(among whom a few emasculate exceptions are not to be reckoned,) regard alike her blandishments and her cruelties. How rapidly flew the hours in which I lounged in the Bodleian and other libraries, or went from college to college, to inspect its pictures and antiquities! Here, a manuscript of Cædmon, which the Anglo-Saxon professor kindly interpreted to me as I inspected it; and there, a _Chaucer_, and “the Game of Chesse,” from the primitive press of Caxton, exposed to my admiring gaze the small beginnings of the wonderful Literature of the English tongue. In the Ashmolean Museum I beheld, with still greater reverence, the jewel once worn by the immortal Alfred, to which I felt that Victoria’s _Koh-i-noor_ was but a twinkling and lack-lustre pendant. In the curious old muniment-room of Merton, I was scarcely less pleased to behold the venerable charters and patents, engrossed in ancient characters, and sealed with quaint historic seals, by which their lands and hereditaments are still retained, and from which the whole Collegiate System of Oxford is derived. The chapel of this charming college is worthy of the noble foundation to which it belongs; and, as my amiable _cicerone_ was an accomplished architectural artist and antiquarian, I was not allowed to inspect its details superficially. His own hand had, very recently, restored the elaborate decorations of the vaulting, in beautiful colours and designs; and he appeared to appreciate the high privilege which he had enjoyed, of mingling his own handiwork, in this manner, with that of ancient and inventive genius. His mediæval tastes had perhaps become a hobby with him; I observed, with pain, some morbid symptoms of unreality in his excessive devotion to the mere æsthetics of religion; but did not then suppose, as since has proved the sad result, that he was destined to add another to those children of the captivity, who, by the rivers of Babylon, have so estranged themselves from Sion, that their tongue seems indeed to have been smitten with the palsy of untruth, and their right hand to have forgotten its cunning.