No one who has any experience of the working and life of Cambridge can be ignorant how completely we have been removed from Cambridge of half a century ago, or that we have lost almost the last glimpse of what our University, even forty years since, was like.

Not only has she changed, as all that lives must change, but one after another the men of advanced years or of clear memory (such as Dr Gilbert Ainslie, Francis Martin, Sedgwick, Shilleto and Dr Cookson) have passed away, leaving no such memoranda as Gunning or Pry me left, at least none which are at present generally accessible, to tell us what were the methods and processes of University Study through which were educated the minds which have done much ta make our University and our Country what they are.

In this quick transition of our academical methods, customs, and institutions, the difficulty becomes intense when we set ourselves to attempt to picture either of our Universities (for the like holds good of Oxford) at a period removed still further from us by two or three generations.

Though I am conscious how unworthy my work is of the Universities, to the knowledge of whose history I desire even remotely to contribute, I have endeavoured to collect in this volume some of the materials which are requisite for a faithful account of Cambridge and Oxford in the Eighteenth Century.