As to the exact time when a band of scholars and teachers first made their home in Cambridge or Oxford, and began to attract to themselves from the four winds classes of eager youths hungry for intellectual food and anxious to listen and learn, that we must be content to leave undetermined. They who like the flavour of the old antiquarianism may enjoy it in its spiciest form, if they choose to hunt up among certain forgotten volumes now grown scarce. They may read what John Caius (pronounced Keys) wrote as the champion of Cambridge, and Thomas Caius wrote as champion of Oxford; they may rejoice their hearts over the Battle of the Keys, and come to what conclusion they prefer to arrive at. For most of us, however, this sort of old-world lore has lost its charm. A man lives through his taste for some questions. The student of history nowadays is inclined to say with St. Paul, "So fight I not as one that beateth the air," and to reject with some impatience the frivolous questions which help not a jot towards bringing us into closer relation with the life and personality of our ancestors. "I am halt sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott; and we, too, have grown weary of weaving our webs with our backs to the light. There is no making any way in Cloudland. We ask for firm ground on which to plant our footsteps, if we would move onwards. * * * * * * * It would have been very galling to the Oxford antiquaries of Queen Elizabeth's days to have to acknowledge that there was a Cambridge before there was an Oxford. Nevertheless the fact is so. Hide your diminished heads, ye rash ones who would fain have us believe that a thousand years before our era, King Mempric, the wicked king whom the wolves ate--as was right and fitting they should--built a noble city, which as time went on "was called _Oxonia_, or by the Saxons _Oxenfordia_." Alack! it turns out that we must make an enormous step along the course of time before we can find trace of any such city or anything like it. It turns out that "the year 912 saw Oxford made a fortified town, with a definite duty to perform and a definite district assigned to it." What! Seven years after the great Alfred had closed his eyes in death, and left to others the work which he had showed them how to do? Yes! Even so. It may be very hard to have to confess the odious crime of youth; but it seems almost capable of demonstration that Cambridge, as a fortress and a a town existed a thousand years before Oxford was anything but a desolate swamp, or at most a trumpery village, where a handful of Britons speared eels, hunted for deer, and laboriously manufactured earthenware pots. What have we to do with thee, thou daughter of yesterday? Stand aside while thine elder sister--ay, old enough to be thy mother--takes her place of honour. She has waited long for her historian; he has come at last, and he was worth waiting for.