by Samuel Gower.
Originally published in Hood's Magazine (Henry Hurst) vol.6 #4 (Oct 1846).
Robert Hall specks of the country round Cambridge as a dead flat, in which you meet with nothing but, now and then, two or three stunted willows, that look as if, in their telegraph-like uniformity, Nature were throwing up signals of distress. For my part, I was quite willing to accept of the penury of Nature as a foil to the grandeur of Art, and as adding to that air of antiquity which we recognise in College-precincts, and on College-ground.
Coleridge describes his having met with the spire of a church steeple, in a valley in the neighbourhood of the Alps, which, thus situated, although a picturesque object in itself, put him, irresistibly, in mind of an extinguisher. Nature, certainly, does not make mock at Art, in the same way, at Cambridge. The, formerly (if not now), dirty town and narrow streets of Cambridge concurred with the aspect of the surrounding country in giving the whole place an air of barbarian grandeur. We associate the ideas of Oxford and Addison; but Cambridge takes us back, at once, to the times of The Edwards. Robert Hall's description is, however, exaggerated. Were I a painter, I would be bound to select, as subjects for my pencil, many delightful spots in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, and this, independently of the vicinity of College-Buildings. No English church and churchyard, at least since the date of Gray's Elegy, can fail to produce ideas elevated so far above the painfully mournful as to be rich in pleasurable sensations of a high order.
King's Chapel at Cambridge, from whatever point of view regarded, is one of the noblest objects that can greet the human eye. Oxford has no building, 'aut simile, aut secundum,' to it. On the other hand, to pursue the contrast, walk up that finest street in Europe, the High Street of Oxford, and you may imagine yourself in a region "of pleasures and palaces," while Cambridge can shew nothing at all comparable to it—every phase of the latter University displaying more of the sombre than the gay: on this very account, however, it looks but the more in character as a seat of learning. While walking up Trumpington Street, were you to see all Chaucer's Pilgrims emerging in procession from under the gateway of St. John's, Trinity College, they would not strike you as much out of place or date. On the contrary, no spectacle which the High Street of Oxford could display would appear too magnificent, or too modern. On your way up Trumpington Street, you pass, beside St. John's and Trinity Colleges, the new frontage of Corpus Christi, which looks so sharp and angular, and so much like a stage-scene, that it gives you the idea of a superficies, not, certainly, of deal and canvass, but of stone, with no substance behind it. Time may, perhaps, already have somewhat softened this harshness of aspect. Go where you will about Cambridge, you have to permeate through a succession of practical anachronisms. There is Downing College which looks like a piece of London let in to the suburbs of the University; nor does it sufficiently partake of the homogeneous to contrast, mentally (for they are not contiguous), with that modern, although most useful, edifice, Addenbroke's Hospital; or with the turrets at the corners of Great Trinity College Square, whose rooms seem fit habitations for no creatures of a species less sublime, or more utilitarian, than owls, alchemists, and astrologers.
The days of my residence at Cambridge were, despite of all this fault-finding, halcyon days. My most agreeable recollections of Cambridge have nothing whatever to do with brick and mortar, or even with stone, however symmetrically reared and munificently sculptured. At the same time, if ever I remembered a building with abiding pleasure; it is King's Chapel: a few more words of it, therefore. Of all views of this surpassing specimen of architecture, commend me to that, taken from a certain angle of the stream—it seems almost too ambitious to call the portion of it to which I allude, a river—in which we were wont to bathe. Oh! the freshness and healthfulness of those bathes, and the pleasure of a gaze at King's Chapel, from the middle of the stream, while swimming! And what I like Cambridge for is, that, in addition to its having noble buildings, and Clare Hall Gardens, and many other pleasant promenades among shrubberies and between avenues of trees, and "Groves of Academe," bathing-weather commences there early, and continues late. One year, I commenced bathing there on the 16th of March, sub Jove of course, and continued till the middle of November, and not infrequently undressed during a heavy shower of rain, my clothes being committed to the uncertain protection of an umbrella. As for rheumatism and catching cold, they were casualties never once thought of. What though Robert Hall could no more 'abide' Cambridge, than old 'Jane Nightwork' could 'abide' 'Master Shallow,' we had any how; many pleasant bathes in the stream whence it takes its name; passed many pleasant hours within its precincts and environs; and are now stored with many pleasant reminiscences of all the pleasures we enjoyed and shared during our sojourn therein.
(The "Long ago" of which we are reminding ourselves, and apprising our readers, abounded with the exploits peculiar to juvenility and superabundant life. An anecdote or two which occurs to us may type many others which we have forgotten. There-was one puddle (or rather kennel) in particular, which runs before one of the Colleges, and which, when swollen with a heavy fall of rain, may have been about three-eighths of an inch deep, and five inches two eighths wide. Into this receptacle, much about our time, fell two men, not by any means in a state of extreme sobriety or teetotalism. The magnanimous reply of one of them, to a passenger who was assisting him up, is worthy of record. "Do not mind me, but pray go and help my poor friend lower down, for he can't swim." But from this and all other kennels, whether sanctified or not by Collegiate incumbency or tradition, to adjourn to the Cam itself. What though its banks were bare, was it not between them, in a vicinity, if I bethink me right, off the coast of Chesterton, that the skill of a nautical friend nearly submerged himself, myself, and a quarter-decker guest, during a squall of wind, the precursor of a storm which drenched us to the skin? And was it not from its waters that I once, by dint of skilful angling, hooked up an undergraduate of Trinity, who had toppled out of our boat into the lock? Twenty years ago! what a retrospect! But the opportunity for being pathetic shall not tempt me! Of those of our old friends, and they are many, that are gone, let us think, consolingly, that "whom the gods love die young."
It just occurs to me that I have omitted to record my impressions on first entering the interior of King's Chapel. It conveyed to my mind an idea of vastness which St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, even York Minster, fail to convey. The interior of St. Paul's dome gives one an idea of loftiness, and of huge dimensions, but one may, by a little computation, arrive at as definite an idea of its size as of that of any ordinarily sized Cupola. Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral have too many compartments. York Minster displays vastness of mass, and extreme beauty, but has rather the variety, than the unity, of the Epic in architecture. And then again, viewed singly; what can be more mournfully impressive than the monuments of the immortal dead? what more vivid than the images of the past which the sight of these invokes? This, too, almost irrespectively of their merits or demerits as works of statuary? Yet, these constitute episodes, which distract the attention from the grandeur of the building as a whole, in proportion as it is the more crowded with them. I speak from memory when I say that King's Chapel had few or no monuments: or that, if there were such, they did not obtrude themselves upon the sight, but were lost in the general effect. And what is that effect? A solemnity, even to chillness, creeps over you as you enter that mighty, but no less graceful, building, and gaze around. You see nothing, whatever else may be there, but its spacious and beautiful interior; its pictured windows; and the organ which marks its consecration as a place of worship. It is this undisturbed unity of character which gives the spectator an impression of vastness far exceeding its admeasured reality. In some other structures, the juxtaposition of the sublime and the ridiculous has become all but proverbial. It is easy to conceive that a short-sighted gentleman or lady taken by surprise into the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey might fancy him or herself in a Statuary's Studio, or a Stonemason's repository. It is unquestionably a truth, regarded in the abstract, that such an approximation to the perfect in architecture as Westminster Abbey, or as York Minster, should have no corners, and should as little as possible resemble a toy-shop or a wax-work exhibition. It is not meant to be asserted that the mighty dead should have no monuments; but it is suggested that their ashes should repose, and their busts be crowned with wreaths, and their memories with honour, in erections devoted to those special purposes. In this respect, the το πρεπον and the το καλον are one; as, indeed, they more commonly are than they are thought to be. It makes no more for the wellbeing of the living than for the honour of the dead, that churches should be occupied, also, as Mausoleums. It cannot be supposed that these remarks are meant to apply otherwise than to the future. Neither the past nor the present, nor perhaps, indeed, the immediate future, can be tampered with to the subversion of established associations, whether of things, or of ideas. No proposition for their divorce, or disattachment, could enter into the mind of any civilised and rational person. To move one stick or stone from its place in any of our Minsters and Cathedrals would be to annihilate a portion of our country and of ourselves; to combine want of patriotism with sacrilege. But as to the vast Future, it will ever Re incumbent upon each successive generation of mankind to add its own wisdom to that bequeathed to it by its predecessors, and, thus, render the richer its own bequest to posterity. Age, which gives experience to the individual, can scarcely fail, henceforward, to confer the same, through the medium of the press, in a constantly augmenting amount, upon the whole human species. In ages past, for want of the pres, much of human knowledge became lost to view, just as some rivers are said to be lost in the sands of the desert. Unless, indeed, knowledge should meet with the misfortune of perishing, from being overlaid with the growing 'multitude-of books,' this is not likely to happen again: the stores of science are already rapidly accumulating, and this, safely as to quality, as well as largely in quality. The non-
collegiate labour of those who work, inveighing perhaps, during each more leisure hour from severer toil, against Collegiate Institutions, is still work: and all who are really workers and not drones in the great human hive, are, in spite of themselves and their prejudices, or call them by the milder name of their opinions, not workers only, but cooperant workers, whose labours tend to the common good of mankind. Those, however, err greatly, to my thinking, who fail to perceive that we owe, if it be not said chiefly, yet to a great degree, the conservation of much that is valuable, the perpetuation of much that is nationally excellent, to our two leading Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Where was it that Canning displayed the first promise of his genius? At Eton and Oxford. Where was it that Peel's brow was encompassed with that single circlet of laurels which only one man can each year gain there—those, viz. accorded to its Senior Wrangler? In the Senate-House of Cambridge—a locality only less remarkable than that in which, during the computed period which marks the transit of one generation of mankind, he has since been the "observed of all observers."
I think, reader, that this paper will not fail to give you some trifling image of the town and University with the name of which this paper is headed. Place a small fragment of a bone before Cuvier, and he could tell, from a cursory perusal of it, the size and configuration of the whole animal to which it belonged. Ingenious reader! do the same in relation to these shadowy outlines, and you will have all Cambridge before you.