When we consider that, at the period to which most of the Colleges owe their foundation, all the learning of the day, as well general as professional, was centered in the clergy, it will not appear strange that in so few of them has the admission of laymen been contemplated by the Founders. The present instance however forms a remarkable exception to this rule. For although the original Founder Edmund Gonville was himself an ecclesiastic, he allowed the Master and three Fellows of Gonville Hall, founded in 1349, to be laymen. This foundation was enriched at various times by later benefactors, but in 1557 the College was still more liberally endowed and enlarged by John Caius Doctor in Physic. His object in this application of his fortune seems to have been especially the furtherance and encouragement of Medical science; and we expect by a reference to the works and lives of the various physicians, who have been members of this learned society, to show most decisively that the intentions and expectations of its founder have been fully realised.

Dr. Caius was himself at once one of the most eminent physicians and learned scholars of his day, as his written works and the general estimation of his contemporaries most clearly testify. It cannot therefore be improper to commence the account of the medical worthies of this College by a slight sketch of its principal Founder and Benefactor, himself amongst the most famous of them.

The complaint has sometimes been made, and not without reason, against the situation of our University, that it is placed in the most open and desolate part of one of our least interesting counties. Whether this circumstance is accidental, or whether it is to be accounted as one of the standing monuments of the “wisdom of our forefathers,” we are not prepared to determine; but certain it is, that the desolate appearance of the surrounding country has a marvellous influence in chaining the flighty spirits of our students to the spot intended for their study; and they become more than ordinarily attached to the “brown o'er arching groves” of the Colleges, for lack of other and greater attractions in the neighbourhood.

The same argument is equally applicable, in the case of our University, to its position and appearance in regard to the Town of Cambridge. For if the vicinity to a lately uninclosed dull and unplanted champaign give additional beauty to the walks and wood at the backs of our Colleges, most assuredly their fronts are not less indebted to the foil afforded them by one of the most irregular ill-arranged and ill-built towns in the land.

All spots, it has been often observed, intended for monastic purposes have been selected with remarkable taste. To the eyes of the writer, perhaps partial, the site of St. Rhadegund's nunnery is no exception to the rule, and he hopes for the concession that, as far as the neighbourhood of the Cam will allow, Jesus College is very prettily situated.

The College has two great advantages; one in the possession of a massive square tower rising from the midst of the buildings, and the other in its being isolated and detached from other buildings so that it may be looked on as a whole.

Jesus College appears to have taken the fancy of that pleasant and facetious monarch, James I., who, whatever his failings may have been in other respects, had a great taste for learning and its haunts. His remark is well known–“that if he lived at the University he would pray at King's, dine at Trinity, and study and sleep at Jesus.” There is another remark recorded by Fuller,–“King James in his way from Newmarket greatly commended Jesus College for the situation thereof as most collegiate, retired from the town, and in a meditating posture alone by itself.” Sherman says that he used to call it “Musarum Cantabrigiensium Musæum”. Nor was his admiration confined to words: for the same writer adds that “etiam atque etiam Collegium invisere dignatus est.”