"The motor has slowed down from seventy miles an hour to fifty miles an hour. We are passing a point of great historic interest." That is sight-seeing in Europe for the American tourist according to one of their own humorists. I have had many opportunities to observe the truth on which that sarcasm is based. Take Milton's Cottage for an instance. I had walked there from Chorley Wood one spring afternoon, and was enjoying idly the blooms in the little garden, when a motor rushed up, disgorged a party of hurried tourists, of which the man member had a guide-book. "Is this Milton's Cottage?" It was: so they entered. "Is this really Milton's chair? Sure?" It was. So they all sat on it solemnly in turn. Within five minutes their chariot of petrol had wrapped them up again, and they were rushing over the face of England to see some shrine of the Pilgrim Fathers. [Illustration: BROAD STREET, OXFORD, LOOKING WEST] But we have rambled from Oxford, which is, by the way, much cursed of the rushing tourist, who has a plan for "doing" it in an hour, and gallops from the Bodleian to Shelley's Tomb, and Addison's Walk, the Old Wall, the Tower of St. Michael's, and is away in a cloud of dust, without having gained the barest hint of the subtle persuasive charm of Oxford; without a thought of seeing St. Mary's Tower afloat in the moonlight; of hearing the choir of Magdalen; of drowsing an afternoon under the elms; or of seeking, with all due reverence and modesty, to gain an entrance to some of those august companies of Oxford--of undergraduates dreaming their exalted young dreams, of dons musing their deep thoughts. I own to it that I feel it difficult to write of Oxford, though, alas! I am able to write with facility of many places visited and things experienced. There is something of rebuke towards quick generalisations and easy judgments in the atmosphere of the place. I have been to Oxford many times. My very first dinner in England was with the Fellows of All Souls, a feast of solemn yet cheerful splendour in four rooms, one for the dinner itself, yet another for dessert, another for coffee, and finally, another for tobacco. Another time I was at Oxford to lecture to a gathering of dons and undergraduates on social problems in Australia; yet another time to prove that the young athletes of the University were conquerable at _epée_ fencing. But never have I got over a first awe of the place. To attempt to probe to its soul seems an impertinence. Oxford has an atmosphere of the Round Table.