so much has been written about cambridge that it is difficult to say anything new; and this little book is therefore merely an attempt to put together recorded facts in an orderly way. i have followed throughout the arrangement adopted by mr wells in his book on “oxford and its colleges,” and have also borrowed his method of marking the portraits of college worthies with an asterisk. every writer on cambridge must be under a great obligation to willis and clark’s architectural history of the university; and mr atkinson’s lately published book gives a singular completeness to the authorities for the architectural side of the question. building at cambridge, however, is a complex problem,—the history of clare and the university church are cases in point—and to follow out carefully every date and mark every alteration would be beyond these limits. my endeavour has been, therefore, to indicate the general date of every building rather than to assign a date to every particular part of its construction. for the historical part of the book, the authorities, grave and anecdotal, are too numerous to mention. among modern[xii] works on the subject, i owe a great deal to mr j. w. clark’s “cambridge: historical and picturesque notes” (seeley, 1890). i am sure, too, that whatever interest my own part in this book may lack, mr new’s drawings will more than supply.

wisbech,

april 23, 1898.