Through this gateway we now make our way into the Premier[16] College of Cambridge, and soon find ourselves face to face with one of the most beautiful views of the world. Before us spreads a spacious lawn, the most extensive in existence,[17] bounded on three sides by the white and grey walls of College buildings, while on the fourth it merges into the wooded grass-land of the Backs; the river which divides it from these being scarcely perceptible from this point. We get a glimpse, however, of Clare Bridge, terminating the graceful facade of that College, which is in our immediate front. Behind us are the nineteenth-century additions to King's, and to our right front the fine pile of "Gibbs' Buildings," erected, in the eighteenth century, as a first attempt to approximate in some degree to the wishes of the Royal Founder, and transfer his College from the cramped position it had hitherto occupied, at the north of the Chapel, to the ampler site on the south which he had originally destined for it, and had cleared for his purpose by buying up and sweeping away, church and all, one of the most thickly populated parishes in Cambridge, that of "St. John Zachary" (_i.e._ St. John the Baptist), including a furlong's length of Mill Street. [Footnote 16: This rank is one of the privileges due to the Royal Founder. Another was the exemption of King's men from the authority of the Proctors; another their right to a Degree without passing the usual examinations. This was given up in the middle of last century, and now every King's student is required by the College to take Honours in some Tripos.] [Footnote 17: A current story tells how a millionaire, who boasted that his money should make him a lawn as perfect, was discomfited by being told that to attain such perfection "you must mow and roll it regularly for 400 years. That is what has been done here."] [Illustration: _Oriel in Queens' College._] For the scale on which Henry VI. intended to build was something hitherto quite unprecedented, and his plan took years to mature. The inspiration of it was originally caught from William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, whose genius first conceived the idea of twinned Colleges, in the provinces and at the University, from the former of which the Scholars should pass on to complete their education at the latter. This idea Wykeham himself first carried into effect by the foundation of the College at Winchester and of New College at Oxford. And, fired by his example, Henry VI., when only twenty, resolved on doing the same thing himself with truly Royal magnificence. His Scholars should begin their course at Eton, beneath the walls of Windsor Castle, his birthplace and favourite residence, and should thence pass to finish it at Cambridge, in the College which he would there dedicate to his own Patron Saint Nicolas, on whose Feast, December 6th (still "Founder's Day" to all Etonians and King's men), he was born.