Oxford and Cambridge.

I had seen Oxford in vacation, and again during term; I had now the privilege of attending its Encænia. The occasion brings many distinguished persons to the University, and the pleasures of dining and breakfasting in the college-halls, and with private parties, are greatly enhanced by such additions to the company of eminent residents. The ceremonies in the Academic theatre sadly disappointed me. Imagine an open area, filled with gownsmen and their friends, and surrounded by tiers of boxes filled with ladies, above which, near the ceiling, is elevated a third tier, full of undergraduates. The Dons and doctors, in their robes, sit on either side of the Vice-Chancellor, at one extremity of the theatre, in a place something between a row of boxes and an orchestra. In the presence of ladies and of such grave and reverend seniors, one naturally expects decorum from all parties; but though I had often read of the frolics in which the undergraduates are permitted to indulge on these occasions, I confess I was not fully prepared for the excessive and prolonged turbulence of the scene. While awaiting the opening of the ceremonial, it was well enough to laugh at the cheers of the youth as they called out successively the names of favourite public personages, or at their sibilations, when the names of “Lord John Russell” and “Cardinal Wiseman” were proposed for merited derision. But when, again and again, as the venerable Vice-Chancellor rose to make a beginning, his voice was vociferously outnoised by that of the boys overhead, I began to think the joke was carried a little too far. There had been some omission of customary music, and to supply the deficiency, uprose those legions of youth, and shouted—God save the Queen, in full chorus, stanza after stanza, till the Dons looked eminently disloyal in their impatience. The Creweian Oration was delivered by the Public Orator, and I was particularly desirous of marking his pronunciation of Latin words, as well as the general merit of a performance in which once, upon a like occasion, Bishop Lowth so handsomely acquitted himself. But, I think, I speak within bounds when I say that scarcely an entire sentence could be heard, from beginning to end. All manner of outcries assailed the speaker, from his rising till he surceased. At one time, an extremely impudent personality excited a general smile. The orator waxed warm as he spoke, and growing quite rubicund of visage, some flagitious freshman cried out—“Pray stop; it makes me hot to look at you.” Several distinguished individuals, bishops and generals, and scientific men, were presented to receive the Doctorate in Civil Law, and now I supposed the hospitality of the University would suffice to shield the eminent personages from the annoyance of such untimely fun. But there was no cessation, and when Sir W. Page Wood was presented, there was a merry cry of “inutile lignum,” at which no one laughed more heartily than the party himself. Verily, thought I, if this were unheard of in England, and were only set down in the book of some peregrine Dickens, as what he saw in America, at a Harvard Commencement, how inevitably would it figure in reviews and newspapers as a telling fact against the disorganizing tendencies of democratic education! In Oxford, it is regarded as a mere outbreak of youthful merriment, and such is indeed the case: and yet, unless Encænia and Saturnalia are synonymous terms, one must be allowed to think the custom best honoured in the breach. I must add, that during the delivery of a poem, by an undergraduate, his comrades showed more respect, and the tumult subsided for a time, like that of Ephesus, on the remonstrance of the town-clerk. The young poet pronounced his numbers in the same tribune where once stood Reginald Heber, enchanting all hearers with his “Palestine.”

A lunch in the superb new hall of Pembroke, of which many ladies partook with the other guests, giving the hall an unusually gay appearance; a dinner at Oriel, and afterwards sport with bowls, and other games, in the garden of Exeter; and, finally, a very agreeable evening party at Magdalen; these were the other occupations of the day, in which I greatly enjoyed the society with which I mingled. I was particularly pleased to observe the enthusiasm of the female visitors of Oxford, many of whom had come up for the first time, and were less acquainted with the place than myself. It was a novel pleasure, on my part, to turn cicerone, and to explain to a group of English ladies, the wonders of the University.

Next morning, after breakfast at Merton, and a lunch at Jesus College, with some kind friends who were preparing to leave Oxford for the Long Vacation, I went, in the company of some of them, to Bedford, and there took coach for Cambridge. I thought of John Bunyan, who once inhabited the county-jail, in this place, and there composed his wonderful allegory; and as I began to travel along the banks of the Ouse, I thought of William Cowper, who was one of the first to do justice to his piety and genius. If the Church of England, sharing in the fault of the times, (and visiting others with far milder penalties than both Papists and Puritans laid upon her) was in any sort a party to his ill-usage, it must be owned that she has done him full justice, in the end. He owed his enlargement to the Bishop of Lincoln’s interposition, and Cowper and Southey have affixed the stamp, and given currency to the gold of his genius. I am ashamed that he was not taken into the Bishop of Lincoln’s house, and made a deacon, and so cured of the mistaken enthusiasm which was evidently the misfortune of the tinker, and not the natural bent of the man.

Our journey lay over a dull and level country, and there was little to enliven it, except the conversation of a young Oxonian going to see the rival University. A cantab, returning from Oxford, maintained a good-natured debate with him, in favour of his own alma-mater. We went through St. Neot’s, where I remembered Cowper again; descried at the distance of some twenty miles the majestic bulk of Ely Cathedral, and finally greeted the fair vision of King’s College, conspicuous among the other academic homes of Granta. It was the fourth of July—and thoughts of the very different scenes through which my friends were passing in America, were continually in my mind. Here it was not thought of, though a day which has left its mark upon Great Britain, and the world. Was it the day of a rebellion? By no means; unless the day that seated William of Orange on the throne of England was such. Our fathers ceased to be Englishmen, because a corrupt and incompetent Ministry were resolved that they should no longer be freemen. I thank God we are no longer at the mercy of such men as Lord John Russell, and Sir William Molesworth. So I mused, even as I stood, for the first time, in venerable Cambridge, where some of my forefathers were educated, and where I felt it a sort of wrong to be disinherited of a filial right to feel at home.

I was not disappointed, disagreeably, in Cambridge, but the reverse; and it grew upon me every hour that I was there. One of my first visits was to the truly poetical courts of Caius, where the singular quaintness of its three gates charmed alike my sight and fancy. “Before honour is humility”—and here the proverb is translated into architecture. You must pass through the gate of humility, and the gate of virtue, before emerging through the gate of honour. Strange that the beneficent founder of this college, like Dr. Faust, in Germany, should have left his name to legend-makers and fabulists, and so to comedy, and the “Merry Wives of Windsor.”

The noble twin of Oxford is certainly inferior in the appearance which she first presents to a stranger, and yet, from the first, the chapel of King’s is a superb sight, which even Oxford might almost grudge to her sister. I greatly regretted reaching Cambridge during a vacation, when comparatively few of the gownsmen were on the spot. Still, having become so familiar with academic manners, in Oxford, it seemed hardly necessary to do more than survey the still-life of Cambridge, in order to understand it as well. The diversities between the Universities are indeed many, and all my prepossessions are in favour of Oxford; and yet, after a brief external survey of her rival, and much conversation with some of her loyal sons, I can easily understand their attachment to her, and the pride they take in her reputation, as well as their firm conviction of her superiority. To an American, indeed, the late election of so unfit a person as Prince Albert to be their Chancellor, is a surprising thing; and it is no very bright omen, for the University, that the prince already aims to shape it, as near as possible, after the similitude of Bonn, his own garlicky, blouse-wearing, and pipe-smoking Alma Mater, in Teutschland. But, on the other hand, the spirited resistance which was made to that measure, in bold opposition even to the known wishes of a beloved Queen, is instanced, by many Cantabrigians, as a proof of devotion to great principles, of which they have reason to be proud. They have a thousand better reasons for being proud of their University, and would that their Chancellor, who is otherwise so well qualified, had the power to appreciate and feel them half as warmly as many an American does, from the depth of his soul!

Cambridge struck me as an older and less modernized place than Oxford. Its streets are a labyrinth, and many of them present the appearance of Continental, rather than of Insular Europe. One of the first things that struck me was the conduit erected by the same “old Hobson” whom Milton celebrates, and from whom comes the adage of “Hobson’s choice.” He was a carrier, and kept horses to let, but made the Cantabs take the horse that stood next the stable-door whenever they came to hire. He certainly was a remarkable man, for what other carrier was ever consigned to immortality by a monument in Cambridge, by a practical proverb, and by a memorial in the verse of such a poet as Milton?

As the means of information respecting Cambridge are in everybody’s hands, and as the picturesque of its colleges and grounds is familiar from engravings, I shall spare my reader the trouble of details which might seem a repetition of those of Oxford. In St. John’s college, which its own men are accused of considering the University, I found the chapel, though small and plain, a most attractive place. Its “non-juror windows,” and other memorials, revive many historical names. I know not why the Johnians have received the Pindaric epithet of Swine, but so it is; and the peculiarly pretty bridge, spanning the Cam, which unites its quadrangles and halls, has accordingly won the sportive name of the “Isthmus of Sues.” In the very pleasant grounds adjacent, I plucked a leaf from the silver-beech, said to have been planted by Henry Martyn, and breathed a blessing on his memory. A fellow of Trinity kindly devoted himself to showing me the attractions of his college, and they are very great. The library is a Valhalla of literary heroes, the sons of Trinity, whose busts adorn the alcoves: and the statue of Byron, by Thorwaldsen, is a superb addition to its treasures of art, which, on the whole, will do no harm here, excluded as it was from Westminster Abbey, by a virtuous abhorrence of the bold blasphemer whom it represents, and thus stamped as deep with infamy as it is otherwise clothed with attractiveness. Among the relics of the collection, there were two which any man must behold with reverence: a lock of Sir Isaac Newton’s hair, and the original manuscripts of Paradise Lost, and of Lycidas! Then to the chapel—that chapel which ever since I read “the Records of a Good Man’s Life,” in school-boy days, I had longed to see, and where I had often wished it had been my lot to pray, in college life. In the ante-chapel, there was that statue of Newton, so beautifully described by the author, as arresting the melancholy attentions of a consumptive youth, as he passed it, for the last time, in his surplice, and confessed that this had been too much his idol, in that house of God, filling his enthusiasm with the worship of genius, when he should have thought only of his Maker. I shall never forget the thrills of excited imagination with which I received some of my first impressions of Cambridge, in reading that story of Singleton: and now they all revived as I stood upon the spot.

Among the attractions of the small colleges, I must not omit to mention the chapel of Jesus College, which has lately undergone a thorough restoration, and presents one of the most beautiful specimens of revived mediævalism in art which I have ever seen. It is the work of an accomplished gentleman of the college, assisted to some extent by the voluntary contributions of undergraduates. Nothing of the kind which I saw in Oxford can compare with this exquisite Oratory. I went to Christ’s college and saw Milton’s mulberry—a pleasant memorial of his best days; the days when he was the “lady of his college” for youthful comeliness, and the man of his college for the genius that produced Lycidas, and for the unsoured feelings that could yet appreciate “the high embowed roofs,” and the “studious cloisters” by which he was there surrounded. Happy would it have been for him, had he kept that youthful heart! The mulberry is propped up like an old man on his staff, and shielded from the weather by a leaden surtout, but must soon cease to be the last living thing that connects with the name of Milton.

What a place is Cambridge, when its minor colleges suggest such names! As I passed what was formerly Bennet college, I thought of Cowper’s lines on his brother. There, too, was Pembroke, suggesting thoughts of Bramhall and of Andrewes—of Andrewes whom even Milton could praise, albeit he was a prelate. There was Peterhouse, reminding me of good old Cosin. More than all—there was little Caius (pronounced Keys) where Jeremy Taylor, the poor sizar and the barber’s son, passed so often to and fro, beneath its quaint old gates, bearing a soul within him, which in after years he poured forth, like another Chrysostom, and made a treasure for all time. I am sorry to say there is another college there, which suggests the odious name of Cromwell, the man who kindled the fiery coals in which the golden heart of Taylor, and the hearts of thousands more, were well refined, and seven times purified.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is a noble collection of antique sculpture and architectural relics, with a library and paintings, and has been housed superbly in a building, which is a great ornament to Cambridge, although built, in modern taste, and in Grecian style, suiting the things it contains better than the place which contains it. I received far more pleasure, however, from a visit to the celebrated round church, which has been lately restored, and whose name, St. Sepulchre, refers it to the era of the Crusades. But how shall I speak of King’s College Chapel? I was not so fortunate as to see it filled with its white-robed scholars, but its own self was sight enough. “Such awful perspective”—indeed! Such tints from such windows—such carvings—such a roof! It springs and spreads above you, light as the spider’s web, and yet it is all massive stone, and its construction is an architectural miracle. I climbed to the roof, and walked upon that same vaulting, as upon a solid stone-pavement. It is put together in mathematical figures, and on principles purely scientific; but modern architects are puzzled to explain them. Above this, there is another roof, which is exposed to the weather, and from which one enjoys a fine view of the town and the surrounding country. The walks and avenues of limes, which stretch before King’s, and which connect with the grounds of Trinity and St. John’s, are inferior to nothing in Oxford, and are generally pronounced by Cambridge men superior to Christ church meadows and the walks of Magdalen. I strolled among some magnificent limes in the grounds of Trinity, which might well apologise for a student’s opinion, that no other college in the world has such grounds and trees. As for the river Cam, its beautiful bridges, I am sorry to say, are reflected in a very sluggish and dirty tide, called “silvery” only by poetical license.

Dining in the hall of Trinity, I was overwhelmed by the sublime associations of such a place, as illustrated by the portraits around me. Everywhere were the pictures of great historic sons of this college; here was Pearson, and there was Barrow; and before us, as we sat at meat, were Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton. What children has this Mother borne; not for herself, but for all mankind! And thus much I will say for Cambridge, as compared with Oxford, that whereas amid the architectural glories of the latter, one almost forgets the glory of her sons, you are reminded, at every turn in Cambridge, that her chief jewels are the great men she has brought forth. One cannot give her all the credit, indeed: she has been singularly fortunate; but when hers are Bacon, and Newton, and Milton, and Taylor, and stars, in constellations, of scarcely minor magnitude, what university in Christendom can call itself superior? If Granta has her peer, there is nothing that is more than that on earth.