Aside from these courts, some, and perhaps most of the colleges, have very large and great park-like grounds and of many acres in extent, with walks ancient and shaded with venerable trees. The lazy River Cam moves leisurely through them, as if loath to leave, and as though admiring its visit and stay. As we stood on one of the grand old bridges crossing it,--and there are quite a number on the grounds leading from one division of the park to another, and sometimes, as at St. John's College, connecting two buildings,--as we stood looking down into the water we almost felt that it, as we did, realized that the visit was one of a lifetime, and not to be hurried over. How inducive of thought are these old classic grounds, centuries in use? Poets, philosophers, and martyrs, the most renowned men of the world, have here walked as we are walking. Oxford has had her great men, and we bow reverently at the thought or even mention of their names. How the destinies of the kingdom and those of the world have been influenced by men to whom Oxford was _alma mater_; but an intense conservatism has always nestled in her bosom and been suckled at her breasts. For centuries it was Oxford's conscientious duty and work to be conservator of religion and philosophy, and, as she understood it, to see that the ship did not drag anchor, drift, nor move a particle from her ancient moorings of received doctrines and principles; and so, if burning of martyrs would aid the cause, martyrs must be burned, and Hooper and Latimer and Ridley and Cranmer, _Cambridge_ men, must be ensamples and victims. As a result the flame of poetry burned low in that university, and if the world was to have a Milton and a Spenser, a Gray and a Byron, Christ's, Pembroke, and Trinity of Cambridge must furnish them. So of great philosophers! Cambridge's Trinity must furnish Newton and Bacon; and, as named, the great martyrs Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley must go from Jesus, Clare, and Pembroke of this university; and what vast influence in our New England was exerted by the labors of John Robinson, the Pilgrims' minister and spiritual adviser, who although he died before he was permitted to look on this promised land, yet was to the moment of his death their best earthly friend; and so we may speak of Elder Brewster and of John Cotton; of Shepard of Lynn, and Parker and Noyes of Newbury, and all their fellow-contemporaries in the work of the ministry,--hardly one, save the two last named, who did not graduate at Cambridge! Archbishop Laud declared Sidney, Sussex, and Immanuel Colleges here to be "the nurseries of Puritanism." To use the thought of Dean Stanley: "It seems to have been the mission of Cambridge to _make_ martyrs, and the work of Oxford to _burn_ them."