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.

Not quite one hundred years after Verrazzano's discovery of the Bay of New York, during all which period we have no account of its having been visited by an European vessel, Hudson made the Capes of Virginia on his third cruise in search of the north-west passage. Standing still on a northward course, he arrived in sight of the Narrows, distinguishing from a great distance the Highlands of Never Sink, which his mate, Robert Juet, describes in the journal he kept as a “very good land to fall with, and a pleasant land to see.”

The most interesting peculiarity of our country to a European observer, is the freshness of its early history, and the strong contrast it presents of most of the features of a highly civilized land, with the youth and recent adventure of a newly discovered one. The details of these first discoveries are becoming every day more interesting: and to accompany a drawing of the Narrows, or entrance to the Bay of New York, the most fit illustration is that part of the journal of the great navigator which relates to his first view of them. The following extracts describe the Narrows as they were two hundred years ago: the drawing presents them as they are.

Three weeks before the first battle of the revolution at Lexington, an emissary was sent to Canada by the Committee of Correspondence in Boston, to ascertain the feelings of the people, and to make such reports as his observations might suggest. His first advice was that Ticonderoga should be seized as quickly as possible.

The “Green Mountain Boys” were at this time fresh from their resistance to the new grants, and were immediately fixed upon as the best force to achieve this object. The little army, already organized under the famous Ethan Allen, assembled at Castleton, and the main body, consisting of one hundred and forty men, marched directly to the shore of the lake, opposite Ticonderoga. It was important to have a guide who was acquainted with the ground around the fortress and the places of access. Allen made inquiries as to these points of Mr. Beman, a farmer residing near the lake, who answered that he seldom crossed the Ticonderoga, and was little acquainted with the particulars of its situation; but that his son, Nathan, a young lad, passed much of his time there in company with the boys of the garrison.

The boy was called, and appeared by his answers to be familiar with every nook in the fort, and every passage and by-path by which it could be approached.

During the last Canadian war, Genpral Putnam, the famous partisan soldier, made the first descent upon Goat Island. A wager had been, laid, that no man in the army would dare to cross the Rapids from the American side; and with the personal daring for which he was remarkable, above all the men of that trying period, he undertook the feat. Selecting the four stoutest and most resolute men in his corps, he embarked in a batteau just above the island, and with a rope attached to the ring-bolt, which was held by as many muscular fellows on the shore, he succeeded by desperate rowing in reaching his mark. He most easily towed back, and the feat has since been rendered unnecessary by the construction of the bridge from which the accompanying view is taken.

Many years since, a Tonemanta chief, after a violent quarrel with his squaw, lay down to sleep in his canoe. The little bark was moored just out of the tide of Niagara river, at the inlet to the creek which takes its name from his tribe, and the half-drunken chief, with his bottle of rum in his bosom, was soon fast asleep among the sedges. The enraged squaw, finding, after several attempts, that she could not get possession of the bottle without waking him, unmoored the canoe, and swimming out of the creek, pushed it before her into the swift tide of the river.

There are very few remaining of the many covered, gable-ended, top-heavy, old houses which constituted the compact centre of Boston in the days of English governors. The finest specimens long stood in the neighbourhood of Faneuiel Hall; but, with one exception, we believe, their picturesque heaps of triangles have dropped beneath the merciless hand of speculation and improvement. Boston has not grown so thriftily, or rather so miraculously, as the capitols of other States, through which the flood of emigration rolls more directly; but it is certainly the handsomest town in the United States, and probably its prosperity is more permanent and solid. Its granite houses and fine public buildings are in strong contrast with the description given of it by John Josselyn, Gent, who visited it in 1638, and afterwards favoured the world with his observations under the title of “New England Rarities.” “Having refreshed myself for a day or two on an island in the bay,” he says, “I crossed the harbour in a small boat to Boston, which was then rather a village than a town, there not being more than above twenty or thirty houses: and presented my respects to Mr. Muthrop the governor, and to Mr. Cotton the teacher of Boston Church, to whom I delivered from Mr. Francis Quarles, the poet, the translation of several Psalms in English metre for his approbation.”

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.

Of all groves, downwards from that where Hercules cut his club, none perhaps has been more fruitful in the article in question than those of Alma Mater. Political clubs, clubs literary, hunting and boating clubs, clubs for encouraging agriculture by devouring beef-steaks, clubs to perpetuate the dress of the seventeenth century, archery clubs, private debating clubs, and clubs for ‘natation’ as the French call it, have all in their turns, some for a season, others perpetually, flourished in the University.

The history of societies like these is a task hard to perform, owing to the fleeting nature of its subject and the great difficulty of ascertaining any thing about it except for the last few years. If our grandfathers had their clubs, any records regarding them can only be found by accident, and in default of access to stores of manuscript referring to the last century we must leave to our readers the puzzling problem as to when clubs were first established here, and why.

For the last half century, the youth of our Universities have been continually advancing in manly habits. Instead of boy-bishops of thirteen or non-descripts of sixteen, the students of the present age rarely appear before eighteen at the earliest. A great change in our habits has been the consequence, aided of course by the altered fashions of the world without.

From this admirably chosen spot, the Bay of New York appears with every accessory of beauty. The city itself comes into the left of the picture to an advantage seen from no other point of view, the flocks of river-craft scud past in all directions, men-of-war, merchantmen, steamers, and ferry-boats, fill up the moving elements of the panorama; and far away beyond stretches the broad harbour, with its glassy or disturbed waters, in all the varieties of ever-changing sea-view. It was on this side that Hudson, who had felt the hostility of the Manhattan Indians, found a friendlier tribe, and made his first amicable visit on shore. The Indian tradition, springing from that visit, and describing the first intoxication they had ever experienced, is extremely amusing.

“A long time ago, before men with a white skin had ever been seen, some Indians, fishing at a place where the sea widens, espied something at a distance moving upon the water. They hurried ashore, collected their neighbours, who together returned and viewed intensely this astonishing phenomenon. What it could be, baffled all conjecture. Some supposed it to be a large fish or animal, others that it was a very big house, floating on the sea.[…]

There is a remarkable point of view on the South Eastern side of Christ's College gardens, at the right-hand of the bowling green; it represents in succession the spire of Trinity Church, the Tower of Great St. Mary's, and the pinnacled gothic roof of King's College Chapel, the whole displaying a panorama embraced in a beautiful framework of foliage such as Nature rarely furnishes even to one of her choicest pictures. Often have we seen the stranger in Cambridge, who has been led into these gardens to pay his respects at Milton's tree, arrest suddenly his footsteps, as if startled with surprise, as soon as he had reached the spot which commands this lovely prospect; and we question, unless perhaps he be some enthusiastic admirer of Liberty or Poetry, some devoted worshipper of Republicanism, or wrapt child of song, we question whether he has not returned considering himself better repaid for his visit by this passing and unexpected treat, than by the recollections or meditations which the Spirit of the Great Bard himself might evoke.

Much depends in all cases upon the day and the hour, the time and place, at which an object of interest is first presented to our consideration: the first impressions are like first love, generally the most durable, because they are the deepest;—they are sealed, as it were, on the soft vermillion of the heart, whose surface, though in after days seared and broken by less pleasing occurrences, retains faithfully to the last the precious stamp of early and dear remembrances.

The Cambridge Press, is, like that of the Sister University, of great, though disputed antiquity. Its undoubted existence reaches back for a period of 319 years, and it has claims to a duration still more extended. Among the κειμήλια equeathed by Archbishop Parker to Corpus Christi College is to be found a quaint old folio, commencing “Fratris laurencii gulielmi de saona ordinis minorum sacre theologie doctoris prohemium in novam rhetoricam,” and concluding “compilatum autem fait hoc opus in alma universitate Cantabrigie, Anno Domini 1478. Die. et. 6. Julii. quo die festum sancte Marthe recolitur. Sub protectione Serenissimi regis anglorum Eduardi quarti.” This colophon is, as the reader will perceive, conclusive only as to the date of the composition of the work in question. The absence however of pagination, signatures, or catch-words, points it out as printed very little later than the date of its composition; so the only thing to be settled is, where it, in point of fact, was printed, which may as well have been at Cambridge as any where else; at least the chances in favour of the supposition bear a relation, which may be ascertained, to those against it, and a relation much greater than might at first have been supposed from the mode of stating the question, inasmuch as Friar Laurence was clearly at that time a resident in the University of Cambridge, probably a lecturer there.

This view out from the gorge of the highlands presents a foreground of cliff and shadow, with their reflections almost folded across in the bosom of the river, and a middle ground of the village of Newburgh and the gently-undulating country in the rear. The blue and far-off line of the Kaatskills shuts in the horizon.

There is some very romantic scenery hidden among the undulations just mentioned, embracing several small rivers, and a romantic stream, called Murderer's Creek, a tributary of the Hudson. Mr. Poulding, in his “New Mirror for Travellers,” gives the following interesting legend in explanation of the name:—

“Little more than a century ago, the beautiful region watered by this stream was possessed by a small tribe of Indians, which has long since become extinct, or been incorporated with some other savage nation of the West. Three or four hundred yards from where the stream discharges itself into the Hudson, a white family, of the name of Stacey, had established itself in a log-house, by tacit permission of the tribe, to whom Stacey had made himself useful by his skill in a variety of little arts highly estimated by the savages. In particular, a friendship existed between him and an old Indian, called Naoman, who often came to his house and partook of his hospitality. The Indians never forgive injuries or forget benefits.[…]

This is one of the most harmonious combinations of mountain, vale, and river, to be found in America; we know not whether to call it more beautiful or grand. Fine as is all the scenery of this neighbourhood, however, it is not till very lately that the current of travel has turned thither, and but partially yet. Harper's Ferry will soon be a resort for admirers of nature from all nations, and it may well share the honours of pilgrimage with Trenton Falls and Niagara. Steam navigation across the Atlantic will make our New World lions as tame as the Pyramids.

It is difficult, at least for me, to stand on any eminence commanding a landscape, wild, yet formed for a blest human residence, without seeing in it the forfeited inheritance of the red man. The unpicturesque new village of the white man, his mill, or his factory, does not convey to my imagination an image of happiness; and I regret the primitive rover of the wild, who neither blackened nature with smoke, nor violated her harmony with brick and shingle. The tide of sympathy seems turning of late against these oppressed tribes, and it is not amiss sometimes to remember our own atrocities as well as theirs. What will be thought hereafter of the massacre of the poor Conestogoes, as related in the history of these middle regions of our territory!