FIVE YEARS IN AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CAMBRIDGE. "THE sage council not being able to determine upon any plan for the building of their city, the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their peculiar charge; and as they went to and fro from pasture, established paths through the bushes, on each side of which the good folks built their houses." KNICKERBOCKER'S NEW YORK. "And round the cool green courts there ran a row Of cloisters, branched like mighty woods, Echoing all night to that sonorous flow Of spouted fountain floods." TENNYSON'S PALACE OF ART. MAGINE the most irregular town that can be im IMA agined, streets of the very crookedest kind, twisting about like those in a nightmare, and not unfrequently bringing you back to the same point you started from. Some of these tortuous lanes are without trottoirs, like the streets of old Continental towns; but it is more common to find a passage or short street all sidewalk— as we call what the English call causeway-without any carriage road. The houses are low and antique; sometimes their upper stories project out into and over the narrow pathway, making it still narrower; and their lower stories are usually occupied as shops-tailors and booksellers being the predominant varieties. Every now and then your road passes over a muddy little river, not larger than a tolerable canal, which rambles through and about the town in all sorts of ways, so that in whatever direction you walk from any point, you are pretty sure to come to a bridge before long. Such is the town of Cambridge-the bridge over the Cam. Among these narrow, ugly and dirty streets, are tumbled in, as it were at random (for the whole place looks as if it had been dancing to Amphion's music, and he had left off in the middle of a very complicated figure) some of the most beautiful academical buildings in the world. However their style of architecture may vary, according to the period at which they they were built or rebuilt, they agree in one essential feature: all the colleges are constructed in quadrangles or courts; and, as in course of years the population of every college, except one,* has outgrown the original quadrangle, new courts have been added, so that the larger foundations have three, and one (St. John's) has four courts. times the "old court," or primitive part of the building presents a handsome front to the largest street near it; but frequently, as if to show its independence of, and contempt for, the town, it retires from the street altogether, showing the passer by only its ugliest wall, and smallest, shabbiest gate. This is particularly the case with the very largest and most distinguished colleges. Some You enter, then, by a portal neither particularly large nor very striking in its appearance, but rather the reverse, into a spacious and elegant square. There are neat grass-plots and walks, a fountain in the centre; on one side stands a well proportioned chapel, in one cor * Downing College, which only went into operation in 1800, and may be considered still in its infancy. ner you catch a glimpse through a tantalizing grating, of a beautiful garden, appropriated to the delectation of the authorities. In a second court you find sounding and venerable cloisters, perhaps a veritable structure of monkish times; if not, a satisfactory imitation of that period. And as you look on the walls, here rich with sculptured ornament, there covered with trailing and festooning ivy, the theory and idea of the college edifice begin to strike you-its front is inside for its own benefits; it turns its back upon the vulgar outside. But you have not yet fathomed and sounded its spirit of seclusion. The entries are narrow and low; the staircases narrow and tortuous; the iron-bound doors, closed by some mysterious spring, or open only to show another door within, look like the portals of a feudal dungeon. But up those break-neck staircases, and inside those formidable doors (sometimes with the additional preliminary of a small, dark passage), are luxurious suites of rooms, not exactly like those of a Parisian hotel or a "doublehouse" in the Fifth Avenue, but quite as beautiful and much more comfortable. The apartments and the entrance seem made in inverse proportion to each other; a mere hole in the wall sometimes leads you to half a house of rooms; and most cosy rooms they are, with their prodigiously thick walls that keep out the cold in winter, and heat (when there is any) in summer; their impregnable sporting-doors that defy alike the hostile dun and the too friendly "fast man," and all their quaint appurtenances, such as book-cases of the true scholastic sort, sunk into and forming part of the wall, so that it would not be easy to appropriate them or the space they occupy to any other purpose: queer little nooks of studies, just large enough to hold a man in an arm-chair and a big dictionary; unexpected garrets, which the very occupant of the rooms never goes into without an air of enterprise and mystery, and which the old priests used for oratories-perhaps; the modern Cantabs keep their wine in them. Late in October, 1840, a young New Yorker was losing himself among the impracticable streets, and admiring the remarkable edifices of Cambridge. He was surprised at the number and variety of the academical buildings and their distance from one another; for, though knowing that the different colleges were separate and independent foundations, connected only by a few general ties, he had expected something like contiguity of location, and was not prepared to find them scattered over an area of some miles. Nor was it without some degree of curiosity that he inspected such of the population as he met, a curiosity which they were not slow to retaliate with abundance of eye-glasses. Dressed in the last Gothamite fashion, with the usual accessories of gold chain and diamond pin, the whole surmounted by a blue cloth cloak, he certainly bore no resemblance, in point of costume, to any of the academical public whom he encountered. The Cantabs' garb generally consists of a not too new black coat (frock or cutaway), trousers of some substantial stuff, grey or plaid, and a stout waistcoat, frequently of the same pattern as the trousers. Straps are unknown to him, and instead of boots he wears easy low-heeled shoes, for greater convenience in fence and ditch jumping, and other feats of extempore gymnastics which diversify his "constitutionals." The only showy part of his attire is the cravat, which is apt to be blue or some other decided color, and fastened in front with a large gold-headed *Words of this class I spell without the #, because the practice pin. During the middle of the day this outfit is completed by a hat of the average ugliness of English hats, but before 12 A. M., and after 4 P. M., you must superadd the academical costume. This consists of a gown, varying in color and ornament according to the wearer's college and rank, but generally black, not unlike an ordinary clerical gown, and a square-topped cap, which fits close to the head like a truncated helmet, while the covered board which forms the crown measures about a foot diagonally across. It is not by any means a sine qua non that the cap and gown should be in good order and condition; the latter is often sadly torn and faded, while the former retains but few traces of its original form after the rough usage it has undergone. To steal caps and gowns is no more an offence against the eighth commandment in Cambridge, than to steal umbrellas is with us an additional reason for their appearance being little thought of. In one thing only is the Cantab particular the one nicety of every English gentleman, however clumsy or shabby the rest of his dress may be -his linen is always faultless. A dirty shirt, or even a badly got up one, is a phenomenon in the University. Peculiar as the academic costume is, its effect is by no means unbecoming; on the contrary, it adds, in a majority of cases, to the dignity and style of the wearer. Nor must it be supposed that the gownsmen are thin, study-worn, consumptive-looking individuals. The stranger's first impression was, that he had never seen so fine a body of young men together. Almost every man looked able and ready to row eight miles, walk of good writers varies sufficiently to leave their orthography an open question and allow any person to adopt whichever form he prefers; not because Webster, who is no authority at all among scholars, spells them thus. |