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Brief Notes on Cambridge.

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MR. URBAN,

A few reminiscences, or abiding impressions, of the principal features of Granta, by an old M.A. may amuse without offending. If the way be beaten, there is both licence and opening to see prospects in a new light; and fresh flowers, though not "fields," may present themselves in the banks and hedgerows. They may at least direct abler observers towards important points of interest in the survey of the University.

BRIEF NOTES ON CAMBRIDge.

Of King's College Chapel what can be said that is not hackneyed, almost ad nauseam? Simply two things, which the writer does not know to have been said before. First, that it is on the whole the finest Chapel in the world. As a pile, some cathedrals may have a stronger claim; as a chapel, we have no equal in England, and no authentic report of one abroad. And 2ndly, the grandest ecclesiastical building in the world of one aisle or nave.-Yet this

would have had, from its height and length (90 and 300 feet), a gaunt and abrupt appearance, had not the architect admirably relieved it by the side chapels. When these, however, are copied as aisles as, amongst others, in the small French church in St. Martin's-le-Grand, they have an ugly and dull effect, thus showing that our ancestors had a better architectural knowledge than we as their imitators.

There is also, in all probability, if not certainty, no building in the world having so many as twenty-five painted windows of equal size (in height 50 feet) and beauty. On the propriety of introducing colour into the west window opinions may differ; it was, no doubt, left plain to give additional light, and might be useful for that

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purpose, as well as for the object of
contrast. A former chapel clerk used
to say that it contained six thousand
small panes.

The muse of Wordsworth was in-
spired, on visiting Cambridge, to give
utterance to two excellently descriptive
sonnets on this "long-drawn aisle and
fretted vault" of olden skill. Milton's

"Storied windows, richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light,"
had, probably, from his early connec-
tion with Cambridge, which appears
in several other instances, a similar
origin.

The new front of Corpus Christi
(olim Ben'et) has been pronounced
equal to any in Oxford; but I shall
not attempt to enter into any criti-

cisms on the modern architectural im

provements in the university, which I
have not had an opportunity of ex-
amining.

At St. Mary's, besides other be-
coming ornaments, the tracery in the
clerestory has been justly pronounced
by Mr. Rickman to be very excellent.
At the Collegiate Church, Manchester,

is some not dissimilar, and a little not
bad at St. Margaret's, Westminster.*
The bells hang in one tier, which is
not usual with twelve, and form one of
eleven peals of twelve now in England,
the twelfth being lost through a fire at
Spitalfields. The tenor, weighing 30
cwt., is deep-toned, and powerful for
its weight. It is easy to ring, though
not exactly so to raise. The eleventh,
which rings for the University, having
a bad tone, was recast about twenty
years ago. Perhaps the turrets here
would bear a small spire, springing
from ribs, on the pattern of St. Nicholas
at Newcastle and St. Dunstan's in the
East.

Prince Albert's creditable admira-
evident from the circumstance, chro-
tion of King's College Chapel appears
nicled in the University papers, that
he visited it four times during his first

stay at Cambridge. When the Queen

and Prince attended the service here

they were much struck by the ad-
mirable chanting of the psalms. There
are sixteen choristers (eight on each

* Perhaps the elegance of the Wenlock Chapel, Luton, Beds, has never yet been sufficiently appreciated.

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side), with six men, forming a powerful contrast with St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey; a number equalled at New and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford, but at no cathedral in England, the numbers in which vary from eight, or less, to twelve.

The Senate House, lately honoured as the University has been, after three centuries, with the presence of Royalty, is a fine and perfect performance of Gibbs, but of scarcely sufficient height (32 feet), with good internal woodwork. Yet it wants a stately organ (as there is one in the Theatre at Oxford) at the west end; which fact has probably struck many. It would but slightly curtail the space and, perhaps, very light upper galleries might be added, by strengthening the cantiliver supports below, without detriment to the architectural effect. This, however, is submitted with much less confidence than the suggestion of the organ.

St. Peter's (commonly termed Peterhouse), besides its being the senior college, deserves a separate notice on two or three accounts. Its oldest buildings, however, do not appear so old as 1400. "The hand of Inigo Jones," it has been said, "was not apparent in the cloisters here;" but, if not very pure, they are neat; and, if the west front of the chapel is a little of a "Chinese-Gothic" kind, the effect is not unpicturesque. The sides and east end, all erected in 1632, are better, and the windows unexceptionable. Here is the best, and unfortunately almost the only, original painted glass, besides King's.

Some remains in the side windows have been pronounced richer in colouring than even that of the east, the subject of which is the Crucifixion, after Rubens. The panneled and gilt oak roof is pleasing, and its organ, of respectable size, about the same as St. John's, Oxford, given by Sir Horace Mann, M.A. Fellow Commoner, Ambassador at Florence, is a fine-toned one. The new building, in the style of King's (original), is handsome. The library, besides old and curious editions, contains some richly illuminated MSS. one of which, presented early in the fourteenth century, is described as given to "St. Mary's Hall by Trumpington Gate."*

* The undergraduates here now wear

The library windows at St. John's have not been sufficiently noticed as of elegant form. At Trinity, perhaps, the thing most needed is to rebuild the two plain sides of the great quadrangle. Its elegant conduit has a happier effect than the leaden Mercury and basin at the grand college at Oxford; and the architectural inclosure here is rather larger, though Oxonians are slow to believe it. The grander features of this college, wanting neither taste nor magnificence, are sufficiently known. The immense length of the chapel (204 feet) alone takes off from the height (44 feet) of the really handsome ceiling. Had this been divided by two arches, as St. John's is by one, into antechapel, chapel or body, and chancel, it might have assisted the effect. Still it is a noble and interesting building, equal to that of Eton; and its organ, superior to King's, with the successive talents of Father Schmidt, Green (nearly his equal), and Avery, is one of the best in the world. The bellows are here worked by an isolated wheel, of which the writer never saw or heard of a similar instance.

At Emanuel the only fault in the handsome front-a centre lower than the wings-is redeemed by the bold Corinthian end and cupola of the chapel in the interior, superior even to Pem

fuller gowns than at most others; but these are reported to have been originally, or formerly, green, with the "keys" embroidered on the back. The late estimable for December, p. 643) was surpassed in Dr. Hodgson (noticed in the Magazine the same year by the Rev. J. Fisher, of this college, now incumbent of Ongar, Essex, who held the same rank as the present Master, Mr. Cookson, B.D. viz. fourth wrangler. The respected poet laureate Dr. Southey visited Peterhouse about 1820, where he was entertained by the late Rev. J. Tillbrook, who introduced the writer to him in the original of Gray in the "new building," who The punning Virgilian inscription of an sang" in the bowers of Peterhouse. Irish bishop named Ram, of this college, on his parsonage house, which he rebuilt, is excellent. One could almost swearthough to a non sequitur—that he was a worthy-hearted man.

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This house Ram built for his succeeding bro

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that was designed by Sir lately) at the Chapel Royal, St. James's.
Brief Notes on Cambridge.
Wren, being the only Perhaps it is again used under the

This band in this university. present amiable and liberal master;
egant Corinthian chapel at though in such estimable qualities it
ng 7,000, with its domed is not easy to exceed his predecessor,
and bright altar-piece by Dr. Kaye, now Bishop of Lincoln.
In churches, i. e. original parochial

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- Mengs' at All Souls, is on a ones, with the exception of the UniverDel of Jesus is the oldest in written, the town has not a great deal to Not superior, to any modern sity and the round church of St. SepulOrd, including Trinity. 14rsity, but it belonged pre- boast. Trinity is generally considered

a hunnery. The rhyming the second; it is a cross-shaped build

Mrred (where the accent in the with flying buttresses at the west end;

one of the fair inmates ing, with a slender tower and spire,

made to lengthen an other the transepts are lofty and have large me syllable). windows, but no aisles; the chancel,

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ANCIENT FIRE-PLACE AT THE DEANERY, LINCOLN.

MR. URBAN, Lincoln, Nov. 27. I SEND you a sketch of an open fire-place and chimney discovered last summer in the old Deanery House at Lincoln, which is now being taken down, and near to the site of which a new residence is to be erected. They were hidden by bricks and plaster, and had been so probably since the year 1616, when the house was modernized and repaired during the period Staunton was dean and Parker precentor. The initials of the latter, with the date of the year, were cut in the front of the parapet over the bow window then projected from the south side of the building, six years after the famous

Tom, the predecessor of the present bell, was cast in a furnace erected for that purpose in the Minster Yard. The fire-place and chimney are, no doubt, a remnant of the old deanery house which Camden tells us was founded by Dean, afterwards Bishop, Gravesend in 1254; they are therefore a very interesting object of antiquity.

The sketch represents one of two chimneys placed back to back on the first floor between the late dean's drawing room and the study; but they were both concealed until the work of demolition began. The underside of the mantel, which is composed of one stone six feet long by thirteen inches high,

stands six feet from the floor, and the pyramidal head of the chimney is nine feet above the three-inch projection over it, and it is composed of nine courses of tooled masonry, terminating at the ceiling with an apex one foot wide. The mantel, which has a projection from the wall of thirty inches, is supported by double corbels, and the whole, after a lapse of nearly six centuries, is in excellent preservation. The stones on each side are not jointed, so that the walls of the room were no doubt either plastered or covered with oaken panels. The corbels are canted, but in other respects quite plain, with the exception of a rude ornament something like a trefoil on each side of the two lowest. The recess in the wall is only five inches deep, and the back of the fire-place is composed of flat tiles placed edgeways.

The gatehouse, built by Dean Flemming, comes down. It is very much to be regretted it could not have been preserved, as it is a fine old tower; but if it were suffered to stand, it would no doubt interfere with the arrangements made by the present dean for his new residence, and obstruct the view of the north side of the minster from his windows.

Yours, &c. F. B.

MR. URBAN, Dec. 15. THOUGH you are generally attentive to the proceedings of the Bookprinting Societies, I am not aware that you have hitherto noticed the large proposals of one styling itself the "ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY SOCIETY, established for the Publication and Republication of Church Histories, &c. chiefly those by British Authors, or concerning the British Church."

This Society, which was advertised very extensively indeed from some six to twelve months ago, and which boasted to have the patronage of their Lordships" the Archbishops and Bishops, together with several of the Irish and most of the Colonial Bishops, &c." proposed to itself no less a task than to reprint the whole of the works of "Anthony a Wood, Barlow, Bede, Burnet, Collier, Dugdale, Dupin, Field, Fuller, Gildas, Godwin, Inett, Heylin, Sprat, Strype, Stow, Walker, Wharton, Winstanley, and many others;❞—a list in which, you will

say,

the alphabetical arrangement makes a very extraordinary medley, with the old Oxford historian "leading the brawls," by virtue of his baptismal prenomen!

The prospectus further announced that this wholesale reprinting was to proceed at the rate of four volumes a year, and that a volume of Strype, a volume of Field, and a volume of Ecclesiastical Trials, were nearly ready for the press, and would "form a portion " of the publications of the Society for this year, that is, this year 1847, now so nearly running out of the glass.

As it seems, however, not unlikely that we shall have made some advance into the year 1848 before we see either the volume of Strype, the volume of Field, or any other production of "the Ecclesiastical History Society," and inasmuch as the frequent blasts of the advertising trumpet have now dropped into a still silence, will you allow me to make this public inquiry as to what progress the editors employed have already made, and as to what the Society is now doing? It would be an additional satisfaction to learn, Who are the Editors?

The original scheme seemed to rest its claims for patronage rather upon its comprehensiveness than its discrimination. It proposed to supply a subscriber with an entire library by a coup-de-main: according to this tempting postscript, or

"N.B.-Donors of 20 guineas will be entitled to the whole of the publications of the Society, in which will be included a new edition of the entire works of

Strype, Stow's London, Field's Book of the Church, &c."

A library of Ecclesiastical History, and Stow's London into the bargain! Perhaps Dugdale's St. Paul's also; or was the name of Dugdale intended to indicate the Monasticon Anglicanum?

One would suppose that book-collectors had a great many empty shelves by this proposal to fill them by the ton; whereas, I have too often observed, Mr. Urban, that the excuse for not patronising a really deserving author, is something in this strain,"It's a book I should like to have; but really I find I must leave off buy. ing books altogether, for I don't know where to put them. My bookcases and

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