centered archway. This was the original churchway for the parishioners, who entered the nave of their church through a porch, now destroyed, at the west end of the south aisle. The chapel and gallery were erected by Dr. Cosyn, Master of Corpus Christi College, between 1487 and 1515. II. The Story of Peterhouse. The Market Hill. A STRANGER who walks through the college quadrangles is apt to think that the arrangement of their buildings was adopted deliberately upon a plan decided upon at the foundation. This very natural opinion is not, however, the true one. The college system started from small and obscure beginnings. It was impossible to foresee the extent to which it would be subsequently developed, and in consequence the first buildings were extremely simple, and destitute of some of those distinctive features (as the entrance gate-way and the chapel) which are now the first to command attention and admiration. The earliest students who resorted to the University lodged where they could in the houses of the townspeople; whence, as Dr. Caius tells us, serious disagreement arose; for the former desired to hire lodgings at a fair price, the latter to let them at an exorbitant one. To remedy this, hostels were established, managed by a Principal appointed by the University, where food and lodging were provided at an equitable rate. Caius, writing in 1573, records the names of some twenty of these, which had been in existence within his own recollection (and he was then, he says, sixty-three years old), but at that date they had all come to an end. After the college system had been accepted they became unnecessary. Some few survived for a while, attached to special colleges as a source of revenue, as St. Austin's to King's, and St. Bernard's to Corpus Christi. Gradually, however, the ground they occupied was required for collegiate extension, and the hostel was either pulled down or converted into chambers. The principal distinction between these temporary residences and the colleges that succeeded them is, that the latter were in all cases governed by a body of statutes imposed by the founder, who further offered inducements to students to resort to his college by holding out the prospect of Scholarships and Fellowships; in other words, of being educated free of cost while an undergraduate, and of obtaining afterwards a provision for a life of study. Besides these, there were the poor scholars (pauperes scolares), now called "sizars," who were lodged as well as educated free of charge, and further allowed to make money by doing menial work. For instance, when building operations are going on, we constantly find reference to their employment at daily wages. This system (which has been beneficial in its effect down to our own time, for many of our most distinguished scholars entered the University as sizars) was part of the deliberate purpose that animated the design of Walter de Merton, who may be called the founder of the whole collegiate system. He sought to attract the most capable men of all classes, and so to raise up secular schools which should check the influence of the monasteries, and through them of the Pope. Merton's code, which was followed at Peterhouse and elsewhere, and that subsequently drawn up by William of Wykeham for New College at Oxford in 1400, well repay attentive study. In a series of pictures of Cambridge, however, we purpose to select those points of collegiate history that illustrate the buildings and the social life, rather than the education, which has of late been exhaustively treated of by others. Let us, therefore, return to the establishment of Peterhouse. Our illustration shows the south side next the Fellows' garden, with the Hall, and the turret-staircase that originally led to the Master's chamber. The |