CAMBRIDGE IN THE 'SEVENTIES [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The interesting article by Dr. Lyttelton in the October number of the Edinburgh Review on " Cambridge in the 'Seventies " ought not to be allowed to pass into the limbo of good magazine articles until it has suffered correction on one very important aspect of University life. Dr. Lyttelton has a remarkable passage to the effect that even at Trinity Professors Westcott and Lightfoot, themselves both Fellows of Trinity, who were the glory of Cambridge in the 'seventies (a glory endeared to us by their lifelong friendship), had no direct influence on the undergraduates. Perhaps, as he himself suggests, Dr. Lyttelton's mind was so !` blanketted " by his
own schoolfellows that he was not able to realize the presence at Cambridge of either graduates or undergraduates who had not previously been to Eton. Multitudes of such persons were, however, at Cambridge in the 'seventies, and many of them came under the influence of the distinguished scholars and teachers to whom he refers. Dr. Westcott's rooms at Trinity contained three reception rooms opening into each other. Again and again have I seen these rooms crowded, nay, more than crowded, crammed to the utmost limits of their capacity by undergraduates who had come to hear him explain the Gospel of St. John. This assembly was a gigantic Bible class composed of young Englishmen who sought food for their souls and believed that under the guidance of Dr. Westcott they should find it in St. John. I used regularly to go to hear Dr. Lightfoot preach, as he occasionally did, a course of sermons in St. Michael's, Trinity Street, and I sometimes found it difficult to get a seat, for, according to the good custom of those day, undergraduates, after attending Evensong at their College chapel, would proceed to one of the churches of the town where there happened to be an unusually attractive preacher. The prayer-meeting originally founded by Charles Simeon was in the 'seventies going strong, and its members bore cheerfully the appellation of " pi " or " pie-men " bestowed upon them by outsiders. Right good fellows they were and a fine set of men. Religion, in my recollection, was in a very healthy condition in Cambridge in those days. Discussion was keen and thought was free. Huxley and Darwin were constantly quoted, but there was a deep stream of personal religion and. New Testament scholarship by which mind and spirit existed alike.—I am, Sir, &c.,
C. POYNTZ SANDERSON.
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