[Cambridge—Monday, 11 July 1859]
Monday. Warm and clear. Began early to look about the colleges and grounds. We were promised a slip from Milton’s mulberry tree under which we sat enjoying always in our rambles the pleasant under current of talk by our friends. The most interesting thing we saw today was the mask of Milton at Christ’s College in possession of the Master. There we found all the refined sensibility intellectually and heavenly purity of the Milton we love and worship. Reverently we entered the apartments where he lived while a student pressing with loving care the very boards he trod a man chosen by Heaven to interpret still farther the highest Truth to man. We saw the manuscript of Lycidas, Thorwaldsen’s Byron, Archdeacon Hare’s books and a wilderness of wonderful things reminding us that the great spirits we know so well were finite & subject to temptations like ourselves.
In the afternoon we saw that marvellous piece of architecture King’s College Chapel built in the time of Henry IIV [sic] the roof a lace-work of carved white stone.
