One of the most striking things about the House of Commons to the view of an American visitor is the well-groomed appearance of the members. They are invariably attired in faultless Prince Albert coats, often with a boutonniere on the lapel, and they all wear silk hats, which, by the way, they are not expected to take off during the sittings, except when addressing the House. It is said to be the best-dressed assembly in the world, and is in sharp contrast with the more democratic and unconventional, not to say slovenly, mode of dressing which obtains in our House of Representatives, where the ordinary costume is a long, loose frock coat--sometimes even a sack--and a derby or felt hat.
The Cathedral route from London to Edinburgh takes one through an interesting stretch of eastern England, part of which is as flat as Holland, with fens and canals and windmills, yielding, however, in the north to a more rolling country, vestibule, as it were, to the hills of Scotland. As its name indicates, this route affords the opportunity of seeing in rapid succession the great cathedrals at Ely, Lincoln, York, and Durham, not to speak of others. But nothing on this side of England equals in interest the university town of Cambridge, with its twenty colleges and three thousand students, its venerable collegiate buildings, its far-famed "backs" (that is, the lovely lawns and stately avenues behind the colleges), its clear and placid little river, and its memories of great men and great causes. It is an exceptionally clean town, of some forty-five thousand inhabitants.
[Illustration: CLARE COLLEGE AND KING'S CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.]
Oxford, farther west, is a somewhat larger city (about fifty-three thousand), with twenty-three colleges and about three thousand students, contains an unparalleled collection of picturesque academic buildings, and has some single features which are not surpassed anywhere, such as Magdalen (pronounced Maudlen) College, "the loveliest of all the homes of learning," Addison's Walk, The Broad Walk, and the "streamlike windings of that glorious street," to which Wordsworth devoted a sonnet. But Cambridge, too, has some features which cannot be paralleled, even in Oxford. For instance, Cambridge has, in Trinity, the largest college in England. It has, in the chapel of King's College, a building of marvellous beauty; Oxford cannot match it, nor can it be matched anywhere in England save by that "miracle of the world," the Chapel of Henry VII., in Westminster Abbey. The roll of Cambridge's alumni is illustrious to a degree, having such names as Bacon, Erasmus, Newton, Milton, Cromwell, Macaulay, Byron, Thackeray, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Harvey (discoverer of the circulation of the blood), Darwin, and many, many others equally well known.