THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME WERE ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY THE CARL HENTSCHEL COLOURTYPE, LTD. [Pg 5] [Pg 4] [Pg 3] THE CLARENDON BUILDING, BROAD STREET It is the Roman Doric portico of the “Building” we see rising in the centre of the picture, surmounted by a huge leaden figure, forming one of the acroteria of the pediment. This noble piece of architecture was erected from the proceeds of the sale of copies of Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion , completed in 1713. Looking west, on th

Most of these chapters have been filled by a brief search into my recollections of Oxford. They aim, therefore, at recording my own impressions as faithfully as the resultant stir of fancy would allow. But I am also deeply and obviously indebted to several books, and in particular to the histories of Oxford by Parker, Maxwell Lyte, and Boase; to Mr. F. E. Robinson’s series of College Histories; to Reminiscences of Oxford and its companion volumes from the Clarendon Press; and, above all the rest

Passing rapidly through London, with its roar of causes that have been won, and the suburbs, where they have no causes, and skirting the willowy Thames,—glassy or silver, or with engrailed grey waves—and brown ploughlands, elm-guarded, solitary, I approached Oxford. Nuneham woods made one great shadow on the land, one great shadow on the Thames. According to an old custom, it rained. But rain takes away nothing from Oxford save a few nice foot passengers. It transmutes the Franciscan habit of th

TOM TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE The palisade enclosing the graveyard of St. Aldate’s Church is on the left; some of the buildings of Pembroke College appear to the right. The gateway in the centre of the picture is the west entrance to Christ Church from St. Aldate’s, and leads into the Fountain Quadrangle. The tower, to the level of the finial of the ogee-headed window, is of the date of Wolsey’s foundation; the remaining part was added by Sir Christopher Wren. [Pg 65] [Pg 64] [Pg 63]...

Standing at Carfax, and occasionally moving a step to one side or another, I see with my eyes, indeed, the west front of Christ Church, with Tom Tower; the borders of All Saints’ and St. Mary’s; and that grim tower of St. Michael’s; and the handsome curves of High Street and St. Aldate’s, which are part of the mere good fortune of Oxford: but, especially if a dawn light recall the first dim shining, or a sunset recall the grey and golden splendour of its maturity, I may also see the past of the

The senior members of the University are perhaps as interesting as they have ever been. The freshman or other critical stranger to the city finds them less picturesque, if his ideal be anything like that of the youthful Ruskin, who looked for presences like the Erasmus of Holbein or Titian’s Magnificoes, and was disappointed at Christ Church by all save one. For the President or Master, whose absolutism used to be the envy of kings, now bears his honours inconspicuously. The fellows of colleges

The Oxford graduate of the past is far too pale a ghost in literature. He lies in old books, like a broken sculpture waiting to be reconstructed, and survives but in an anecdote and from his importance after leaving Oxford for a bishopric or a civil place. For one memory of a Don there are a hundred of soldiers, statesmen, priests, in the quadrangles and streets. He is in danger of being treated as merely the writer of a quaint page among the records of the college muniment-room. Erasmus, Fuller

What a thing it is to be an undergraduate of the University of Oxford! Next to being a great poet or a financier, there is nothing so absolute open to a man. For several years he is the nursling of a great tradition in a fair city: and the memory of it is above his chief joy. His follies are hallowed, his successes exalted, by the dispensation of the place. Surely the very air whispers of wisdom and the beautiful, he thinks— That time is the one luxury he never regrets. It is a second childhood,

The fact that no porter or other college servant has recently received a D.C.L. is no proof of his insignificance. “The President and your humble servant manage very well between us,” said one porter, with perfect truth. College servants are the corbels and gargoyles that complete the picturesqueness and usefulness of Oxford. The oldest are not so much serviceable as quaint, often grotesque, reminders of an age that has gone; their faces are apt to express grim judgments upon the changes which t

I have no doubt that the past had many such to show, and that the present, when it has graduated into a past, will not be found wanting; but the ways of the college servants of old are buried deep in oblivion. They were less numerous then, when a senior and a junior student slept in the same room, and the latter made the beds, etc. Upon scholars, Bible-clerks, and the like, fell a great many of the duties which are now the scout’s—as waiting at the fellows’ table in hall, and the pleasanter alth

In other cities the past is a tradition, and is at most regretted. In Oxford it is an entailed inheritance. Nevertheless, by way of a gaudy foil to this hale immortality, fashions flourish there more luridly, and fade more suddenly, than elsewhere. Afraid, therefore, that I might stumble upon anachronisms unaided, I addressed myself as a seeker after truth to several freshmen who might have been expected to know practically everything. One wished to be excused because he was standing for the sec

In spring, when it rained, says Aubrey, Lord Bacon used to go into the fields in an open coach, “to receive the benefit of irrigation, which he was wont to say was very wholesome because of the nitre in the aire, and the universal spirit of the world.” Nor is it difficult in a college garden to associate the diverse ceremonial of Nature with the moods and great days of men. What, for example, can lay such fostering hands upon the spirit that has grown callous in the undecipherable sound of citie

The history of a college like New or Wadham is written clearly on its walls. It rose by one grand effort, from one grand conception, at the will of founder and architect. All its future uses were more or less plainly implied in the quadrangles, chapel, and hall, through which the opening procession marched with solemn music; they stood in need of little more than time and good fortune. Such a college was then in a sense mature, fully armed and equipped, before the founder’s decease. But it was m

Lætissimus umbra. And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers. The walls of Oxford are tufted with ivy-leaved toadflax, wallflower, and the sunny plant which botanists call “inelegant ragwort.” They form a trail from the villages, upon wall after wall, into Ship Street and Queen’s Lane, by which the country may be traced. In the same way, the city may be said to steal out into the fields. Not only do we read the epitaph of a forgotten fellow in a quiet church, and mark a resemblance to Merton or

Many have written in praise of Oxford, and so finely that I have made this selection with difficulty. I have excluded the work of living men, because I am not familiar with it. Among that which is included will be found passages from the writings of one who was at both Universities, John Lyly; of two who were at Cambridge only, Dryden and Wordsworth; of two who were at neither, Hazlitt and Hawthorne; and of several brilliant lovers of Oxford whose faith was filial and undivided. Almost all the q