It cannot fail to have been often remarked, that our two Universities, the only two strictly classic towns of our most unclassic land, are rarely if ever contemplated in that spirit of enthusiasm and poetic admiration, which is naturally due to the nursing mothers of so many of our saints and sages, our philosophers and bards divine,

The feelings, on the contrary, with which our Alma Mater is generally approached, are either, on the part of her existing sons, those of careless indifference to the past, while all their thoughts are centred in their own immediate engagements or troubles, trials of strength physical or intellectual, the feats of the quill or the rifle, the whip or the oar: or, on the part of the strangers, who resort occasionally to the sequestered retreats of our academic bowers, the ideas, we apprehend, if closely analysed, would be found too often to flow in a far more confined and unintellectual channel; being limited for the most part to the probable amount of tradesmen's bills, the expense of furnishing apartments, the relative cost of lodgings in town or rooms in college, with all the other paraphernalia and wretched solicitudes of a mind,

Certainly, such are not the sentiments which are most genial to the place, if estimated according to its just pretensions; and it would have been not more difficult for the distracted poet of the Roman satirist's imagination to conceive

than for one occupied with thoughts like these to imbibe the inspiration which impregnates the atmosphere breathed once by a Bacon and a Newton, a Milton, and a Gray.

Samuel Pepys, the subject of this brief memoir, was born A.D. 1632: he was educated at St. Paul's School, which he quitted about the year 1650, and was entered as a Sizar of Trinity College; but he transferred his name to the boards of Magdalene College on commencing his residence in the University. In the year 1660 he took his degree of M. A. by proxy: this privilege was granted at the instance of Dr. Fairbrother; and being then very rarely allowed “did”, says he, “somewhat please me, though I remember my cousin Roger Pepys was the other day persuading me from it.” He was well connected, although his father followed the trade of a tailor. His cousin, above alluded to, was the person of greatest local importance at Cottenham; and there was a family connexion with the famous Hobson, the carrier. Amongst his immediate relations he numbered Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, to whose patronage his advancement may in a great measure be attributed. On January 1st, 1659-60, he commenced his Diary, the early part of which details many little indications of that progressive change of public feeling which preceded the Restoration. His joining with Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell in a Canon, composed by the former, the words of which were “Domine salvum fac Regem;” and his drinking to the health of the King in the cellar of Audley End, are soon followed by the notice of the people of Deal setting “the King's flags upon one of their May-poles, and drinking his health upon their knees in the streets, and firing the guns, which the soldiers of the Castle threatened, but dared not oppose.“

SATURDAY, JULY 4

In my hearty commendations to you, worthy Sir, I will first pray you to bespeak me your singular good friend, and, in the words of honest Cutwoode, ‘to pardon me if out of mine own humour and knowledge of myself I deliver this conceit before my booke, that all we write is but conceit, and nothing pleaseth conceited men more than to have partners and acquaintances with their conceits.’ Therefore if peradventure you be not so overweeningly conformed to the fashion of the present times, as to eschew my quaint and rusty language, understand ye, that I am disposed to devise a pretty chronicle for your diversion, wherein I shall tente to set forth, God willing, the most memorable entertainment and spectacle now presented by the loyal and learned Universitie of Cambridge, in honour of the Installation of the most noble and honourable good Lord, my Lord the Marquis Camden; who, upon the sorrowful decease of His Grace of Gloucester, hath now newly succeeded to the chair of Lord Chancellor of the said Universitie; wherein, in comparison of place and persons, pomp and pageantry, wine and wassail, you would have to look both north and south, at home and abroad, to see the like again.

I would you were with me here, Master Peter, to advantage you might admire in my company the rare witcheries of this delectable spot.

If a stranger in visiting Cambridge, were to content himself with merely passing through the streets, and viewing the exterior of such Colleges as there present themselves to the eye, he would have a poor opinion of what Lord Coke calls “that famous University.” The town itself is irregularly built, and appears from a distance to emerge from a kind of marshy wilderness. Nothing can be more flat and uninteresting than the scenery around. Robert Hall, of Leicester, was accustomed to ascribe the insanity which at one time clouded his fine faculties, in part, to the monotony of view which pressed upon his spirits, while for some time he was stationed at Cambridge; and quaintly compared the willows that droop over the side of “sedgy Camus,” to nature putting up signals of distress. This, no doubt, was a bold and exaggerated mode of expressing the fact that the country around possesses little natural beauty. And it may seem strange that such should be the case. For some of the loveliest situations in our land are occupied by the gray ruins of what were once flourishing monasteries, priories, and abbeys. It is a pleasing thought, which perhaps we may be allowed to cherish, that the pious founders of those noble piles selected those sites which should best attune the soul of man to the exercise of devotion.

Thomas Legge of Norwich, who was first elected Fellow of Trinity and then of Jesus College, was afterwards appointed by John Caius the nineteenth Master of this College in the year 1573, as may be seen in the Annals, p. 135. He was Doctor of Laws, 1574; one of the Masters of Chancery, Doctor of the Court of Arches, Commissary of the University, and twice Vice-Chancellor, in the years 1587 and 1592, and died on the 12th of July, 1607, in the 72nd year of his age, after he had successfully directed the college for thirty-four years and two weeks. A great amiability of manner was the most prominent feature in his character, by which he kept the fellows of the college attached to him with all love and respect; while his zeal in promoting literature and rewarding the endeavours of the young men who made it their pursuit rendered him admired as well as beloved.

Though in other respects of grave disposition and though always actively engaged in his forensic duties, he used to amuse himself when tired of business with seeing and composing plays, particularly tragedies: one of these that represented the cruel disposition of Richard the Third was once publicly acted in the hall of St. John's College, and was received with the greatest applause by the spectators, members of the University: another, the subject of which was the Fall of Jerusalem, he finished off at his leisure hours in order that he might make it a perfect performance, but when at length it was rendered complete in every part our expectations were disappointed by some thievish plagiarist.

We confess ourselves rather puzzled to know in what manner to deal with the hero of the present chapter, under so many different forms is he represented by his biographers. The greater part of them represent him as uniting the professions of horsedealer and carrier in his own person, and at the same time exhibit him as a benefactor of our town in a way hereafter to be told. One chronicler hails him

Another,

while Milton endeavours to overthrow all these opinions by asserting him to be

But as the last named authority elsewhere informs us that

we must reject his evidence as contradicting itself, and treat our hero as a man indeed, but of that species of which Proteus was the progenitor.

And, first, all dwellers in and visitors of Cambridge are well acquainted with a stream which runs by their side for a quarter of a mile as they come into the town on the London Road, and which, after accompanying them from the Bridge to the end of Downing Terrace, is there separated into two parts, one of which runs down both sides of Trumpington Street as far as Pembroke College, where it disappears like the Arethusa of old and is seen no more until sought for in its ortygia, the conduit in the Market Place: down both sides of Regent Street, until like its fellow it disappears opposite Christ's College and flows underground to the same conduit.

THE LIFE OF JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER

The little town of Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, had the honour of giving birth, about the middle of the 15th century, to two of the most learned Prelates and greatest benefactors of Cambridge in that age, John Alcock, and John Fisher, both Bishops of Rochester, the former being from thence advanced to Ely, a preferment which the other declined; and both Founders of famous Colleges, in doing which they each unwarily established a precedent which was afterwards employed for the suppression of the Monasteries. The following Sketch of the latter will more especially regard his connection with Cambridge.

John Fisher was born A.D. 1459. His father was, as we may collect from his will, a somewhat wealthy merchant and a zealous churchman, as he bequeaths several legacies to different convents and churches, and his body to be buried in that ‘of the blessed Mary of Beverley, before the crucifix.’ His widow, though she married again, proved a careful mother to the two sons of her former husband, John and Robert, who were left very young. As soon as they were of an age to go to school, she committed them to the care of a priest of the collegiate church of St. John of Beverley, who taught them their letters and the rudiments of grammar; and as John gave great promise of aptness for learning, it was determined that he should be sent to Cambridge, ‘distant from his native soyle about viij dayes journey southwarde.