There are sour-tem

pered people who look on even the manly sports of the place as mischievous; but in truth they are most valuable. There are, indeed, many students who triumph on the Cam, and in Parker's Piece, whose knowledge in the arts is chiefly confined to those of 'bumping' and bowling, and whose philological acquisitions are mainly in the language of the stable, and who require skilful coaching' to pass anyhow through the University examination; but then there are more whose rowing and cricketing, so far from interfering with their serious studies, by giving bodily vigour, enables them to go more easily through them and often the crack bat or stroke is well up, if not first in the tripos. There is, of course, a good deal of extravagance in language and conduct observable among the students; but it belongs to their time of life; and the least hopeful of all students is ever the prim, correct, precise, and 'nervous' one. Our Cambridge students are, by the admission of all who know them best, a fine, manly, promising body-earnest in study, respectable in conduct, gentlemen in manners.

We have said nothing of the event which gives Cambridge a temporary interest. The Installation of Prince Albert, as Chancellor of the University. The particulars of it will be best learned from the newspapers. It may however amuse the reader to compare the reception of Queen Victoria with that of Queen Elizabeth nearly three centuries before, and we therefore give a slight sketch of the proceedings on that occasion, from the contemporary materials supplied in 'Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth visited Cambridge for the first time in 1564. The anticipation of it excited a great commotion in the minds of the learned body, and many were the preliminary inquiries instituted and the arrangements made, not only as Cecil, who was Chancellor of the University, expresses it "what manner of pleasures in learning might be presented to her majesty," but also "how the town might be preserved from contagion of plague." These we shall not record but proceed to the reception.

All arrangements being completed, Sir William Cecil arrived at Cambridge on Friday afternoon the 4th of August, and was received with much ceremony: an oration was addressed to him; and he in his turn "discoursed at large" of the things necessary to be regarded in the entertainment of the Queen, particularly directing -it is noteworthy as a sign of the times-" that uniformity should be showed in apparel and religion, and especially in sitting at the communion table.' Then the authorities gave him thanks for his care of the

The Queen was to arrive this afternoon. About two o'clock the whole University was assembled at King's to receive instructions. Every man was strictly charged to "keep his place, and all other not to mingle themselves with them :" the scholars were ordered at the queen's passing "to cry out 'Vivat regina!' lowly kneeling, and after that, quietly and orderly to depart home to their colleges; and in no wise to come to the court, or the disputations, or the plays." Meanwhile the mayor and corporation had gone out to meet her Majesty. When they met her, "at a little above Newnham on horseback, they alighted and did their duties:" the Recorder made her " an oration in English" and the mayor delivered his mace, and "a fair standing-cup which cost £19, and twenty old angels were in it." The mace she restored with a neat compliment; the cup and its contents she handed to one of her attendants. She was then brought into the town, all the streets of which had been carefully covered with sand, except the lane from Queen's College to King's College, which "was strewed with rushes, and flags hanging in divers places, with coverlets and boughs, and many verses fixed upon the wall." When they came into the town by Queen's College, Mr. Secretary informed her Majesty of the several orders of the University, and the scholars, "of what sort they were.” Then when she had come about into the middle of where the scholars were collected, two of them came forth, and knelt down, and delivered two congratulatory orations one in prose and one in verse. The like was done by two Bachelors of Arts, and by two Masters of Arts. "And so she was brought among the Doctors, where all the lords and ladies did forsake their horses; and her majesty only remained on horseback." Her Majesty's dress on the occasion was a sufficiently handsome one. It is thus described by the University reporter: "She was dressed in a gown of black velvet pinked; a caul upon her head set with pearls and precious stones; a hat that was spangled with gold, and a bush of feathers."

Then the Queen was conducted by the Mayor to King's College at the gate of which he stayed. King's College was the chief point in the visit of Elizabeth. It was there she lodged during her stay: Trinity College is now considered to be the official residence of the Sovereign when at Cambridge. When she arrived

In approaching Ely from Cambridge, we pass through the heart of the fen or "rough" country, as it is called by the people about there. On either side of the line are vast tracts, only now being reclaimed, and the dim, pungent smoke of the peat (which is pared off the surface, stacked, and burned, preparatory to the tillage of the land) invades the nose and eyes of the tourist, and stretches far and wide before the wind across the unbroken level. This year, 1854, at least two-thirds of the land about Ely under cultivation has been sown with wheat. In 1852 the Brandon river, or Little Ouse, burst its banks about a mile above Brandon Creek (where it joins the Great Ouse), near Littleport, on the Ely and Lynn line, and laid thirty thousand acres under water. The flood did not entirely disappear until the end of the year 1853; and it had so enriched the soil that the farmers sowed wheat everywhere, without regard to the preceding crop. The vast plain around Brandon, or Brand' Creek, as it is called, has consequently exhibited this year, with but little interruption, one magnificent sheet of waving golden corn, which looks sufficient of itself to victual England through the coming twelvemonth. From the midst of this vast plain rise the pleasant wooded slopes of the Isle of Ely. Slight as is the elevation of the Isle, it contrasts remarkably with the surrounding flat; and the grand towers of the cathedral, crowning its summit, present a landmark high above the level of the Fen, visible for many miles and from every direction. The Ouse winds about one side of the Island; and a large catch-water drain, with, of course, several tributaries, completes the circuit. The railways keep the river side; and the traveller gets frequent glimpses of the great drainage system of the Fens as he speeds along. Here he catches a view down a long stretch of the placid old Ouse, rolling quietly between the high green banks that imprison his once vagabond waters, and along whose level ridge a barge-horse is plodding, dragging, by a rope attached to the top of the mast of the first one, a train of loaded wherries against the stream, while his driver is stimulating him by a call with a long musical shake at the end of it, peculiar to the Fen-bargees;—there he sees a couple of windmill pumps, stationary in the summer drought;-now the deep parallels of some mighty cut (the Forty-foot, or the Eau-brink, or Verumyden's cut, or somebody else's cut, or cau, or brink) open their long perspectives before

him for a passing instant ;-now the tall chimney of an engine-house rises out of a clump of trees, that stand an arborescent oasis among the crops of grain. At last the sight of a gravel-pit and rough stone-quarry, hollowed in the slope of a field, assures him that some change in the geological features of the country is at hand; and passing by cottages and farms on the side of a hill, and a row of wharfs and houses at its foot, the train glides by the junction platform of Ely.

From the station it is a short walk to the cathedral, up a tolerably steep ascent. The town of Ely is pretty airy and clean, with a look of antiquity and peace about it (when it is not market day) very pleasant to behold. The cathedral stands on the highest point of the town and island, with a fine open green before it, and the venerable and beautiful Bishop's Palace on its lower side. Its exterior is extremely grand and noble. The carvings and decorations of the wall-faces, windows, and buttresses of the western tower are rich in the extreme, and, mouldering as they are with age, and fretted by frost and rain, have a very venerable and fine effect. The proportions of this noble cathedral have already been stated (page 374). It is now undergoing a long-promised course of reparation. A good deal of later English work disfigures the body of the cathedral exteriorly, and several of the Norman windows have been replaced by Gothic ones. In the interior the restorations and decorations are going on with considerable taste, under the direction of Dean Peacock: the colouring of some of the spandrils of the roof is, however, somewhat violent and gaudy. The chancel is very good, and has a rich carved screen,

There are no cloisters to Ely Cathedral now; the fine range that formerly existed appears to be built into the canons' houses,-in fact, the entire precincts have suffered much desecration. One of the chapels attached to it is used as a parish church.

Ely is remarkable as having been one of the first settlements in the Fens. A Saxon monastery was erected on its site in very early times, and suffered many a siege from the invading Danes, and witnessed many a stout defence by its pious garrison. There are several curious remains of antiquity about the neighbourhood of the cathedral; and the visitor should return to the station through the solemn, shady gardens of the priory, and its noble old gateway at the lower end.

FROM the Fen districts we pass into the Eastern counties, two of which, with Cambridgeshire, constituted the Saxon kingdom of East Anglia; whilst the third, Essex, formed part of the kingdom of that name. The first of these, Norfolk, lies on the German Ocean, close to the Great Wash-that shallow marshy estuary, which divides the great lowland of England into two unequal parts. It took its name from the East English settlers, who called the inhabitants of this, the most northern part of East Anglia, the North-folk; as they did those of the southern portion, the South-folk; hence Norfolk and Suffolk ;—of which counties old Michael Drayton sang

"Norfolk and Suffolk near; so named of their sites,
Adorned every way with wonderful delights
To the beholding eye, that every where are seen,
Abounding with rich fields, and pastures fresh and green;
Fair havens to their shores; large heaths within them lie,
As nature in them strove to show variety."

In the time of the Britons, Norfolk was a part of the dominions of the Iceni, or Simeni; who, during the reign of Claudius, allied themselves with the Romans; under whose division of the country, the county was included in the province of Flavia Cæsariensis. The Saxon kingdom of East Anglia was founded by Offa in 575. It continued till 792; when Ethelred, a youthful sovereign who had just come to the throne, sought the hand of Elfrida, daughter of Offa king of Mercia, in marriage. Offa invited him to his court, where he was basely assassinated, and from that period the kingdom became tributary to Mercia. East Anglia was frequently invaded by the Danes, the first descent being made near Reedham, in Norfolk, when the sons of Lodbrog, a Danish nobleman, who was murdered by Bern, a retainer of King Edmund, came with an armed force to revenge his death. William I., after he was recognised as King of England, bestowed the earldom of Norfolk and Suffolk on Ralph de Guader, who rebelled against his benefactor, was defeated, banished, and his forfeited demesne conferred on Roger Bigod. Roger supported the claim of Robert, the eldest son of William, to the throne, upon the death of the latter; but was ultimately obliged to submit to Rufus, after the county had been greatly devastated by civil war. Some other prominent events in the history of the county will be found mentioned in our account of Norwich, its capital.

The coast of Norfolk presents an almost unbroken convexity from the Wash on the north, to the estuary of the Yare on the south. It lies low, and considerable encroachments have been made upon it from the sea, particularly at Mundesley and Cromer, which lie nearly in the centre. A strong sea-wall has been erected at the latter place, to resist the further aggressions of the turbulent waves, which have buried an ancient village and church in their vortex. The Wash separates it

from Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire; and the Waveney and Little Ouse, which fall into the Yare, divide it from Suffolk; its boundaries on the east and north are the North Sea, or German Ocean. It is the fourth county in the kingdom in size, being exceeded only by Devonshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. The population is dense, averaging something more than 200 to each square mile. There are several creeks or harbours on the coast, of which Lynn, Wells, Cley, and Yarmouth, are the chief. The greatest depth of water is at Lynn deeps; but in Yarmouth roads there is also good anchorage, and they are well known to seamen engaged in the northern trade. Sometimes several hundred vessels are anchored there, detained by strong winds from the north.

Norfolk is a flat county; many parts of it are a dead level. Mousehold hill, near Norwich, is almost the only eminence deserving the name of a hill in the entire district. The western part is included in the great Fen country; and yet it is this side which lies the highest. Here chalk downs appear, and the level declines gradually towards the east; and there the chalk sinks under beds of alluvial soil, with which a considerable portion of the county is covered. The principal rivers rise in the chalky soil in the north-west; and they run through valleys, some of great picturesque beauty, the ground undulating in gentle slopes on each side. The interior of the county is well watered by the Yare, the Wensum, the Waveney, the Bure, the Thet, the Ouse, the Tas, the Nar, the Wissey, the Welney, and other streams. The Yare rises at Shipdam. It is the most considerable river in the county, and falls into the sea at Yarmouth-or Yaremouth; it expands, about three miles before it reaches the ocean, into a large sheet of water, called Breydon Broad, which at high tide forms a splendid inland lake, being about three miles long, and one-and-a-half broad. The Wensum rises in the neighbourhood of Fakenham, and falls into the Yare at Norwich. The Waveney rises at Lopham, and the Bure, in the northern part of the county, near Aylsham. Both these rivers fall into Breydon: the Waveney at the south-western, and the Bure at the north-eastern extremity. Dearly would old Isaac Walton have loved Norfolk, for its rivers abound in fish,— principally pike and bream, which are captured in large numbers, and of great weight, at Cantley and Buckenham, on the Yare; and in Wroxham and Hickling Broads, on the Bure. Roach, perch, and eels are found

The word "Broad," applied to a sheet of water, is a provincialism, in use only, we believe, in Norfolk and the adjoining county of Suffolk. The Rev. Richard Lubbock, rector of Eccles,

is our authority for saying, that it is applied to pieces or sheets of

water of all dimensions, "from the puny pool overgrown with weeds, called here provincially a 'pulk,' to the wide-expanded lake."