The staple exercise, however, is walking. Between 2 and 4, all the roads in the neighbourhood of Cambridge are covered with men taking their constitutionals. Longer walks, of twelve or fifteen miles, are frequently taken on Sundays. There is not so much riding as might be supposed. When there is ice enough, the cantabs are great skaters. It is almost a sine qua non that their exercise should be in the open air. A finer set of men, consequently, is not to be seen. So bent, indeed, are they upon combining study and recreation, that, during the vacations, they form excursion-parties, which, from their professed design, are called reading-parties (lucus a non lucendo), and of which the utmost that can be advanced in justification of their name is, that reading is not impossible. Reading-parties do not confine themselves to England, or even the United Kingdom; sometimes they go as far as Dresden. When a crack tutor goes on one, which is not often, he takes his whole team with him.
Debating-clubs do not seem to be so common at the English universities as at the Scotch. At Cambridge, there is only one of a public nature—the 'Union.' Henry F. Hallam was instrumental in getting up a small society of about forty members, called the 'Historical.' Another society of a private nature was composed of a number of intellectual aspirants, called the 'Cambridge Apostles;' so called, it is said, because they had usually thirteen members in residence. This was a university feeder to the Metropolitan Club, founded by the friends of John Sterling. Their association had great influence in the formation of their minds and characters—a sort of mutual benefit society in more respects than one. For example, when a member of the club publishes a book, one of the fraternity has a footing in the Edinburgh, another in the Quarterly, a third in Fraser, and a fourth in Blackwood, and so the new work is well introduced. Both Tennyson and Thackeray, it is said, got well taken notice of in this way by their comrades. But there was no plan at the bottom of it—nothing to constitute them a name. The Apostles were always inveighing against cant—always affecting much earnestness, and a hearty dislike of formalism, which rendered them far from popular with the high and dry in literature, politics, or religion. They were eyed with terror by the conservatives as something foreign—German, radical, altogether monstrous. But, in reality, their objects were literary—not religious; and religion only entered into their discussions as it must into those of all serious and philosophic men.
Upon the whole, our young American was much pleased with Cambridge, and much benefited during his residence there. Genial himself, he found Englishmen the same; and though he had his eyes open, while in this country, and never forgot that he was an American, he writes with great impartiality, which raises the value of his intense enthusiasm for the English and English life. After five years' residence, he took leave of his friends in a series of substantial dinners, that there might be a pleasant memory of the transatlantic in their mouths. On a fine May morning, he took his last walk in the beautiful grounds of Trinity, and set out for New York, where he now leads a classical existence, puzzling the natives by his free use of the Græco-cantab dialect, as well as by a semi-pagan sort of worship which he pays to his Alma Mater.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Five Tears at an English University, By C. A. Bristed. 2 vols. New York: 1852.
DREAMS.
Dreams usually take place in a single instant, notwithstanding the length of time they seem to occupy. They are, in fact, slight mental sensations, unregulated by consciousness; these sensations being less or more intense, painful or agreeable, according to certain physical conditions. On this subject, the following observations occur in Dr Winslow's Psychological Journal:—'We have in dreams no true perception of the lapse of time—a strange property of mind! for if such be also its property when entered into the eternal disembodied state, time will appear to us eternity. The relations of space, as well as of time, are also annihilated; so that while almost an eternity is compressed into a moment, infinite space is traversed more swiftly than by real thought. There are numerous illustrations of this principle on record. A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted, was apprehended, carried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and at last led out for execution. After all the usual preparations, a gun was fired; he awoke with the report, and found that a noise in the adjoining room had, at the same moment, produced the dream, and awakened him. A friend of Dr Abercrombie dreamed that he had crossed the Atlantic, and spent a fortnight in America. In embarking, on his return, he fell into the sea, and awakening in the fright, found that he had not been asleep ten minutes.'