imposing public buildings. The greater Colleges lie with their
gatehouses towards the town, their courts and lawns stretching
towards the river, which is spanned by their private bridges. Beyond
the river the eye is charmed with a vista of tall trees and flowery
gardens. In every College there lurk particular treasures. Corpus
Christi, with its old Court abutting on the Saxon Church of St.
Benet, where in bygone days the scholars were wont to worship, can
show the hall in which Kit Marlowe dined and Parker presided. This
College has one of the most interesting libraries in the University,
and one of the best collections of plate in the country. Jesus
College has an unique chapel. Norman and Early English masonry, fine
old stalls, and a mediæval organ may here be seen, and, for those who
care for such things, there are windows by Morris and Burne-Jones.
Examples of Wren's work in Cambridge have already been noticed. The
bridge built from his designs at St. John's is illustrated in the
present volume. No one should miss all there is to see in this
stately College. The Combination Room is a typical Tudor gallery;
and on Feast Nights, when illuminated with wax candles in silver
sconces, it presents a picture unforgetably beautiful. Trinity and
St. John's are the only Colleges possessed of statuary. In the
anti-chapel of the former College the statues of Newton, Bacon,
Barrow, Macaulay, Whewell, and Tennyson form a striking group. That
of Newton is by Roubiliac, and some busts by this admirable master
may be seen in the College library, where too is the celebrated
statue of Byron by Thorwaldsen, and numerous enrichments of the
bookcases by the hand of Grinling Gibbons. This library, which is
one of the principal Collegiate libraries in Europe, has over 100,000
volumes. Among its manuscripts are the celebrated Canterbury
Psalter, a volume of Milton manuscripts (including the first sketch
of _Paradise Lost_), the manuscript of Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, that
of Thackeray's _Esmond_, and several Byron manuscripts. The library
of St. John's College is second only to that at Trinity. It is
approached by a staircase of singular beauty. At Magdalene is the
Pepys Library; and the libraries of Peterhouse, Trinity Hall, and
Queens' are good specimens of mediæval college collections. The
University has two public libraries. Of these the University Library
proper enjoys the right to a copy of every book printed in the realm.
It numbers some 500,000 volumes, and is rich in every kind of
literature. The rule which allows M.A.'s and certain B.A.'s to
borrow books, and which gives readers access to the shelves, makes
this library, as Lord Acton said, "the only useful library in
Europe". The library of the Fitzwilliam Museum includes a remarkable
collection of musical manuscripts, the most valuable of which are
manuscripts of Bach, Handel, and Beethoven.
During the last hundred years Cambridge has been enriched with
numerous laboratories and several collegiate institutions. Of the
latter the most important is Downing College, built in 1805. Two
professors have their maintenance here: one of Medicine, the other of
the Laws of England. On Downing property the present Law Schools,
Geological Museum, and other of the more recent habitations of
science have been built. The great Cavendish Laboratory, to which
the seventh Duke of Devonshire was a conspicuous benefactor, was
built in 1874. Almost every branch of science now possesses its
special museum, while art and the study of antiquities are served by
the Fitzwilliam and the Archæological Museums.
Cambridge to-day is a large and complex community: the undergraduate
population alone has reached nearly four thousand souls. The Senate,
or body of M.A.'s having voting powers in the government of the
University, numbers over seven thousand persons; while the total
number of members of the University who still keep their names "on
the boards" stands at 14,758. Every kind of study, from astral
chemistry to engineering, finds among this mass of people some
professed teachers and eager students.
All this has not been a matter of natural growth. The nineteenth
century saw far-reaching changes imposed upon the University; though
for some time, most Fellows of Colleges were still required to take
Orders, and the rule of celibacy was enforced. By the removal of
these restrictions and by the abolition of Religious Tests, the
University has reaped much benefit. But it has not been all gain.
The amenities of College life in many of the smaller societies have
been considerably interfered with, and that "corporate sense" which
has hitherto been the strength of the college system has been
weakened. On the other hand, the additions which have been made to
the recognized fields of intellectual activity have indisputably made
for the utility of Cambridge as a centre of education; though it is
possible that the demand for young teachers, both public and private,
by drawing men away from private study, may tend to lessen the value
of the University as a contemplative body. Of this danger not
everyone seems unconscious.
[Illustration: CLARE COLLEGE FROM THE BACKS]
As the seventeenth century was the age of Bacon, and the eighteenth
century that of Newton, so the nineteenth century has been called the
age of Darwin. Thus has Cambridge sent three of her sons to
revolutionize the study of Natural Philosophy. Among Cambridge
scientists of modern times are Adams, Airy, Herschell,
Clarke-Maxwell, Stokes, Lords Kelvin, Rayleigh, Avebury, Sir James
Dewar, and Sir Joseph Thompson. Cambridge as a school of medicine
has been celebrated ever since the time of Caius. Its importance at
the present moment is largely owing to the life and labour of the
late Sir Michael Foster. Numerous Cambridge men have held
professorships at Oxford during the century. The names of Maine, Sir
F. Pollock, and Mr. Sidgwick at once occur to the mind; and to-day
the chairs of Astronomy, Physics, Botany, Classical Archæology, and
English Literature in that University are occupied by Cambridge men.
From Cambridge, too, come the Astronomer Royal, his immediate
predecessor, and most of the provincial and colonial astronomers.
Popular fallacies die hard. But it is indeed remarkable that
Cambridge should be supposed to give herself over to mathematical
studies, when it is remembered that she produced in Bentley and
Person the two greatest classics that England ever knew; while in the
nineteenth century Munro, Jebb, and Headlam have won European
reputations as classical scholars; and, of the older Universities,
Cambridge alone confers a purely classical degree. The Cambridge
School of Theology is associated with the names of Westcott,
Lightfoot, and Hort.
Modern Cambridge has been prolific in men of letters: Byron,
Macaulay, Thackeray, Kinglake, Tennyson, Fitzgerald, Grote, Kingsley,
Seely, F. D. Maurice, Samuel Butler, Leslie Stephen, and Maitland are
names taken at random. The list of her public men is a long one and
includes the great Whig peers from Palmerston, Melbourne, Grey, and
Lansdowne to such men as the late Duke of Devonshire and the late
Earl Spencer: the senior branch of the House of Cecil has been
uniformly faithful to Cambridge since the days of the great Lord
Burleigh. The Manners family have been as stoutly Cambridge; and the
late Duke of Rutland, better known as Lord John Manners, was a
familiar figure in the University. It is a Cambridge College that
can claim at this moment the Speaker, the Lord Chief Justice, the
Leader of the House of Lords, the Leader of the Opposition in the
Commons, the Viceroy of India, the Ex-Viceroy, and the retiring
Governor-General of Canada.
Cambridge as a home of legal studies has been famous since the
sixteenth century: Lyndhurst, Cranworth, Pollock, Fitzjames Stephen
are legal luminaries of modern times. Trinity Hall is the College
with which the study of law is particularly associated. For two
hundred years this College practically controlled the Court of
Arches, which until the nineteenth century was some way advanced took
cognizance of all Probate and Admiralty cases, as well as of causes
arising out of ecclesiastical jurisdictions. For some time the
Masters and Fellows appointed the Dean of Arches, and the Master
enjoyed a right to rooms in Doctors' Commons. Among learned
Civilians who have presided over the destinies of "the Hall" are Sir
James Exton, Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, Sir Edward Simpson, and Sir William
Wynne. The last of this order (for the Court of Arches lost its
civil jurisdiction at this time) was Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, whose
name will long be remembered in connection with the celebrated Gorham
judgment. Sir Herbert was succeeded in the Mastership by the late
Sir Henry Summer Maine, of Pembroke College, sometime Corpus
Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford.
The reputation of a College for this or that study is, however, less
precious to its more thoughtful inmates than are those associations
with famous men long since dead which cling to every grove and every
court in Cambridge: to Byron's pool at Grantchester; to Milton's
mulberry tree in the Fellows' garden at Christ's; to the little tower
at Queens' in which Erasmus studied; to the rooms occupied by Gray at
Pembroke; to Newton's at Trinity; or to Wordsworth's at St. John's.
Sometimes such traditions are well founded; but if they be not, what
matter? The strength and value of such things lie in their power to
cause even the youngest of us to see humanity as a grave pageant, of
which we may be witnesses though only for a space. But membership of
an English University carries with it experiences more personal and
more intimate than these. A man may deem himself to be bestowing
scant notice upon his surroundings, and yet there are a hundred
impressions made upon him by sights and sounds, in these his student
days, which pass pattern-wise into the fabric of his nature. Other
phases of College life are remembered in more detail: hours passed in
anxious study for the schools; boisterous gatherings when, with old
wine in young bellies, almost anything seemed worth the saying; eager
struggles in the field or upon the river, when the glory of the
College really did seem to depend upon the muscles of some eight or
fifteen carefully-dieted young men. One recalls these states of mind
as facts; but they have no corresponding values in the world of
sense. The really haunting memories are those of particular
firesides; of the outlook from this or that window seat; of a moonlit
court in summer-time, of the scent of flowers there and of the babble
of the fountain; of choir music by taper light in winter; and of the
ordered chimes leisurely perpetuating their Tudor cadences. Such
thoughts, such recollections
"The past bestows on us,
Like showers along the dusty roads of life,
Or welcome sunbeams on some bleak grey morn,
Cheering the soul in her long pilgrimage".