23 Alexander Gooden to Mary Gooden, 23 October 1836

My Dear Mother

My father will probably have informed you how little I was at first captivated with the external appearance of Cambridge. Nothing material has occurred since his departure, and I may therefore as well record for my own amusement, and I hope they will not be unamusing to you, my first impressions of the place. If I had been asked my opinion on the first night after my arrival, I should have described Cambridge as a dull and shabby town. The colleges which present on the side of the street very much the appearance that our own Inns of Court do (especially the Temple) are of all colours sizes and styles of architecture. Here you have a fine, modern looking edifice, and there a dingy collection of brick towers; here the walls are on a line with the street, and there a college stands aloof from it in the midst of a garden. The shops and houses are without exception small and shabby; I have not seen one that looks like the residence of a private gentleman; indeed they seldom exceed 3 stories in height. The streets are narrow and of course the pavement is the same; so that you must skip along in the kennell and on the causeway as well as you can. The churches are numerous and old but not large. After entering the gate of a college you generally find a quadrangle (at Trinity a very fine one) from which you pass on to one or more, and so to the college walks which are commonly behind the buildings. This takes from the beauty of the colleges because the gardens are not seen until you actually enter them. The trees are very fine, the gravel walks very well kept, and the grass-plots very well rolled.

The river Cam both in colour and width strongly resembles a ditch; but several bridges crossing it connect the different parts of the colleges with one another: and where it flows (I should rather say creeps) through the college grounds the banks are grassy and sloping and lined with elms and other large trees.