The university and the colleges--the collegiate system--eras of college building--Peterhouse--Michaelhouse--_collegium_ and _aula_--Clare--college statutes--architectural scheme of a college--Pembroke--founders of colleges--Gonville--Trinity Hall--Corpus Christi--Cambridge in 1353--Chaucer at Cambridge--the schools, library, the university printers and the Pitt Press, the senate house--King’s--King’s College chapel--Cambridge college chapels--Queens’--English sovereigns at Cambridge--S. Catherine’s--Jesus--Christ’s--Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher--S. John’s--Magdalene--King’s Hall and Trinity College--college libraries--gateways--Caius--monks in Cambridge--Emmanuel--Sidney Sussex--Downing--public hostels--nationality of founders and general scope of their foundations--university and college revenues. The college is an endowed foundation providing for the residence and maintenance of teachers--masters or graduates, and for the free education of a certain number of poor scholars, to whose company are added, according to the capacity of the building, other students who are able to live at their own charges. [Sidenote: Relation of the college to the university.] Much has been said about the relation of the college to the university. By some it is supposed that the latter is nothing but the aggregate of the former; that somewhere in the time of the Georges “the university” arrogated to itself a separate existence, and that since that time university offices have taken precedence of collegiate offices.[97] The _universitas_, the corporation of scholars, must and did precede any college foundation: at the same time we cannot distinguish the development of either of our universities from the rise of these foundations, whose history has, ever since, been the history of the academic society. Each college is independent and autonomous, and though the aggregate of colleges does not constitute the university, each collegiate foundation forms part and parcel of it in virtue of its union with the incorporated society of Chancellor Masters and Scholars which formed at first and still forms “the university.” [Sidenote: The college the distinguishing characteristic of Cambridge and Oxford].