to find that Oxford
is regarded as pre-eminent on every count, we are tempted to make
certain claims for the slightly less ancient university. These claims
are an important matter if Cambridge is to hold its rightful position
in regard to its architecture, its setting, and its atmosphere.
Beginning with the last, we do not hesitate to say that there is a
more generally felt atmosphere of repose, such as the mind associates
with the best of our cathedral cities, in Cambridge than is to be
enjoyed in the bigger and busier university town. This is in part due
to Oxford's situation on a great artery leading from the Metropolis to
large centres of population in the west; while Cambridge, although it
grew up on a Roman road of some importance, is on the verge of the
wide fenlands of East Anglia, and, being thus situated off the
trade-ways of England, has managed to preserve more of that genial and
scholarly repose we would always wish to find in the centres of
learning, than has the other university.

Then this atmosphere is little disturbed by the modern accretions to
the town. On the east side, it is true, there are new streets of dull
and commonplace terraces, which one day an awakened England will wipe
out; there are other elements of ugly sordidness, which the lack of a
guiding and controlling authority, and the use of distressingly
hideous white bricks, has made possible, but it is quite conceivable
that a visitor to the town might spend a week of sight-seeing in the
place without being aware of these shortcomings. This fortunate
circumstance is due to the truly excellent planning of Cambridge. It
is not for a moment suggested that the modern growth of the place is
ideal, but what is new and unsightly is so placed that it does not
interfere with the old and beautiful. The real Cambridge is so
effectively girdled with greens and commons, and college grounds
shaded with stately limes, elms, and chestnuts, that there are never
any jarring backgrounds to destroy the sense of aloofness from the
ugly and untidy elements of nineteenth-century individualism which are
so often conspicuous at Oxford.

Cambridge has also made better use of her river than has her sister
university; she has taken it into her confidence, bridged it in a
dozen places, and built her colleges so that the waters mirror some of
her most beautiful buildings. Further than this, in the glorious
chapel Henry VI. built for King's College, Cambridge possess