However, if you would forget the follies of politicians, you have but to cross the bridge and drive to Cambridge, which, like the other Cambridge of England, is the seat of a distinguished university. You are doubly rewarded, for not merely is Cambridge a perfect specimen of a colonial village, but in Harvard there breathes the true spirit of humane letters. Nor is the college a creation of yesterday. It is not far short of three centuries ago that John Harvard, once of Emmanuel College in England, endowed the university which bears his honoured name. The bequest was a poor L780, with 260 books, but it was sufficient to ensure an amiable immortality, and to bestow a just cause of pride upon the mother-college. The daughter is worthy her august parentage. She has preserved the sentiment of her birth; she still worships the classics with a constant heart; the fame of her scholars has travelled in the mouths of men from end to end of Europe. And Harvard has preserved all the outward tokens of a university. Her wide spaces and lofty avenues are the fit abode of learning. Her college chapel and her college halls could serve no other purpose than that for which they are designed. The West, I believe, has built universities on another plan and to another purpose. But Harvard, like her great neighbour Boston, has been obedient to the voice of tradition, and her college, the oldest, remains also the greatest in America. Culture has always been at once the boast and the reproach of Boston. A serious ancestry and the neighbourhood of a university are enough to ensure a grave devotion to the things of the spirit, and Boston has never found the quest of gold sufficient for its needs. The Pilgrim Fathers, who first sought a refuge in New England, left their country in the cause of what they thought intellectual freedom, and their descendants have ever stood in need of the excitement which nothing save pietism or culture can impart. For many years pietism held sway in Boston. The persecution of the witches, conducted with a lofty eloquence by Cotton Mather, was but the expression of an imperious demand, and the conflict of warring sects, which for many years disturbed the peace of the city, satisfied a craving not yet allayed. Then, after a long interval, came Transcendentalism, a pleasant mixture of literature and moral guidance, and to-day Boston is as earnest as ever in pursuit of vague ideals and soothing doctrines.