the Universities stand 
 thus affected. Oxford is always in extremes. Twenty 
 years ago, when the Tractarian or Puseyite movement 
 swept over England, Oxford went heels over head, right 
 into the abyss, and emerged soaked and dripping. Her 
 architecture, her poetry, her divinity, her politics, all 
 became saturated with lecterns and roodlofts, chasubles 
 and dalmatics, vigils and antiphons, Laud the Saint and 
 Charles the Martyr. Ruskin was not too independent, 
 Mansel not too philosophical not to catch, unconsciously 
 perhaps, deep tinges of the scarlet dye. When this stream, 
 so sparkling yet so turbid, brawling over a dead leaf like a 
 stone, thundering against an oak of centuries like a weed 
 of yesterday, had run itself fairly into the subterranean 
 cell of monasticism, another spring, the spring of criticism, 
 of free discussion, of liberal thought broke out, and now 
 who so liberal as Oxford, who so eager for reform in the 
 Church, who so indignant against subscription? What 
 are we to think of a University where Heurtley and Stan- 
 ley are both canons of Christ Church, and Jowett and 
 Pusey both Professors ? Oxford is like France after the 
 Restoration. The Bourbon King and the Napoleon Code, 
 the times of the flood and the times of the Reformation ; 
 between them they have excluded deliberation, moderation, 
 harmony. I need not say I strongly sympathize with the 
 Jowetts and the Stanleys, but I know that when the ex- 
 citement of admiration for them is gone, we shall fall back 
 on the Wilberforces and the Puseys. In the seventeenth 
 century Oxford educated John Locke ; and she also burnt 
 his works as pestilent and seditious. The spirit of her 
 younger men is towards reason, liberality, reform ; but the 
 curse of Reuben is upon them, " Unstable as water, thou 
 ehalt not excel." 
 
 How, then, does Cambridge stand affected ? Cambridge 
 never has been in extremes. She never stood out either 
 as the mother of the bigoted tories or the fanatic radicals. 
 Her principle has been, as expressed in the mouths and
 
 On the Cam. 259 
 
 works of her great men, to keep just in advance of the 
 times ; to lead in England ; never to be a long vf&y ahead, 
 and never the least behind the general sentiment of the 
 English nation ; and so is she at the present time. The 
 extreme High Church or Tractarian fever affected her but 
 slightly. Of course in a place containing so many inter- 
 esting archaeological and ecclesiastical monuments, and so 
 devoted to the Church, there were some violent Anglicans, 
 but there always was a strong basis of common sense to 
 put a check on their excesses. The Low Church clergy 
 have always flourished at Cambridge. These Calvinistic 
 divines, in England as in Holland, in France, and till 
 lately in America, are always on the side of liberal prin- 
 ciples, of progress ; though their reasoning may be narrow 
 and tortured, yet they are willing to reason somewhat, 
 whereas the High Church clergy steadily refuse to reason 
 at all. But the glory of Cambridge at the present day is 
 her divines of the Broad or Liberal section of the Church 
 proper, those who have not yet become convinced that her 
 articles and formulae need essential change, but who are 
 foremost in free criticism of the Scriptures, in laying aside 
 tradition and superstition, in raising the spirit above the 
 letter, in eagerness to demonstrate their faith on a rational 
 basis. Such are Ellicott, the most laborious and accurate 
 of all commentators on the text of the New Testament, 
 and Alford, less acute, less advanced, less free from servile 
 tradition, but still gentle, tender, Catholic, Christian. Such 
 in the last generation was that fearless inquirer into truth, 
 Julius Charles Hare, and that faithful and diligent student 
 of ecclesiastical history, knocking down unfounded tradi- 
 tions right and left, Archdeacon Hardvvick. Such a divine 
 is Vaughan, who, having given fifteen years of his life to 
 winning the hearts of boys to truth and purity, is devoting 
 the rest of it to teaching men and women the same noble 
 lessons ; such is Kingsley, about whom our opinion here 
 has changed so often, hot-headed, blundering, the blind 
 follower of whatever society he is last in, but still, through
 
 260 On the Cam. 
 
 all his errors, aiming at love and liberty. Such a one is 
 a most accomplished and amiable man, who I was delighted 
 to see suggested for the vacant bishopric of Ely, the 
 diocese in which Cambridge stands, the Venerable Lord 
 Arthur Hervey, whose work on the Genealogies of our 
 Lord I wish thus publicly to commend to all students of 
 Scripture, as discussing a most perplexed question in the 
 light of new discoveries with unusual precision, acuteness, 
 and judgment. Such a one is Lightfoot, my own revered 
 and beloved college tutor, who is devoting the whole energy 
 of a mind of powers peculiarly various, vigorous, and fear- 
 less, to a new commentary on the Greek Testament, which 
 I venture to predict will in due time astonish the Christian 
 world by its learning, its intelligence, and its piety, and 
 prove him a worthy namesake of the revered orientalist. 
 From Cambridge, too, is that gentle soul, too holy and too 
 pure for the controversies of these times, who in the very 
 foremost and advanced rank of the divines of the Church, 
 is pleading with angelic energy for the emancipation of 
 truth and love from bigotry and calumny. Eeviled, in- 
 sulted, betrayed, may long years yet be in store for him of 
 victorious and honoured life, and ages to come shall assur- 
 edly weep tears of gratitude on the memory of that faithful 
 champion of Christ aud that true lover of his race, Frederick 
 Denison Maurice.* 
 
 It is to these men that Cambridge looks as the strength 
 of the Church. She has a few of the Revolutionary party 
 among her sons, Rowland "Williams and his fellow essayist 
 Goodwin, and the late lamented Donaldson. But it is not 
 from her that the forlorn hope will lead the assault and the 
 victorious general sound the onset on the tottering castle 
 of superstition. When the walls are crumbling and the 
 rums smoking it will be for her eloquent, prudent, wise men 
 to come forward, to repair the breaches with new and better 
 
 * This is a mistake. Exeter College, Oxford, claims the honour 
 here bestowed upon Cambridge. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 261 
 
 stone, to weave newer blazonry into the old standard, and 
 bid its sacred folds float over a widened, strengthened, 
 peaceful Church. For though the fiery invaders as well as 
 the immovable bigots are not from her, yet it is to her the 
 people of England look in the end for the faithful leaders 
 that are to guide their feet into the way of peace. 
 
 It is sometimes pleasant to close our thoughts of a trou- 
 bled, anxious state of affairs, with a contemplation of its 
 ludicrous side. About thirty years ago a young man of 
 St. John's College, Cambridge, took a very distinguished 
 mathematical degree, and at once devoted himself, as so 
 many do, to the duties of a clergyman of the Church of 
 England, together with those of an instructor in his favourite 
 branch of learning. He also wrote some elementary books, 
 which soon became popular, and every school in England 
 used the " Elements of Arithmetic and Algebra, by J. W. 
 Colenso." These good services procured him the honour- 
 able exile of a colonial bishopric. Meditating in his leisure 
 on the Old Testament, he became suddenly aware of diffi- 
 culties in the text, which any learned man in Germany or 
 America could have told him had long ago been recognized 
 and merely laid aside as not affecting the spirit. But the 
 poor man, being a bishop of the Church of England, was 
 quite amazed, and published them as startling novelties. A 
 storm of obloquy was at once poured on his head, and all 
 the thunders of such a Vatican as can be got up on short 
 notice at the Cape of Good Hope have been lately rattling 
 all around him. I cannot better illustrate the ludicrous 
 aspect of Church politics in England than by repeating to 
 you an Epic in the modern style, jointly composed by two 
 so-called scholars of Trinity, one of whom I know might 
 have been much better occupied. 
 
 " A bishop, of tastes arithmetical, 
 Endeavours to be exegetical; 
 
 So he rashly exposes 
 
 The errors of Moses, 
 And at once is condemned as heretical."
 
 XII. 
 
 RELATIONS OF CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, 
 AND AMERICA. 
 
 The Universities and the Professions. Middle-Class Examina- 
 tions. The Universities Aristocratic. Cambridge and Oxford 
 contrasted. Cambridge the Liberal University, English Opi- 
 nions of America. Mutual Needs of the Two Countries. 
 Concluding Stanzas. 
 
 HEN a traveller in some distant city has duly 
 surveyed all the objects of interest it contains, 
 has listened to every long-winded explana- 
 tion rattled off by his guide, paid every fee 
 for seeing what he didn't want to, and being 
 shown what he could see without ; when his head is filled 
 with a mass of images, some clear, some vague, but all 
 separate, just as he has made up his mind to leave for new 
 scenes and wonders, his footsteps will lead him into the 
 environs of the town. He will turn to some gentle emi- 
 nence, and, tired as he is, will cheerfully submit to the 
 ascent, that he may be rewarded by the prospect. And 
 lo ! that mass of buildings that seemed so senseless and 
 confused, ranges itself into shape and consistency. The 
 streets and squares map themselves out before him, the 
 spires rear themselves in graceful and decent supremacy 
 over the buildings given up to worldly cares ; the river 
 becomes no longer the turbid flood he crossed six or eight 
 times in hurrying from cathedral to garden, and from gal- 
 lery to prison, it is the great artery which is carrying to 
 the extremities of the nation the life-blood of the nation's
 
 On the Cam. 263 
 
 heart, and this heart, the city itself, stands forth like a 
 queen on her throne, to bid the stranger, in the name of 
 the country, " hail and farewell." He casts his eyes all 
 around, to watch the fields standing thick with harvest or 
 purple with the vintage ; the loaded waggons toiling on to 
 pour the wealth of the farmers into the laps of the burghers ; 
 the stately mansions dotting the heights where the princes 
 of the land retreat in the heats of summer ; the lofty hills 
 that have survived a hundred civilizations looking down on 
 the whole. He reflects how the few acres of land, inhabited 
 by a few score thousand men, have become the concentration 
 of leagues and millions, whose line is gone out through all 
 the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. And 
 then, if he is an American, and his heart is not wholly 
 chilled or estranged, he will turn his eyes fondly westward, 
 and dream that in the mighty mass of clouds which the 
 setting sun is tingeing with tender green and gorgeous 
 crimson, he can see the hills of his own dear country; and 
 he feels his soul leap along that golden ray that has just 
 shot to his feet, and is uniting, with an electric flash, the 
 lovely land of his exile and the peerless nation of his 
 birth. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, our six weeks' visit to Cam- 
 bridge is drawing to a close. You have kindly submitted 
 to my guidance through its maze of wonders and treasures, 
 its public halls and its private homes ; you have made the 
 acquaintance of some of its inhabitants and picked up some 
 of its phrases. Last Tuesday you spent an hour in that 
 form of foreign sight-seeing, which, though frequently 
 most curious, is always to me most tedious, its churches 
 and chapels. And now before we take our homeward 
 passage, let us go to the top of the Castle Hill, look back 
 upon all we have left, and raising our eyes to the fields 
 around, think not only what, but where Cambridge is, 
 what her relations are to the wonderful country to which 
 she belongs, and what Englishmen themselves think of 
 their mighty University. And then, at last, let our eyes
 
 264 On the Cam. 
 
 take a westerly turn, and look along the chain which con- 
 nects every two countries on the earth. Perchance we 
 shall find that it is not, as some of us suppose, light as 
 gossamer, nor yet, as the same persons inconsistently 
 deem, forged of cankering iron, and stained with spots 
 of rust, or a yet angrier red ; but at once strong as the 
 hills and gorgeous as the sunbeams, links of the purest 
 gold, rivets of priceless jewels, never, never to be broken. 
 The relations of the Universities to the nation are not 
 in England exactly the same as they are in this country. 
 Oxford and Cambridge do not stand quite on the same 
 footing, as regards the professions, with Yale and Har- 
 vard. The chief aspect in which colleges are regarded 
 throughout this country is as the training for certain pro- 
 fessions called liberal. As far as the Church is concerned, 
 Cambridge and Oxford are even more important to Eng- 
 land than our colleges to us. In the profession of the 
 Law, also, there is about the same proportion there as here 
 of young men who first go through the University, and of 
 those who begin their law studies directly with nothing but 
 a school education. In the profession of medicine there is 
 a vast difference. Here, the majority of regular practi- 
 tioners have a University education ; there, it is, I think, 
 decidedly the reverse. The reason of this is, that the 
 medical profession does not stand on a level with the bar, 
 the pulpit, the senate, or the army, as a calling for young 
 gentlemen, and this it is which sends the prospective 
 physicians to be educated elsewhere. The University in 
 England is essentially an aristocratic institution, more so 
 even than here. The majority of persons who go there, 
 go to obtain the education of a gentleman. I do not mean 
 to say that there are not many, and many of the most dis- 
 tinguished of the University, who belong to the lower 
 classes. But they go to the University because it at once 
 puts them on a higher platform, because it gives them an 
 entrance into the Church, much more honourable than any 
 they can get elsewhere. The University or the military
 
 On the Cam. 265 
 
 service of the country is the natural destination of all young 
 gentlemen, and you know how much that name means in 
 England, including the whole landed aristocracy, titled or 
 untitled. Neither the medical * nor the commercial pro- 
 fessions, what we call generally " business," are considered 
 proper for a young gentleman to engage in. The son of 
 a nobleman, a baronet, a large landed proprietor, a clergy- 
 man, must if possible go into the University or the army or 
 navy ; any other destination after his school life is closed is 
 derogatory. A few sons of bankers may be taken into their 
 fathers' counting-houses; a few persons interested in go- 
 vernment, who are in a very great hurry to make officials 
 of their sons, will give them a place in a government office 
 at once ; but as a rule, the civil life of all gentlemen is 
 begun at the University of Oxford or Cambridge. In par- 
 ticular, those who are to make Parliament, government 
 business, or diplomacy, the occupation of their life, and 
 you will remember that in England men select these as the 
 occupation of their lives, without being dependent either on 
 popular election or oratorical ability, and without studying 
 any other profession, always begin by acquiring that 
 knowledge of men, that practice in the ways of society, 
 that habit of getting information from voluminous works, 
 that practice in putting their knowledge on paper, which 
 nothing but a University can give. And hence you will 
 get an idea of the position that the Universities occupy in 
 England; they are not places of popular education, they 
 are not means for diffusing education among the people, 
 but they are the head-quarters of polite literature and 
 exact science, and the great training schools for the go- 
 verning classes. And this is so felt throughout England, 
 
 * This represents the feeling of thirty years ago, rather than the 
 present. The medical profession stands in far higher esteem in 
 England now than it did formerly, and the respect for its members 
 is daily increasing ; but young men who feel an aptitude for it must, 
 as a rule, commence their special training early, and that is the 
 reason why they do not frequent the Universities. ED.
 
 266 On the Cam. 
 
 that a farmer, or a country attorney, or a doctor in a small 
 town, feels that by sending his son to college he will give 
 him a rank among his fellow-citizens he never could have 
 had without, and give the name a new lustre that will go 
 far in accomplishing an Englishman's dearest wish, the 
 founding of a family. 
 
 The University, then, is rather an aristocratic than a 
 popular institution, as far as its direct education is con- 
 cerned. England, as is well known, is becoming a govern- 
 ment of the people more and more every day ; the popular 
 influences are constantly pressing harder on the old aristo- 
 cratic and royal establishments ; and one would naturally 
 suppose that this would diminish the credit in which the 
 Universities are held. And, to a certain extent, this is 
 true. Already the Church is thrown open to candidates 
 not from the Universities ; already the retaining attorneys 
 have ceased to value a barrister on his having taken a high 
 degree; already commerce, engineering, mechanical science, 
 are arrogating to themselves places on the list of liberal 
 occupations that the old professions are reluctantly obliged 
 to concede to them. Just at this crisis, just as one would 
 think that the old, abuse-eaten, expensive, exclusive Uni- 
 versities must give up the hold they have so long had on 
 the people of England, just as some new instructors for 
 the people are loudly called for, they the old, the worn- 
 out, the antediluvian have stepped into the breach, and 
 declared, like King Richard to the mob, when their cham- 
 pion was slain, " We will be your instructors, we, your 
 Universities." It had long been conceded that the plan 
 of written examinations, at stated times, followed by pub- 
 lished lists of the success of the respective candidates, was 
 an excellent stimulus to study. Accordingly, the two 
 Universities appoint examinations all over the country, in 
 all the principal towns and cities. They choose, out of 
 their most eminent members, a large body of examiners. 
 Each draws up examination papers in his favourite subject: 
 not only in the chosen subjects of college instruction, the
 
 On the Cam. 267 
 
 Ancient Languages and Mathematics, but in the Modern 
 Languages, French, German, and Italian ; in the Sciences, 
 Botany, and Zoology, and Geology, and Chemistry, and 
 Natural Philosophy ; in English Literature, and the de- 
 velopment of our language ; in Ancient and Modern His- 
 tory ; and in Music. To these examinations all persons, 
 producing proper certificates of age, &c, are cordially in- 
 vited ; they are examined in various classes, according 
 to the degree of proficiency they profess ; the results of 
 the examinations are published ; those who pass, with a 
 certain degree of credit, examinations of certain difficulty, 
 receive from the Universities the eminently pleasing and 
 honourable title of Associate in Arts, and are at once 
 marked out to the whole nation as young men who will do 
 credit to their teachers and employers. In this way, just 
 at the time when the credit and authority of Oxford and 
 Cambridge might be supposed to be diminishing, they 
 have leapt to their feet, clothed in all their ancient might, 
 and, like the combatants in the arena of old, cast a net of 
 affection and influence over all England, fine as silk, but 
 strong as steel. I know of no more noble effort ; whether 
 we consider the difficulty of assimilating old forms to new 
 men, or the prejudice against adapting essentially aristo- 
 cratic and exclusive institutions to all classes, or the reluc- 
 tance that men of letters, used to their dear old conventual 
 life, would naturally have to expend their treasures among 
 the people, and themselves go from town to town to assist 
 in their diffusion, all these things being remembered, I 
 know, I say, of no more noble effort in the annals of edu- 
 cation, than the establishment, by Cambridge and Oxford, 
 of these Middle-Class Examinations. 
 
 You see in this system the old character of the Univer- 
 sity religiously preserved. It does not afford these candi- 
 dates instruction, but a stimulus to receive instruction ; not 
 teaching, but a test of teaching. It stretches its influence 
 over them, not so much coming down to them, as drawing 
 them to it. And it still preserves its old aristocratic cha-
 
 268 On the Cam. 
 
 racier, it does not make itself any more an institution of 
 the people, it makes, even in the degree it gives them, a 
 distinction between them and its own proper children, who 
 live in its walls ; and several, who in their youth have 
 passed these examinations, and been received Associates of 
 Arts, afterwards enter the University and take the regular 
 degree, as if dissatisfied with their partial reception into 
 the ranks of the learned. 
 
 Hence you see precisely the position held by the Uni- 
 versities, offering their own instruction, in a course ex- 
 pensive, arduous, and in some respects exclusive, to all who 
 are able to avail themselves, they extend their authority as 
 autocrats of education over .the whole body of the English 
 people. This is essentially an aristocratic theory, how- 
 ever popularized it may be. It tends, in fact, to create and 
 to ratify formally an aristocracy of learning ; an aristocracy 
 to which any one is eligible, but to which when once elected, 
 he is separated from those who have not entered. There 
 is no law to prevent all the worshippers from forcing their 
 way to any part of the Temple, from the Court of the Gen- 
 tiles to the Holy of Holies, but be his place at the moment 
 where he will, he is walled off for the time being, walled 
 out from the select ones who have gone yet farther, while 
 the crowd beyond are walled out from him. 
 
 And while thus creating a class distinct from others, the 
 University goes yet farther, and keeps up its connection 
 with them through life. By its preference in all appoint- 
 ments to Church offices, or posts as school teachers ; by the 
 prior claim it gives for all government posts ; by the lucra- 
 tive and honourable offices in its own immediate gift, or that 
 of its colleges ; by the facility and pleasure of returning to 
 its walls, and the security of finding old friends still living 
 there at whatever age you return ; by its immediate con- 
 cern in Parliament and elections, by all these the chil- 
 dren of the University are bound to their mother all over 
 England. When the clergyman in your parish begins the 
 service, you can tell at once from which University he
 
 On the Cam. 269 
 
 comes by the colour of his silk hood, white and black for 
 Cambridge, red and black for Oxford. Yes, the University 
 spreads out her arms all over England, and drops the seed 
 of power and strength in its remotest corners, springing up 
 into the stateliest of trees, overtopping the lowlier plants. 
 In the halls of the legislature, the offices of state, the very 
 King's palace, in the parish church and the school-room, 
 in the heats of India, the snows of Canada, the wilds of 
 Australia, still we find her children, " wherever the chosen 
 race and sons of England worship " learning " they turn 
 their faces towards her." 
 
 " If she but stretch her hand 
 She heaves the gods, the ocean, and the land." 
 
 But though both the Universities are essentially aristo- 
 cratic, essentially institutions for the governing classes,- they 
 are of very different characters. The governing classes in 
 England maybe divided into two very distinct parts, which for 
 want of a better name, I may call the old and the new aris- 
 tocracy, though these names, like all such general appella- 
 tions, will not hold in all cases. The old aristocracy consists 
 of the old families, whether bearing noble titles or not, that 
 have been accustomed for centuries to hold rank as the gov- 
 erning class, and are slow to admit innovations in their 
 habits, or additions to their number. It comprehends nearly 
 that whole body of landed proprietors, who own the greater 
 part of the soil of England, and to some extent still cling to 
 the theory that England, the whole country, belongs to them ; 
 that a man who owns ten acres of land has actually more 
 right to enjoy the institutions of the country than a man who 
 owns two, no matter what the comparison may be in other 
 respects. 
 
 The new aristocracy consists of those who are forcing 
 themselves every year into the ranks of the old, by wealth 
 acquired in trade or commerce, by distinction at the bar, or, 
 by sheer force of character and strength of mind, ousting 
 from their seats the old effete houses that have run their
 
 270 On the Cam. 
 
 race, and ceased to be of use. You might not be able to tell 
 the difference between the two classes on a mere sight of their 
 houses and estates ; but the least intercourse with them, the 
 least practice in their ways of talking, would show you that 
 the power of the English government, the authority which 
 for eight centuries has been connected with wealth and here- 
 ditary rank, is no longer in the hands of a single, united 
 body, but that the old nobility, including quite as much the 
 squirearchy, the country gentlemen without title, as the peer- 
 age, has yielded very much ground to a new set of men who 
 have risen to their places, some by one means, some by ano- 
 ther, but all in virtue of the new English civilization, as differ- 
 ent from the old as the royal family now on the throne is dif- 
 ferent from the Stuarts. It is this that has preserved the 
 aristocracy, the nobility, the landed gentry so long, and is 
 likely to preserve it so much longer, that as one by one the 
 old families become effete, a new set of men, born of the peo- 
 ple, come in to take their places. In some cases, the new 
 men insensibly fill exactly the places of the old ; like the 
 Norman nobles who went to Ireland, and became more Cel- 
 tic than the Celts themselves ; they become more noble than 
 the nobility, more conservative than the conservatives. This 
 is eminently true of pure parvenus, men who suddenly ac- 
 quire large fortunes by doubtful means, who are enabled by one 
 bound from obscurity to step into large estates ; they ape not 
 only the style of living, but the style of thinking and talking 
 of the old aristocracy, change a good plain Saxon name for a 
 Norman one, to which everybody knows they have no right, 
 and talk about the Conqueror, as if they were the king-mak- 
 ing Neville himself. But those who, without such freaks of 
 fortune, have risen by steady industry and force of character 
 to take their place among the magnates of the land, gene- 
 rally show that they are of another breed than the haughty 
 peers that sought to hold both houses of Parliament as their 
 own appanage in 1832. 
 
 We may then fairly draw this somewhat rough line of 
 distinction in the whole English aristocracy, the whole class
 
 On the Cam. 271 
 
 from whom the Universities are recruited ; and there can be 
 uo doubt that in general the first, the old aristocracy, chiefly 
 patronize Oxford ; the second, the new aristocracy, hold by 
 Cambridge. Not, of course, invariably ; many of the great 
 baronial houses have been for centuries devoted to Cam-; 
 bridge, Howards and Cavendishes and Spencers and Fitz- 
 williams ; and much of the new blood, that has only been 
 allowed to flow in legislative veins for a few years, gets its last 
 touch of refinement and spiritualization in the foundations of 
 Cardinal "VVolsey and William of Wykeham. But take all 
 England through, count the whole body of that wondrous 
 upper class which has for so long maintained an undaunted 
 front against despotism, against democracy, against invasion, 
 that class to which the middle rank look with admiration 
 and awe, the proletarians with dread and hatred, extending 
 as it does from the fox-hunting baron or earl, whose remote 
 ancestor stripped the crown from some imbecile Plantagenet, 
 up ordownas youplease, to the renowned lawyer whose father 
 was abarber or a blacksmith, of all this great class the wing 
 attached to conservatism and the world that is past finds ita 
 congenial atmosphere in Oxford ; the wing devoted to pro- 
 gress and the new world of thought is faithful to Cam- 
 bridge. This is the allowed, the universal reputation of the 
 two Universities, Oxford the conservative, Cambridge the 
 progressive ; Oxford the tory, Cambridge the whig ; Ox- 
 ford the loyal or the Jacobite, Cambridge the revolutionary 
 or the Hanoverian. If Oxford has sometimes stood, as in 
 1688, on the side of progress and emancipation, it is be- 
 cause the hand of tyranny was laid on her vested rights that 
 she sought to preserve. If Cambridge, as in the rebellion 
 of 1715, sided with the court, the high nobility, the estab- 
 lished order of things, it was because the established order 
 of things was on the side of liberty, and the revolutionists 
 aimed at the revival of tyranny. We can well conceive of 
 such an inversion, we know that a loud cry of chivalry 
 and aristocracy may well be the watchword of rebellion, and 
 that the devoted friend of progress and republicanism may
 
 272 On the Cam. 
 
 give his life to uphold order and law. At the time of the 
 Pretender's rebellion, the king quartered some troops at 
 Oxford, at the same time that he made a present of books to 
 Cambridge. An Oxford muse, smarting under the imputa- 
 tion of disloyalty to the upstart German house, perpetrated 
 this epigram on the two royal acts. 
 
 " Our royal master saw, with equal eyes, 
 The wants of both his Universities ; 
 Troops he to Oxford sent, and reason why, 
 That learned body wanted loyalty ; 
 But sent his books to Cambridge, as discerning 
 That that right loyal body wanted learning." 
 
 Sir William Browne, a distinguished Cambridge scholar, 
 seeing deeper into the real feeling of the two institutions, 
 and knowing full well what the habits and minds of Oxford 
 men were, answered it by this still more condensed and pithy 
 verse. 
 
 " The king to Oxford sent his troop of horse, 
 For Tories own no argument but force ; 
 With equal care to Cambridge books he sent, 
 For Whigs allow no force but argument." 
 
 Yes ! It is not always safe to take the opinion of a 
 corporate body about itself ; but if there is one thing cer- 
 tain in the history of England, if there is one thing con- 
 ceded by all parties, it is that Cambridge is the Whig 
 University, the Liberal University, the home of advanced 
 principles of government in all ages. I know that at Ox- 
 ford there are abundance, particularly at this very moment, 
 of noble and liberal-minded men. Perhaps at this instant. 
 the views of her leaders are somewhat in advance of those of 
 Cambridge. I know, too, that at Cambridge is many an 
 old Tory, and bigoted divine. But on the whole, in the ag- 
 gregate, the spirit of progress, the spirit of liberty, the spirit 
 of free thought, that bids defiance to musty enactments, 
 and antiquated ideas, and effete principles and abuses,
 
 On the Cam. 273 
 
 this spirit, which, with all her prejudices, with all her obsti- 
 nacy, with all her arrogance, is still the glory of England, 
 this heavenly spirit still breathes strong and clear from the 
 airy courts of Trinity, it sounds like a rushing mighty wind 
 across the valley of the Cam, it peals in celestial tones from 
 the organ of King's. 
 
 I need no better proof of this than the consideration of 
 the present ministry and opposition in England. Lord 
 Derby, the only leader under whom the Tories have a chance 
 of power, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Lord 
 Palmerston, the only man who can hold together all sections 
 of the Liberal party, was formerly in Parliament from the 
 University of Cambridge. I know I shall be told that Mr. 
 Gladstone, the liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, is mem- 
 ber for the University of Oxford,* and that Spencer Wai- 
 pole, the Secretary for the Home Department under Lord 
 Derby, is member for the University of Cambridge. But I 
 know also that when Mr. Gladstone left Oxford, he left it an 
 arrant Tory, and that his views have undergone a steady 
 modification in the liberal direction, and Iknowthat Spencer 
 Walpole is the most liberal and advanced of the conserva- 
 tive party, and sadly out of place with such antediluvians 
 as his coadjutors. 
 
 Yes, let me repeat again, till the halls ring with the de- 
 lightful sound, Cambridge is the liberal University, Cam- 
 bridge is the camp from which the blast of progress has 
 pealed through the ages. In all time it is from her that 
 have come forth the great leaders in the successive steps for 
 the emancipation of the English mind. And she shall 
 stand so still. Whatever temporary wave of bigotry may 
 roll over her, whatever sudden cry of fanaticism may be 
 raised in her streets, still those grey halls, those sunny 
 court-yards, those re-echoing cloisters, those heaven-kiss- 
 ing pinnacles, and the sovereign authority that resides in 
 
 * One might imagine that Oxford had ejected her late member 
 expressly to lend some colour to these remarks. ED.
 
 274 On the Cam. 
 
 them, shall be kept forever the sanctuary of liberty, " the 
 sacred temple consecrated to our common faith." And to 
 her the nation shall look for wisdom. To her in England's 
 darkest hour, when intolerance or superstition or corruption 
 seek, under the name of conservatism, to let the grand edi- 
 fice of her liberty decay and crumble, to let the gorgeous 
 folds of the old standard of freedom that has braved so 
 many storms, fall in worn-out shreds from the mast, then 
 to Cambridge shall the nation look for protection and 
 strength, for the eloquent orator and the upright judge, the 
 counsellor and leader of the people of England. 
 
 Here might I pause. Here, having led you to the 
 mountain-top, and bid you survey all the country round, I 
 might leave you. But my last words strike in my breast 
 a chord, to which, I know, yours vibrate responsively. The 
 people of England ! "Who are they, and what are they to 
 us? 
 
 Those persons who, in our counti-y, at the present day, 
 find themselves aggrieved by what they conceive the opin- 
 ion held by the people of England on American affairs, are 
 accustomed to hold and aver two very distinct and, to my 
 mind, inconsistent views. First, that the opinion of the 
 people of England is based on falsehood, built up by preju- 
 dice and injustice, and animated by malice and hatred, and, 
 consequently, should create in us a hostile feeling towards 
 them ; the particular degree of hostility, whether coldness, 
 contempt, dislike, rage, being in each special case dictated 
 by the education, the temperament, or the interests of the 
 individual. Secondly, and how this view consorts with 
 the other I cannot see, that the opinion of the people of 
 England is nothing to us ; that they know nothing of us, 
 and if they did, they are incompetent, by the very constitu- 
 tion of the national soul, to form a correct opinion of us ; 
 that it is our own duty, as free citizens of the Western Re- 
 public, to put out of view altogether the contemptible and 
 conceited quibblings of these insignificant king-ridden 
 islanders (for by this time our controversialist begins to get
 
 On the Cam. 275 
 
 abusive). Now, ladies and gentlemen, either the opinion of 
 the English people is valuable, or it is not. Eeject it, if you 
 will, as not worth considering under any circumstances ; 
 but, in that case, you must not be elated by their praise, any 
 more than distressed by their censure. Or accept it as a 
 serious matter. Then if you find it hostile, you may be 
 indignant, you may be grieved, you may be haughty, but 
 you cannot be contemptuous. You cannot say, England's 
 opinion is valuable when she praises us, but worthless when 
 she condemns us. My own opinion is this : The views 
 of the people of England are of importance to us. We 
 cannot reject them as worthless. The position of England 
 to the other nations of the earth and to ourselves is such, 
 that whether just or unjust, laudatory or condemnatory, we 
 must listen to them. If just, we should accept their ap- 
 proval as a most gratifying tribute, and their censure as a 
 most serious warning ; and if unjust, we should work with 
 all our might to modify the erroneous basis, and the preju- 
 diced inference. We cannot set the opinion of such a na- 
 tion aside as of no consequence. But waiving that point 
 for a moment ; what do I think of the views themselves ? 
 Are they just or unjust, laudatory or condemnatory ? The 
 answer is not so simple as good people here believe. Let 
 us consider each class in England separately. 
 
 The old aristocracy are almost to a man against us. 
 Their feeling to us is, and always has been, an entire dis- 
 approval of the whole American civilization. We may 
 prosper, but we have no right to prosper. Providence 
 may, if he will, preserve in peace and plenty those who 
 habitually violate his principles of government, but that 
 does not make them the less his enemies. All the ele- 
 ments of our Constitution, elective sovereigns, frequent 
 rotation in office, the entire abolition of hereditary dis- 
 tinctions, and of property qualification, avowed silence of 
 the Constitution on everything relating to religion ; all 
 these things are as alien to the high aristocracy of Eng- 
 land as the government of Dahomey or Japan, perhaps
 
 276 On the Cam. 
 
 more so. They cannot wish such a nation true prosperity ; 
 they cannot want such a set of arch-heretics in political 
 theology to succeed. The question of slavery makes very 
 little difference. With some extremists it may modify, 
 with others increase the hatred ; but slaveholders or not, 
 we are all sinners alike. Anything is good that breaks up 
 such a nest of basilisks ; and, if they must decide between 
 two evils, why, they rather prefer the South : they are 
 country gentlemen, with some notion of aristocracy and 
 the predominance of the landed interest. These noble 
 ladies and gentlemen are in ignorance of many things 
 about us ; but if they were better informed, it would only 
 increase their dislike. They may be civil to the country, 
 and friendly to individuals ; but they can no more agree 
 to, or approve of anything we do, than a Republican of 
 1835 could approve of General Jackson, or a Republican 
 of 1855 approve of Judge Douglas. 
 
 It should be said that these old people hardly like Eng- 
 land better than America. They have only just got over 
 the Reform Bill, they shudder at the Corn Laws, and go 
 into hysterics over measures for the further relief of Dis- 
 senters. 
 
 I said that as extremes always meet, the parvenus, men 
 raised to wealth from a very low position, often by equi- 
 vocal means, sided as much as possible with the high aris- 
 tocracy. In this case it is very true. They are against 
 us, not from motives of principle, they have no principle, 
 but purely from interest. The American commerce 
 interfered with their gains, the American cargoes began 
 to underbid their shipments, consequently they want this 
 pestilent prosperity broken up at once, how they care not.* 
 
 We next come to the second division of the governing 
 classes, the progressives ; the Whig families, whether high 
 
 * Mr. Everett is not often unjust; on many points he is only 
 too charitable ; but here he is somewhat blinded by natural anger. 
 A few very shallow individuals maybe selfish and short-sighted to 
 this extent, but they do not represent a class. ED.
 
 On the Cam. 277 
 
 aristocracy or only gentry, those men whose foresight, 
 whose prudence, whose liberality have again and again 
 saved the fabric of English liberty from crumbling for want 
 of new stones and mortar. I mean men who would accept 
 Lord Russell and Cornewall Lewis as their leaders. How 
 are they disposed to us ? I regret to say, not much more 
 favourably than the former. For what they have done for 
 England, they deserve infinite credit. One after another 
 they have succeeded in removing abuses that were a dis- 
 grace to her state, they have incurred obloquy of all kinds 
 for so doing, they have exposed themselves to the fire of 
 bigots on one side and fanatics on the other, and they 
 have steadily persevered in their great work, to adapt 
 existing constitutions to new crises, and thus make the 
 whole world of England advance without destroying the 
 harmony of its parts. For these great reforms they de- 
 serve our highest admiration. But this is all. Having 
 devoted themselves so long to considering the resources 
 and needs of the English government and constitution, 
 they have in a manner ceased to comprehend those of any 
 other country. They would assimilate every country on 
 earth to England, and they cannot seem to understand 
 why every country does not instantly assimilate its consti- 
 tution to that of England. They cannot recognize how, 
 without for a moment seeking to disparage the value of the 
 English road to liberty, there may not be a French, a 
 German, an Italian, an American road to liberty, each 
 peculiar for the same reason that gives the peculiarity to 
 all roads, that each starts from its own point. For in- 
 stance, they allowed forty years to pass after France 
 abolished slavery, before they did the same. But the 
 moment they had abolished it, not a day passed without a 
 tirade against America for not abolishing it, though they 
 could suffffest no possible method. And because it was 
 
 
 
 not abolished then, they have been slow to believe it is to 
 be now. And thus, because the other nations of the world, 
 and especially the United States, differ in some principles
 
 278 On the Cam. 
 
 of government, or details of administration from England, 
 their policy is habitually condemned by men just as fond 
 of liberty as we are ! In regard to the present war, their 
 idea is very curious. They are never able to understand 
 an incident or a jcharacter in foreign history, Greek, Ro- 
 man, French, American, till they have found a parallel to 
 it in English history. Thus they read, in Grote and 
 Merivale, not of Demosthenes and Cicero, but of Mr. Fox 
 or Lord Erskine. So the parallel had to be found for 
 secession. The nearest they could find was the Revolu- 
 tionary War. Now the liberal party in England have 
 just come to the conclusion, to which Horace Walpole 
 came ninety years ago, that the American colonies were 
 tyrannically treated, and were right in declaring indepen- 
 dence. So, having found their darling parallel, being 
 propped right up by a precedent, they will have everything 
 give way, all differences are of minor importance, and be- 
 cause Buttrick and Harrington were in the right in firing 
 on Major Pitcairn's battalion, Beauregard and Pickens 
 were right in shelling Fort Sumter ! 
 
 From these two classes then, both divisions of the great 
 governing body of England, we have as yet little sympathy 
 to expect. The first could not sympathize with us under 
 any circumstances, the latter cannot accept us as coadju- 
 tors in the cause of universal liberty, because we refuse to 
 be servants in the universal distribution of English liberty. 
 In other words, nearly the entire body of the governing class 
 in England feels a want of faith in us, in our principles, 
 our methods, our intentions. We commonly say they are 
 ignorant of us, so they are, but I suspect when the war 
 broke out, we were quite as liable to make Uimders about 
 our geography as they. I know we were about our poli- 
 tical history. It is that they feel a species of general dis- 
 trust in us all, that prevents their either seeking fuller 
 information, or when they have it, using it aright. And 
 it is not till they can be made to believe in us, that they 
 can be made to appreciate us.
 
 On the Cam. 279 
 
 But there are two classes in England that I would op- 
 pose to these, because I believe them to be truly our 
 friends. And first I refer to the middle class of England, 
 the great body of the people above the rabble of prole- 
 tarians, and below the ruling class, yet constantly rising 
 into it, constantly recruiting it, spread throughout the 
 whole country, and forming, as is constantly the boast of 
 those who deliver panegyrics on England, the real strength 
 of the country. These men, when the war broke out, and 
 for some time after, accepted the views of North and South 
 that were so loudly and constantly forced upon them from 
 above. But they are a set of men naturally impatient of 
 control ; they have always felt, even in the moments when 
 they seem most servile, a rivalry and opposition to the 
 aristocracy, and they determined to think for themselves. 
 Ladies and gentlemen, when a great body of men, unde- 
 terred by hereditary creeds, by political prejudices, by 
 greedy self-interest, resolves to think for itself about the 
 American war, can you doubt what the result will be? 
 Can you doubt what they will think ? The manufactures 
 in Lancashire stopped. The cotton brokers in Liverpool 
 told the mill-owners that the United States were shutting 
 off the supplies, and they believed them. Bat when in a 
 year they found that while their wheels were still, and their 
 looms silent, and their children starving, that these disin- 
 terested cotton traders were making fortunes, selling and 
 reselling cotton a score of times without ever removing it 
 from the wharf, then they indignantly shook off the 
 shackles of such dense dictation, and now the great heart 
 of the cotton district of Manchester and Bolton is beating 
 in harmony with that of Lowell and Lawrence. 
 
 But there is another class that also, I believe, thinks 
 w ith us, a class that is removed above the influence of the 
 governing class ; a class to which, as I stated in a former 
 lecture, every nation must look for its real glory, and every 
 University for its most valuable representatives, the class 
 of literary men, the writers, the thinkers. England with
 
 280 On the Cam. 
 
 all her many claims to honour, with all the douhtful spots 
 in her history, will challenge the world to produce a litera- 
 ture more varied, more solid, more brilliant. When I 
 therefore express my sincere conviction, derived from con- 
 versation, from reading, from association, that the great 
 body of literary men, those who, not content with possess- 
 ing valuable information and sound learning themselves, 
 have taken up the glorious work of transmitting it to the 
 people, of handing on the sacred fire, that these are with 
 us, I hope you will see what a noble body of allies is 
 ours, and what a glorious augury we have that the heart 
 and sense of England in time will be ours as well. 
 
 Yes, a glorious augury ; for there is no dearer hope in 
 the breast of every faithful American than that we shall in 
 due time extort the meed of approbation and sympathy 
 from England. You perceive, fellow citizens, I am not 
 one of those who affect to slight or disregard the support 
 and friendship of the English people, no, we cannot do 
 without them, we cannot tread our pathway alone. In 
 this great work we have chosen to stand forth as the cham- 
 pions of freedom against oppression, of progress against 
 bigotry, of truth against falsehood, of the new civilization 
 against the old. However gratifying such an attempt 
 might be to our national vanity, we cannot woi'k alone. 
 No one nation can convert the world, no one nation can 
 force the reluctant despotisms and oligarchies into the 
 way of truth. Somewhere, in some part of the world, we 
 must find a coadjutor, a helper, a brother. Somewhere 
 there must be another nation to which we can look for 
 support, to feel that while we are combating the powers of 
 sin on one side, they are crushing them under the other, 
 that while the Malakhoff of error is crumbling beneath our 
 shot and shell, its Redan is slippery with the blood of their 
 charging legions; and that when the last foe lays down 
 his arms before us, and our victorious but weary hosts are 
 starting to their feet at the peal of another bugle, we shall 
 recognize in its tones not the challenge of an advancing
 
 On the Cam. 281 
 
 enemy, but the triumphant blast of a returning friend. 
 Where are you to look for this ally? in what nation will 
 you find your natural, your heart's friend? In France, 
 scarce healed from the blows of her revolution, and bleed- 
 ing with fresh wounds from the hand of the craftiest of 
 tyrants and the falsest of usurpers ? In Italy, that is only 
 just struggling into union through a thousand perils, and 
 looks to you not as a companion and ally, but a guide, a 
 patron, a guardian, among the clashings of stronger powers? 
 In Germany, split into a score of petty states, wasting her 
 noble nationality in baseless speculations and worthless 
 wranglings ? In Russia, cursed with the most unrestrained 
 despotism of the age, and fighting at this moment against 
 law and justice ? O, my friends, it is not possible, it is 
 not true that you can be so " lost to all feeling of your 
 true interest and your national dignity," as to " seek that 
 weed that grows in every soil," when in that one glorious 
 country is to be found what you so much need. Take the 
 warning Schiller puts in the mouth of the old counsellor of 
 the Tells and StaufFachcrs of Switzerland : 
 
 " lerne fulilen, welches Stamms du bist ! 
 Wirft nicht, fiir eiteln Glanz und Flitterschein 
 Die echte Perle dienes Vortheils bin ! " 
 
 There she stands, the dear old country, the home of your 
 fathers, the home of your brethren, the land of the 
 Hampdens and the Cromwells and the Miltons, of the 
 Pitts, the Burkes, the Erskines, the home of our com- 
 mon freedom, of our common truth, of our common justice 
 and law, of our common language, of our common blood. 
 O never, never, let the accursed serpent of calumny infuse 
 his foul poison into your ears, and fill your blood with his 
 leperous distilment to the rejection of such blessings. 
 
 Fellow citizens, there is a work, a mighty work for the 
 united action of England and America. Let all the orators 
 of both countries come forward to repeat the glorious destiny 
 awaiting either one of them. Let them count over every
 
 282 On the Cam. 
 
 tender memory, and every brilliant hope known to either, 
 let them pile up the colossal structure of their towering 
 climaxes to enshrine the lesson of national duty, let them 
 recount every state or every colony acknowledging the 
 sway of either, from the Mackenzie River to Norfolk 
 Island, from the mouth of the Columbia round eastward to 
 the China Sea, over which either country is bound to dif- 
 fuse her national blessings, and their united eloquence 
 will not realize a tithe of the glories that await the action 
 of the united nations. What power on earth can resist 
 two such mighty energies, leading to some future Chat- 
 tanooga of liberty the whole vast army of the Saxon name, 
 in one unbroken charge along the entire line, circling the 
 flanks, right and left at once, breasting the heights, crush- 
 ing through the rifle-pits, and thundering down the farther 
 slope on the scattering rabble of darkness ? 
 
 But such metaphors are all too weak to express the 
 glory that will attend the united action of the whole Eng- 
 lish race. When two such flames join, the blaze will be 
 like the sun himself over the whole heavens ; and already 
 the day is at hand. Already Aurora is opening the gates of 
 the morning, already the hours are making ready the glit- 
 tering car, and, when the sun of liberty himself issues, to 
 drive his majestic course along the starry zodiac of the 
 ages, amid the gorgeous galaxy of the nations, he will 
 yoke to his resistless chariot the two unrivalled steeds, that 
 even now are snuffing the keen fresh air of the morning, 
 and beating impatiently against the barrier, England and 
 America, 
 
 " Two coursers of imperial race 
 With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace." 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, As my course of lectures 
 draws to a close, I thank you most heartily for the atten- 
 tion and sympathy I have uniformly experienced from you. 
 I invite you to give that same sympathy and attention to a 
 . few lines embodying the idea of my last few sentences, in
 
 On the Cam. 283 
 
 earnest that the hopes experienced at the beginning of my 
 course have been fulfilled. 
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 Ye cannot break the cord of gold 
 
 That binds in one the sister lands ; 
 Unharmed by man the links will hold, 
 
 When God hath forged their glittering bands. 
 Though every fiend that hell hath screened, 
 
 In falsehood's foulest gloom involved, 
 Tugged at the chain with might and main, 
 
 It cannot, shall not be dissolved. 
 
 No ! By that blood whose crimson tide 
 
 The breasts of each to manhood warms ; 
 No ! By that speech which either side 
 
 Repeats alike in myriad forms ; 
 No ! By each name, to each the same, 
 
 Of child, or hill, or town, or river, 
 Still hers, still ours, ye guardian powers 
 
 Our hearts from doubt and strife deliver ! 
 
 By every fight for freedom fought, 
 
 By every song for freedom sung, 
 By every right so dearly bought, 
 
 By stalwart arm or silver tongue ; 
 By all the past, our friendship fast 
 
 Nor time shall change, nor ocean sever, 
 By all the hopes the future opes 
 
 Her triumphs shall be ours for ever. 
 
 Yes, we will love thee ! Though the cloud 
 
 Of dark detraction dim the skies ; 
 Though slander's trumpet, bellowing loud, 
 
 Assault our faith with countless lies. 
 Though cold and strange, through chance and change, 
 
 Still turn thy brothers' hearts to thee ; 
 Firm may'st thou stand, our sister land, 
 
 Our beacon light across the sea !
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 OLDEK AND YOUNGER STUDENTS. 
 (LECTURE V.) 
 
 OON after the fifth of these lectures was 
 delivered, I was favoured with some criti- 
 cisms by a young friend on that portion of 
 it in which the treatment of younger by 
 older students in English and American 
 colleges is compared. The criticisms are two in number, 
 and of very different weight and character. I am told, 
 first, that I have instituted an unfair comparison between 
 English and American colleges ; that I should compare 
 American colleges and English public schools, and that at 
 these latter there exists a system fagging which affords 
 a reasonable parallel to the treatment of younger classes 
 complained of in America : secondly, that the treatment 
 objected to is really no source of pain or suffering to the 
 younger class ; that, being meant as a joke, it is almost 
 always taken as one, and recognized as an institution that 
 the Freshmen themselves would not wish abolished. 
 
 I am not aware what my critic's sources of information 
 on English Public Schools are. While I lived in England,
 
 286 Appendix. 
 
 I was very intimate with a large number of teachers and 
 pupils iu them, and made constant inquiries as to their mode 
 of life, which were very freely answered, and I have arrived 
 at a conclusion directly opposite to my critic's. The com- 
 parison between English schools and American colleges 
 has certain superficial resemblances to support it, but a 
 thorough knowledge of both entirely removes it. The 
 system of fagging differs toto ccelo from that of practical 
 joking as practised here. Four points may be enumerated 
 in support of this statement : 1st. Fagging is exercised 
 by the oldest pupils on the youngest, the middle portion of 
 the school being neither servants nor masters ; 2nd. It 
 consists in specified services yielded by the younger in 
 return for protection and defence by the older against bul- 
 lying, and it is in all cases expected and required that this 
 protection should be asked and obtained ;* 3rd. The ser- 
 vices and requirements are reduced to a well-understood 
 system, beyond which nothing can be exacted, in order to 
 guard against individual caprice ; 4th. The whole system 
 is with the consent and under the control of the masters, 
 constituting a regular feudal aristocracy, where the master 
 is lord paramount, and the great vassals exercise lordship 
 and protection over the less. This applies to Rugby, 
 Harrow, and other great schools modelled on them. At 
 Eton, the system, particularly in respect of the authority 
 of the elder boys being derived from the master's, is not 
 so accurately laid out, but a series of immemorial customs 
 is almost as efficient in preventing systematic bullying and 
 keeping authority within bounds. A more complete con- 
 trast to Harvard can hardly be imagined. The old system 
 of Freshman servitude and Senior protection is somewhat 
 analogous to it, but, as is well known, the very name of 
 that has ceased for half a century ; that system fell from 
 an inherent weakness from which the English schools are 
 
 * The informant who gave Mr. Everett this picture of our fag- 
 ging system laid on the rose colour rather thick. ED.
 
 Appendix. 287 
 
 free, the admission of the Sophomores, the middle portion 
 of the school, the part just free from the servitude, to a 
 share in authority, which they of all others were most 
 likely to abuse. 
 
 But in truth no such elaborate contrast need be drawn, 
 for the two sets of institutions are not to be compared. 
 The English schools are for boys. Their inhabitants study 
 like boys, play like boys, talk and think like boys, as boys 
 they are and wish to be treated, and if their fagging or any 
 other part of their life took the form of practical joking, 
 it would be excused or punished as a boy's failing. If 
 you called them young men, they would suspect a joke 
 and not relish it either. Our colleges claim to be attended 
 by young men, who are very proud of having taken the 
 first step on the path of manhood, and they assert and re- 
 ceive privileges accorded to none but young men. Let 
 them beware then how they give as a precedent for their 
 actions the conduct of a boys' school, and boast of their 
 boyish tastes. 
 
 Secondly, I am told that the persecution of the Fresh- 
 men is not by them regarded as persecution at all, but as 
 a joke, and a good one ; that, in fact, to use the words of 
 my young critic, " They rather like it." To this there 
 are many answers. First, the Freshmen are not the only 
 persons whose opinion should rule in this matter. The 
 governing authorities of the college to whom its proprietors 
 commit its internal discipline ; the parents who have sent 
 their sons to it, and can surely claim a voice in the treat- 
 ment they are to experience ; the community which has 
 laws on its statute book against breaking, and entering, 
 and assault and battery ; all these are quite as much to be 
 taken into council as the Sophomores and Freshmen. 
 Secondly, the fact that the Freshmen are content or pleased 
 to be the victims of a system of practical joking only 
 proves a very poor state of things at college. There are 
 plenty in China who will literally give their heads for a 
 good smoke of opium. It is with the greatest difficulty
 
 288 Appendix. 
 
 that Indian widows are prevented from mounting their 
 husbands' funeral piles. But these cases are generally 
 thought to prove the degradation of the countries, not the 
 propriety of suicide, real or constructive. Third, I deny 
 the fact. I have no doubt the Freshmen in most cases 
 submit and make the best of it, because it is the instinct 
 of all young men to submit unflinchingly where they can- 
 not prevent. I know also that they never complain, 
 because to complain would involve " telling," that highest 
 crime in the youthful code. But putting false courage 
 and false honour out of the question, to assert that they 
 like their persecution, that they regard it for instance as 
 the " Foxes" at a German University are supposed to like 
 their initiation into the company of the " Burschen," 
 shows either wilful perversion or gross ignorance of facts. 
 Suppose we had the state of things which exists in Eng- 
 land ; suppose the Sophomores for the whole of the first 
 term devoted themselves to making the Freshman's path 
 easy ; invited him to social entertainments where he was 
 not made to pay, gave him useful information about col- 
 lege, made him a member of their clubs at an early stage, 
 and encouraged and helped him in every way, would the 
 Freshman sigh for the old state of things, and envy the 
 Cadets at West Point for their happiness in possessing a 
 set of kind elders, who treated them to delightful jokes ? 
 
 For these reasons I have left the passage as it was de- 
 livered ; and I wish it distinctly understood that my 
 remarks have no connection with any that have appeared 
 elsewhere, and particularly with no newspaper editor or 
 writer.
 
 Appendix. 
 
 289 
 
 II. 
 
 DIFFEEENT COLLEGES. 
 (LECTUBE VII.) 
 
 I APPEND a list of the colleges at Cambridge, with the 
 date of their foundation and founders' names : 
 
 St. Peter's, or Peterhouse, 1257, 
 
 Clare, 
 Pembroke, 
 
 Gonville and Caius, 
 Trinity Hall, 
 
 Corpus Christ!, 
 King's, 
 
 Queens', 
 
 St. Catherine's, 
 
 Jesus, 
 
 Christ's, 
 St. John's, 
 
 Magdalene, 
 Trinity, 
 Emmanuel, 
 Sidney Sussex, 
 Downing, 
 
 1326, 
 1347, 
 1348, 
 1558, 
 1350, 
 
 1352, 
 1441, 
 1448, 
 1465, 
 1473, 
 
 1496, 
 
 1505, 
 1511, 
 
 1519, 
 1546, 
 1584, 
 1598, 
 1800, 
 
 Hugh de Balsam, Bishop of 
 
 Ely. 
 
 Lady Elizabeth Clare. 
 Countess of Pembroke. 
 Edmund Gonville. 
 John Kaye, or Caius. 
 William Bateman, Bishop of 
 
 Norwich. 
 
 Two Guilds. in Cambridge'. 
 King Henry VI. 
 Queen Margaret of Anjou. 
 Queen Elizabeth Widville. 
 Eobert Wodelark, Chancel- 
 lor. 
 
 John Alcock, Bishop of Ely. 
 C Lady Margaret Somerset, 
 < Countess of Richmond and 
 ( Derby. 
 
 Thomas, Lord Audley. 
 King Henry VIII. 
 Sir Walter Mildmay, Kt. 
 Sidney Lady Sussex. 
 Sir Geo. Downing, Bart. 
 
 Several of these foundations, St. John's, Christ's, and 
 Trinity for instance, absorbed those of older colleges ; 
 Trinity in particular occupies the site of King's Hall, 
 founded by King Edward III. and St. Michael's, or 
 Michael House, by Hervy de Stanton, in the same reign.
 
 290 Appendix. 
 
 III. 
 
 EXPENSES. 
 (LECTURE X.) 
 
 I HAVE often been asked what is the annual expense of 
 living at Cambridge. It is very difficult to answer this 
 question, owing to the large part of every year spent away 
 from the University, and the very considerable pecuniary 
 assistance which many of those, otherwise in very easy 
 circumstances, derive from their place of birth or early 
 training. I believe, however, it would be generally agreed 
 that any student with an income of less than two hundred 
 pounds a year would have to economize in many points 
 where he saw his intimate friends spending freely ; and 
 that any one with more than three hundred pounds would 
 be distinctly classed among the richer men. One might 
 infer from this that two hundred and fifty pounds a year 
 was the average income : but this ambiguous expression is 
 strongly calculated to mislead. It struck me that only a 
 small part of the undergraduates spent anything near this 
 average ; the larger number were quite poor, dependent 
 on various benefactions from school or college, and living 
 very economically ; or else quite rich, stinting themselves 
 in very little, and thinking hardly at all of the future. 
 Perhaps the least deceptive statement would be that any 
 young man with an income of two hundred and fifty pounds 
 a year could live surrounded by comforts, and what to 
 American students would be luxuries, for the scale of 
 living is certainly higher in England ; that with an income
 
 Appendix. 291 
 
 either less or greater, he would have to practise great care, 
 unless it were very much greater, in order to make his 
 means square with the style of associates to which his ante- 
 cedents would probably introduce him. 
 
 
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