As great a change was passing over the spiritual sympathies of man; a sterner Protestantism was invigorating and ennobling life by its morality, by its seriousness, and by its intense conviction of God. But it was at the same time hardening and narrowing it. The Bible was superseding Plutarch. The obstinate questionings which haunted the finer souls of the Renaissance were being stereotyped in the theological formulas of the Puritan. The sense of divine omnipotence was annihilating man. The daring which turned England into a people of adventurers, the sense of inexhaustible resources, the buoyant freshness of youth, the intoxicating sense of beauty and joy, which inspired Sidney and Marlowe and Drake, was passing away before the consciousness of evil and the craving to order man's life aright before God. Emmanuel and Sidney Colleges were the children of this transition period. Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel, was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the reign of Elizabeth, known and trusted by the Queen from her girlhood--she exchanged regularly New Year's gifts with him--a tried friend and discreet diplomatist, who had especially been distinguished in the negotiations in connection with the imprisonment of Mary, Queen of Scots. He had been educated at Christ's College, though apparently he had taken no degree. He was a man, however, of some learning, and retained throughout life a love for classical literature. Sir John Harrington, in his "Orlando Furioso," quotes a Latin stanza, which he says he derived from the Latin poems of Sir Walter Mildmay. These poems, however, are not otherwise known. He is also spoken of as the writer of a book entitled "A Note to Know a Good Man." His interest in his old university and sympathy with letters is attested by the fact that he contributed a gift of stone to complete the tower of Great S. Mary's, and established a Greek lectureship and six scholarships at Christ's College. He had acquired considerable wealth in his service of the State, having also inherited a large fortune from his father, who had been one of Henry VIII.'s commissioners for receiving the surrender of the dissolved monasteries. It was fitting, perhaps, he felt, that some portion of this wealth should be devoted to the service of religion and sound learning. Anyhow, in the month of January 1584, we find the Queen granting to her old friend, "his heirs, executors, and assigns," a charter empowering them "to erect, found, and establish for all time to endure a certain college of sacred theology, the sciences, philosophy and good arts, of one master and thirty fellows and scholars, graduate or non-graduate, or more or fewer according to the ordinances and statutes of the same college." On the 23rd of the previous November, Sir Walter had purchased for £550 the land and buildings of the Dominican or Black Friars, which had been established at Cambridge in 1279 and dissolved in 1538. During the fifty years that had elapsed since the