The Fitzwilliam Museum is a noble collection of antique sculpture and architectural relics, with a library and paintings, and has been housed superbly in a building, which is a great ornament to Cambridge, although built, in modern taste, and in Grecian style, suiting the things it contains better than the place which contains it. I received far more pleasure, however, from a visit to the celebrated round church, which has been lately restored, and whose name, St. Sepulchre, refers it to the era of the Crusades. But how shall I speak of King’s College Chapel? I was not so fortunate as to see it filled with its white-robed scholars, but its own self was sight enough. “Such awful perspective”—indeed! Such tints from such windows—such carvings—such a roof! It springs and spreads above you, light as the spider’s web, and yet it is all massive stone, and its construction is an architectural miracle. I climbed to the roof, and walked upon that same vaulting, as upon a solid stone-pavement. It is put together in mathematical figures, and on principles purely scientific; but modern architects are puzzled to explain them. Above this, there is another roof, which is exposed to the weather, and from which one enjoys a fine view of the town and the surrounding country. The walks and avenues of limes, which stretch before King’s, and which connect with the grounds of Trinity and St. John’s, are inferior to nothing in Oxford, and are generally pronounced by Cambridge men superior to Christ church meadows and the walks of Magdalen. I strolled among some magnificent limes in the grounds of Trinity, which might well apologise for a student’s opinion, that no other college in the world has such grounds and trees. As for the river Cam, its beautiful bridges, I am sorry to say, are reflected in a very sluggish and dirty tide, called “silvery” only by poetical license. Dining in the hall of Trinity, I was overwhelmed by the sublime associations of such a place, as illustrated by the portraits around me. Everywhere were the pictures of great historic sons of this college; here was Pearson, and there was Barrow; and before us, as we sat at meat, were Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton. What children has this Mother borne; not for herself, but for all mankind! And thus much I will say for Cambridge, as compared with Oxford, that whereas amid the architectural glories of the latter, one almost forgets the glory of her sons, you are reminded, at every turn in Cambridge, that her chief jewels are the great men she has brought forth. One cannot give her all the credit, indeed: she has been singularly fortunate; but when hers are Bacon, and Newton, and Milton, and Taylor, and stars, in constellations, of scarcely minor magnitude, what university in Christendom can call itself superior? If Granta has her peer, there is nothing that is more than that on earth. CHAPTER XXXII. _Cathedral Tour—The Border._