The origin of Cambridge University, as of that of Oxford, is of unknown date, and the manner of its inception problematical. Who was the great teacher that first drew scholars to him at this place? We cannot tell. That he was a Churchman goes without saying, for the Church, in the dark ages when learning began to be, held letters and culture in fee-simple. Nor can we tell why Cambridge was thus honoured, for it was not the home, like Ely, Crowland, or Thorney, of a great monastic establishment, whence learning of sorts radiated. One of the untrustworthy early chroniclers of these things gives, indeed, a specific date to the beginnings of the University, and says that Joffrid, Abbot of Crowland, in 1110 sent monkish lecturers to the town; but the earliest record, beyond which we must not go into the regions of mere surmise, belongs to a hundred and twenty-one years later, when royal regulations respecting the students were issued. Already a Chancellor and a complete governing body appear to have been in existence. It is arguable that a century and more must have been necessary for these to have been evolved from the earliest days of a teaching body; but these affairs are for pundits. Such special pleaders as John Caius and Thomas Key, who fought with great bitterness and amazing pertinacity in the sixteenth century on the question as to whether Oxford or Cambridge were the older of the two, had the hardihood to trace them back to astonishing lengths. According to Caius, arguing for Cambridge, it was one Cantaber, a Spanish prince, who founded the University here in the very remote days when Gurguntius was King of Britain. To this prince he traces the name of the town itself, and I think that fact alone serves to discredit anything else he has to say. [Illustration: TRUMPINGTON STREET, CAMBRIDGE.] But no matter when and how the University originated. To those early teachers came so many to listen in the one room or hall, that probably constituted the original University, that the town did not suffice, to accommodate them, and, both for the sake of convenience and discipline, the first college was founded, as primarily a lodgment or hostel for the scholars. As their numbers continually grew, and as benefactors began to look with increasing kindliness upon learning, so were more and more colleges added. The first of all the colleges was, as already stated, this of Peterhouse, founded so far back as 1280 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. It was at first established in the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist, near by, but was removed, only six years later, to the present site, for convenient access to the Church of St. Peter. It is to the fact that the chancel of this church was used as its chapel that the college owes its official but rarely heard title of "St. Peter's." In 1352 St. Peter's Church was given a new consecration, and has ever since been known as St. Mary the Less. Meanwhile, in 1632, the college built a chapel of its own.