EARLY COLLEGIATE LIFE.* IN this little volume the President of
Caine has collected a number of essays illustrating the past life cf his College, most of which have been delivered as addresses or printed in the College magazine. Caius is fortunate in the possession of a good deal of unique material, upon which Dr. Venn has been able to draw, and he has also traced some interesting series of private letters, extracts from which be prints to illustrate the undergraduate life of different periods. For the seventeenth century he goes to the Gawdy MSS. at the British Museum, and shows us the kind of correspondence which passed between Framlingham Gawdy, Esq., of West Harling, a pro- sperous Norfolk landowner, on the one side, and his son and Anthony Gawdy, a poor relation supported by him at the University, on the other. The difficulties of communication at this time were great. Messengers were often hard to find, and once we hear of young Gawdy's letters being delayed through his carrier having been pressed for a soldier. Such letters as did succeed in reaching Norfolk generally contain requests for money or clothes, and occasionally there are even demands for "a great cake or twos and withal a cheese or two . . . to amend our poore lenten commons." We hear of smallpox as " reife in the town" more than once, and deaths occur in College. But for the most part the writers tell us little of their actual life or studies. There is, however, one curious sentence in a letter from William to his father. "My cosen Doll arrived yester-night at Cambridge with her man Goodman Goblet, and intendes to sojourn at ones house that was one of Anthony's mistresses, but now married to a draper in Cambridge." Anthony was the poor relation already men- tioned. He was subsequently "sent down" for a brawl with the Dean, though (according to the account which survives) the Dean was in the wrong; and if this letter is to receive what seems the only possible interpretation, it throws a strange light on the condition of University life at the time, and the current views of morality.
• BarlvCarsoiste hha Teas. esabedes W. HOW and Masa Cal wad To illustrate the eighteenth century Dr. Venn has been able to secure some letters written in 1767 by a pensioner of Caine to a friend who was to follow him to the University. These (though written at a time when Cambridge is supposed to have been at the lowest point of intellectual stagnation) show us a much more civilized and studious society. One actually goes through a day's programme. The writer rises at five to read for an hour, after which he takes an hour's walk before chapel, then (three times a week) a cold bath (the bathing place was in the Fellows' garden and the letter dated August), then breakfast, followed by three and a half hours' reading. At half-past twelve every day comes the hairdresser, and our pensioner dresses for dinner, after which it is allowable to lounge away an hour at a friend's room and drink a glass of wine (" but this is what I seldom do "). At five one may visit the coffee-house, read the newspapers, and drink a cup of tea, coffee, or chocolate ; at six there is chapel again, and afterwards a short walk is taken, before eight o'clock supper, which brings the day to an end. We hear, too, of driving and boating excursions, and, generally speaking, of a life quite as much in accord with that of the University to-day as is that of sixty years ago, which Dr. Venn describes in a later chapter,
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