It might be a question how far back a Retrospect should extend; and one or two answers might be given. For instance, perhaps the first reference to Cambridge in extant literature is in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History (iv, 19). Stone is sought to make a coffin for Queen Aethelthryth or Etheldreda, who had died an abbess at Ely. The district of Ely, says Bede, is on every side encompassed with water and marshes and has no large stones; but the brothers sent on this errand came to ‘a small deserted city’ (civitatula) ‘which in the language of the English is called Grantacaestir’, and near its walls they found a white marble coffin, beautifully wrought, with a lid of the same stone. Grantchester, say the annotators; probably not, say the antiquaries, suggesting that it is more likely to have been Chesterton. But, whichever it was, the archaeologists would carry our retrospect much further back. Mr Cyril Fox, in his Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, dates the bronze age. in this area about 2000 B.C. He assembles an extraordinary mass of material of successive periods and races, to which the reader is referred with confidence. The retrospect of an ordinary member of the University may not improperly be limited at times to the academic story.