If a stranger in visiting Cambridge, were to content himself with merely passing through the streets, and viewing the exterior of such Colleges as there present themselves to the eye, he would have a poor opinion of what Lord Coke calls “that famous University.” The town itself is irregularly built, and appears from a distance to emerge from a kind of marshy wilderness. Nothing can be more flat and uninteresting than the scenery around. Robert Hall, of Leicester, was accustomed to ascribe the insanity which at one time clouded his fine faculties, in part, to the monotony of view which pressed upon his spirits, while for some time he was stationed at Cambridge; and quaintly compared the willows that droop over the side of “sedgy Camus,” to nature putting up signals of distress. This, no doubt, was a bold and exaggerated mode of expressing the fact that the country around possesses little natural beauty. And it may seem strange that such should be the case. For some of the loveliest situations in our land are occupied by the gray ruins of what were once flourishing monasteries, priories, and abbeys. It is a pleasing thought, which perhaps we may be allowed to cherish, that the pious founders of those noble piles selected those sites which should best attune the soul of man to the exercise of devotion.