Historiae Cantebrigiensis Academiae ab urbe condita, liber primus [-secundus]

in Judaism. Perhaps it is a bank, to which one goes by the alley that leads from the great street, not far from Bede's house, to the water, on the northern side of the chapel of the brothers of Saint John the Baptist. Flaxhithe, and other banks suitable for the uses of merchants and people, but almost unknown through long antiquity.

These things teach that it was once a distinguished city, even if the ancient writers of British affairs were silent, and even if the grass hides the ruined houses: even if there is now a harvest where Troy once was: even if the city, once placed in a high position, has now settled into a valley, and has been derived from a sublime to a humble place. Thus devouring time and the various accidents of ages have consumed the once great and noble Rome, and have led it from high hills and a sublime place to humble ground. What is it that antiquity does not consume? A series of times even ruins rocks. Time and accident make such diversity in things that, with the sites of places overturned, no signs remain for recognition. When what were once high with mounds settle into valleys, sometimes those pressed by valleys are gathered by a meeting of earthly dust or mud. Thus the Isle of Wight was separated from Britain, and Sicily from Italy, and thus Castorea or Castre in Norfolk were separated from the sea, which once had been joined; from whence the Isle of Wight was once called in the British name Guith, that is, divided.

Isle of Wight.

Cantaber first placed the Academy of Cambridge.

In that great city of Cambridge, by whatever name one prefers to call it, Cantaber placed an Academy; he appointed philosophers and astronomers, brought from Athens, for the sake of teaching; he dedicated the city to letters, not to merchandise, to studies, not to the making of labor: so that you may understand that the city was instituted for the sake of the Academy, not the Academy for the sake of the city, if you divide them, and that a Gymnasium existed from the very beginnings. In faith of which thing, besides what we have said in the book on Antiquity, there also comes this, that from the beginning the city of scholars (as before...)