The Cathedral Towns and Intervening Places of England, Ireland and Scotland: / A Description of Cities, Cathedrals, Lakes, Mountains, Ruins, and Watering-places.

by Thomas W. Silloway; Lee L. Powers

The present population, including about 8,500 students, is 35,372. What makes it of peculiar interest to people of Massachusetts is, that from it is taken the name of our Cambridge, which was done in honor of some of the early settlers, who were graduates here, and also of Rev. John Harvard, who removed from here to America, and died at our Charlestown, Sept. 24, 1638. At his death he made a donation to our college of money and his library of 300 books.

No more beautiful place of sojourn in the kingdom of Great Britain exists than this. There is at one of the principal business sections quite a commercial aspect, there being good stores for the sale of goods of all kinds, and the bookstores are exquisitely tempting. Here and there are fine old mansions elegantly embowered in trees; and winding about among them, and for long distances, are the most rural of roads imaginable for quiet rambles, strongly reminding one of the more retired parts of our Roxbury, most of them being shaded by venerable trees. There are examples of churches, with their surrounding graveyards, which boast of very great antiquity, and they also greet us with a look of centuries. The people are blest with a becoming and good reverence for these time-honored enclosures and venerable buildings, and they religiously repair them when needed, but refrain from amending.

Happily for them, public sentiment is such that no Old South campaigns, such as balls, fairs, and "Carnivals of Authors," are required before they will refrain from putting them out of existence. An atmosphere of learning, and suggestions of high cultivation, and that of centuries' duration and exercise, prevails and is everywhere apparent. Even the business portion seems to be subdued, refined, and classic. After making due allowance for the fact of knowledge of the nature of the place and interest in it exciting, perhaps, a too intense admiration, one gets the impression that the children are more refined, and that even the street horses are better behaved than elsewhere; he all the time feels as though he was enveloped in an atmosphere of unusual propriety, for there's a sort of Sunday-air about everything.

As at Oxford, the colleges are many in number, and the buildings are of peculiar construction, entirely unlike ours in America. We have given a full description of those at Oxford, and remarks concerning them apply alike to these, for in most respects they do not vary much from each other. It may be said that, take at random one half of those at Oxford, and exchange buildings and grounds with an equal number from Cambridge,—take them promiscuously, and put each respectively in the place of the other,—and you would in no way attract especial attention so far as style, size, or kind of architecture is concerned. Of course all vary from each other, but part of those in one place do not vary from part of those of another, any more than each varies from its neighbor.

Here are the same courts, or closes, called courts at Cambridge, and quads at Oxford. They are always entered by a principal arch or gateway from a main street, and there enclosed is the elegant lawn of that indescribably velvet-like grass, for which such places are celebrated, and which the mild and moist climate so well takes care of and favors. Then there is a grand and scrupulously clean gravel-walk around it, and up against the buildings; and it may be there are good paths across it, leading to other openings, through under the first story to another court of like nature, and yet again to others,—for some colleges have four or more of these.

Everywhere exists a neatness that is remarkable,—no particle of paper nor bit of anything to mar the nicety. Windows innumerable are filled on their outside sills with pots of flowers. We often say, as we pass through the courts and observe the perfect repair every building is in,—the cleanliness, the comfortable quiet,—"How perfect, and what a good public sentiment among the students there must be to make the condition possible."

Aside from these courts, some, and perhaps most of the colleges, have very large and great park-like grounds and of many acres in extent, with walks ancient and shaded with venerable trees. The lazy River Cam moves leisurely through them, as if loath to leave, and as though admiring its visit and stay. As we stood on one of the grand old bridges crossing it,—and there are quite a number on the grounds leading from one division of the park to another, and sometimes, as at St. John's College, connecting two buildings,—as we stood looking down into the water we almost felt that it, as we did, realized that the visit was one of a lifetime, and not to be hurried over.

How inducive of thought are these old classic grounds, centuries in use? Poets, philosophers, and martyrs, the most renowned men of the world, have here walked as we are walking. Oxford has had her great men, and we bow reverently at the thought or even mention of their names. How the destinies of the kingdom and those of the world have been influenced by men to whom Oxford was alma mater; but an intense conservatism has always nestled in her bosom and been suckled at her breasts. For centuries it was Oxford's conscientious duty and work to be conservator of religion and philosophy, and, as she understood it, to see that the ship did not drag anchor, drift, nor move a particle from her ancient moorings of received doctrines and principles; and so, if burning of martyrs would aid the cause, martyrs must be burned, and Hooper and Latimer and Ridley and Cranmer, Cambridge men, must be ensamples and victims. As a result the flame of poetry burned low in that university, and if the world was to have a Milton and a Spenser, a Gray and a Byron, Christ's, Pembroke, and Trinity of Cambridge must furnish them. So of great philosophers! Cambridge's Trinity must furnish Newton and Bacon; and, as named, the great martyrs Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley must go from Jesus, Clare, and Pembroke of this university; and what vast influence in our New England was exerted by the labors of John Robinson, the Pilgrims' minister and spiritual adviser, who although he died before he was permitted to look on this promised land, yet was to the moment of his death their best earthly friend; and so we may speak of Elder Brewster and of John Cotton; of Shepard of Lynn, and Parker and Noyes of Newbury, and all their fellow-contemporaries in the work of the ministry,—hardly one, save the two last named, who did not graduate at Cambridge! Archbishop Laud declared Sidney, Sussex, and Immanuel Colleges here to be "the nurseries of Puritanism." To use the thought of Dean Stanley: "It seems to have been the mission of Cambridge to make martyrs, and the work of Oxford to burn them."

But we pass on and notice the colleges themselves. From their great number and the long history each has, it will be impossible to give even a respectable synopsis of their history, and we can do but little more than name them, as was done for Oxford, in the order of their founding, with the date, and give a sample only of names of the eminent men who have been educated at each; and first in the list is St. Peter's, founded 1284, by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. The library contains 6,000 volumes, and has fine old antique portraits of some of the masters and fellows, dating from 1418 to 1578. Among its eminent men were the famous Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who died 1447. Thomas Gray, author of the renowned "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," died in 1771, and Lord Chief Justice Ellenboro', 1818.