Behind the Round Church rise the sumptuous rooms of the "Union[89] Society," a University club primarily instituted as an association for the cultivation of oratory amongst undergraduates, which has now added to its central debating hall a library, dining-room, smoking-room, and the other adjuncts of a first-class club. Here, on each Tuesday evening during Term, debates are held, usually on current political or social situations, theological polemics being strictly barred. When the Society was first instituted, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, current politics were also prohibited (by the University authorities), and could only be discussed under a decent veil of reference to antiquity. But the comparative merits of the causes championed by Caesar and Pompey, or by the Cavaliers and Roundheads, were so easily made to apply to the burning questions of the day, that the prohibition speedily become obsolete. Many a well-known Parliamentary orator has won his first fame on the benches of the Union, Lord Macaulay being a notable example. His perfervid outpourings here swept away all opposition, and his friend and contemporary, Mackworth Praed, records how the issue of any debate is irrevocably decided-- "When the Favourite comes, With his trumpets and drums, And his arms, and his metaphors, crossed." [Footnote 89: So called because in union with the twin Society at Oxford; members of each having, _ipso facto_, all the privileges of membership in the other.] Leaving the Round Church behind us, and proceeding westwards, we pass the Church of St. Clement, with its inscription DEUM COLE ("Worship God"), which has nothing to detain us, and shortly arrive at "the Great Bridge,"[90] that famous passage of the river to which the town owes its name and its very existence. It can never have been an imposing structure, in spite of its high-sounding title, and is now represented by an exceedingly commonplace iron span. But, as the only passage of the Cam approachable by an army, in fore-drainage days, for many a long mile, it was of old a strategic point of first-class importance, and more than once played a notable part in English history. Its possession by the anti-monarchical forces shattered the last efforts both of King John and of Charles the First, and brought about, as we shall see, the speedy ruin and death of the former. [Footnote 90: So called to distinguish it from the smaller town bridges by Newnham Mill and Garret Hostel.] To the North of the Bridge, and on the Eastern bank of the River, is the last of the many "Hithes" (or Quays), of which we read so much in connection with old Cambridge, remaining in actual use for traffic. Here we may to this day see exemplified the ancient local proverb, "Here water kindleth fire;" for barges loaded with fire-wood and turf from the fens still discharge their cargoes at this spot.