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.“

Like most of the landings on the Hudson, Peekskill is a sort of outstretched hand from the interior of the country. It is about eighty miles from New York, and the produce from the country behind is here handed over to the trading sloops, who return, into the waiting palm, the equivalent in goods from the city. A sort of town naturally springs up at such a spot, and, as a river-side is a great provocative of idleness, all the Dolph Heyligers of the country about seem to be collected at the landing.

The neighbourhood of this spot is interesting from its association with the history of the Revolution. The head-quarters of General Washington were just below, at Verplank's Point; and the town of Peekskill, half a mile back from the river, was the depôt of military stores, which were burnt by General Home in 1777. “On my return southward in 1782,” says the translator of Chastellux, who has not given his name, “I spent a day or two at the American camp at Verplank's Point, where I had the honour of dining with General Washington. I had suffered severely from an ague, which I could not get quit of, though I had taken the exercise of a hard-trotting horse, and got thus far to the north in the month of October.[…]

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.

This town, so suddenly sprung into existence, is about thirty miles from Lake Erie, and exhibits one of those wonders of enterprise which astonish calculation. The waters of Lake Erie, which have come thus far without much descent, are here let down sixty feet by five double locks, and thence pursue a perfectly level course, sixty-five miles, to Rochester. The remarkable thing at Lockport, however, is a deep cut from here to the Torenanta Creek, seven miles in length, and partly through solid rock, at an average depth of twenty feet. The canal boat glides through this flinty bed, with jagged precipices on each side; and the whole route has very much the effect of passing through an immense cavern.

This tract of country is very interesting to the antiquarian, from the remains of fortifications, and other probable traces of a race who existed, and whose arts perished before the occupation of the country by the tribes who lately possessed it. On Seneca river, on the south side of Lake Erie, in many different parts of the State of New York, and in a long chain extending west through the valley of the Ohio, down that of the Mississippi, and so westward through Mexico, are traces of a people who were settled in towns defended by forts, and altogether far more advanced in civilization than the Iroquois found here by Europeans.