Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-19T19:35:32.357Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

THE FIRST MILESTONE FROM CAMBRIDGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2010

Edited by
Get access

Summary

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 few whom genius gave to shine

Through every unborn age and undiscovered clime.

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,

de lodice paranda

Attonitæ.

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

The steeds, the chariots, and the forms of gods;

And the fierce Fury, as her snakes she shook,

And withered the Rutulian with a look,

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1840

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×