THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 19 
Cambridge in term time, and has had a glimpse of the life. 
that may be lived in those surroundings, can fail to understand 
what is to be prized above all else in the ancient universities. 
The beauty of the place, the noble buildings, the traditions 
that they breathe, the great names of the past (and occasionally 
of the present) that stir the imagination; and then the daily 
life, at. work, at play, the meals in stately halls, the quaint 
and ancient customs, the crowd of kindred spirits, the seeming 
religious background to it all. I have lived as a temporary don 
for a fortnight in a Cambridge college. It was not long, but 
quite long enough to enable me to understand partly and 
forgive wholly the exuberance of praise to which I have been 
compelled to listen all my life from my many friends who were 
educated at Oxford or Cambridge. I have been in Cambridge 
in May week more than once and seen the very flower of 
England’s youth assembled there for wholesome pleasure- 
making. There is, I believe, nothing like it to be seen in the 
world, unless, of course, at Oxford. No one can wonder at the 
‘impress such communities make upon those who dwell within 
them, and no one can wonder at those who think that we 
have nothing like this to offer and never can have. 
But, after all, Oxford and Cambridge had a beginning and 
so have we, and I for one am content to work for the future. 
I should not be content unless I could do so with good and 
well-founded hope. It is almost thirty years since I went as 
a student to Owens College, Manchester, and lived in lodgings 
in that great city. I cannot say that my sense of the beautiful 
was much exalted by my surroundings, though I think my 
sense of the need of beauty was very much sharpened. 
There was good music to be heard, perhaps the best 
in England; there were good plays to be seen, and there 
was some art; but altogether it was not what is called an 
‘atmosphere’. There was something of a corporate life 
outside the class rooms; there were games and societies, 
