KING'S, CORPUS CHRISTI, AND QUEENS' COLLEGES.
Trumpington Street broadens into the King's Parade, and here, entered through a modern buttressed screen pierced with openings filled with tracery, is King's College. It was founded by Henry VI. in 1440, and in immediate connection with the school at Eton, from which the more advanced scholars were to be transferred. The great King's Chapel, which gives an idea of the grand scale on which this college was to be constructed, is the special boast of Cambridge. It is two hundred and eighty feet long, forty-five feet wide, and seventy-eight feet high, with a marvellously fretted roof of stone, and large windows at the sides and ends filled with beautiful stained glass. This is the most imposing of all the buildings in Cambridge, and occupies the entire northern side of the college court. Its fine doorway is regarded as the most pleasing part of the exterior design. The stained-glass windows are divided into an upper and lower series of pictures. The lower is a continuous chain of gospel history, while the upper exhibits the Old-Testament types of the subjects represented below. Although designed on such a magnificent scale, the Wars of the Roses interfered with the completion of King's College, and even the chapel was not finished until Henry VIII.'s reign. The other college buildings are modern.
KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL—INTERIOR.
Adjoining King's is Corpus Christi College, the buildings being almost entirely modern. Of the ancient structure one small court alone remains, a picturesque steep-roofed building almost smothered in ivy. Corpus Christi Hall is said to have been partly designed after the great hall of Kenilworth. In its library are the famous manuscripts rescued from the suppressed monasteries, there being four hundred interesting and curious volumes of these precious documents, which are most jealously guarded. Opposite Corpus is St. Catharine's College, with a comparatively plain hall and chapel. Behind this is Queens' College, an antique structure, though not a very ancient foundation. Its entrance-tower is of brick, and a quaint low cloister runs around the interior court. Within is Erasmus's Court, where are pointed out the rooms once occupied by that great scholar. Across the river a wooden bridge leads to a terrace by the water-side with an overhanging border of elms, and known as Erasmus's Walk. This college was founded by the rival queens, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Widvile, and though it is very proud of having had the great scholar of the Reformation within its halls, he does not seem to have entirely reciprocated the pleasure; for he complains in a letter to a friend that while there "he was blockaded with the plague, beset with thieves, and drugged with bad wine." Returning to Trumpington Street, we find on the western side the University Printing Press, named from the younger statesman the Pitt Press. He represented the university in Parliament, and the lofty square and pinnacled tower of this printing-office is one of the most conspicuous objects in Cambridge. Yet even this structure has its contrasts, for the "Cantabs" consider that its architecture is as bad as its typography is good.
DOORWAY OF KINGS COLLEGE CHAPEL.