Where was “yonder grave,” and where “yon whitening spire?” It was with some chagrin that I followed my directions into the dullest haunts of the town, and into a modernized church, in an unromantic street, and there soliloquized, over a miserable brass plate, amid a pile of pew-lumber—“In such a grave your Druid lies!” It is amusing, on a few square inches of worthless metal, as entirely devoid of artificial value as it is of intrinsic worth, to observe the vanity with which a man of rank has contrived to write his own name in as large letters as those of the poet’s. “The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man, and so sweet a poet, should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his interment, &c.”—so reads the inscription. The Earl has at least the merit of having exactly expressed the character of his tribute, for it _denotes_ the place, and that’s all. One would think a Scottish nobleman might have spared a few guineas in doing something better for the grave of his countryman. A glimpse of Twickenham, and of the spire of the church where Pope is entombed, were all that I allowed myself, in honour of a bard whose faultless verse is no excuse for the frequent indecency and paganism of its sentiment. It is a curious and revolting fact that his skull has been purloined, and now belongs to a phrenologist. I caught a railway view of Dachet-lane, famous for Falstaff’s experiences in the buck-basket, and so once more to Windsor! I stopped, over a train, to enjoy one more walk on the castle terrace, and one more look at Eton college, and then hastened on to Oxford, to attend the Commemoration. I accepted the hospitalities of my friends of Magdalen, who lodged me in the rooms formerly occupied by the Bishop of Exeter. During my visit I did not fail to see the celebrated Dr. Pusey, who struck me as a younger man than he is generally supposed to be. His appearance indicates nothing eccentric or ascetic, and his manners are those of a gentleman at home in the society of his fellow-men. He has friends and foes at Oxford, as well as elsewhere, but all seem to regard him with respect as a man of piety and learning. To me he was less a lion, however, because I have always regarded the application of his name to the great movement of 1833, as a mere instance of popular caprice. His share in it has been less than that of many others; neither the credit of its good, nor the disgrace of its evil, belongs to him in any superlative degree. Its progress has left him, with others, far in the rear of its existing interests; and what has been stigmatized as _Puseyism_ is perhaps, when fairly distinguished from the extravagances of a few fanatics and sophists, the English phase of a world-wide return to principles that were the life of Christianity, long before Popery was in existence, and ages before it had bred Protestantism by its violent reaction. CHAPTER XXXI. _Oxford and Cambridge._