thought I, if this were unheard of in England, and were only set down in the book of some peregrine Dickens, as what he saw in America, at a Harvard Commencement, how inevitably would it figure in reviews and newspapers as a telling fact against the disorganizing tendencies of democratic education! In Oxford, it is regarded as a mere outbreak of youthful merriment, and such is indeed the case: and yet, unless _Encænia_ and _Saturnalia_ are synonymous terms, one must be allowed to think the custom best honoured in the breach. I must add, that during the delivery of a poem, by an undergraduate, his comrades showed more respect, and the tumult subsided for a time, like that of Ephesus, on the remonstrance of the town-clerk. The young poet pronounced his numbers in the same tribune where once stood Reginald Heber, enchanting all hearers with his “Palestine.” A lunch in the superb new hall of Pembroke, of which many ladies partook with the other guests, giving the hall an unusually gay appearance; a dinner at Oriel, and afterwards sport with bowls, and other games, in the garden of Exeter; and, finally, a very agreeable evening party at Magdalen; these were the other occupations of the day, in which I greatly enjoyed the society with which I mingled. I was particularly pleased to observe the enthusiasm of the female visitors of Oxford, many of whom had come up for the first time, and were less acquainted with the place than myself. It was a novel pleasure, on my part, to turn _cicerone_, and to explain to a group of English ladies, the wonders of the University. Next morning, after breakfast at Merton, and a lunch at Jesus College, with some kind friends who were preparing to leave Oxford for the Long Vacation, I went, in the company of some of them, to Bedford, and there took coach for Cambridge. I thought of John Bunyan, who once inhabited the county-jail, in this place, and there composed his wonderful allegory; and as I began to travel along the banks of the Ouse, I thought of William Cowper, who was one of the first to do justice to his piety and genius. If the Church of England, sharing in the fault of the times, (and visiting others with far milder penalties than both Papists and Puritans laid upon her) was in any sort a party to his ill-usage, it must be owned that she has done him full justice, in the end. He owed his enlargement to the Bishop of Lincoln’s interposition, and Cowper and Southey have affixed the stamp, and given currency to the gold of his genius. I am ashamed that he was not taken into the Bishop of Lincoln’s house, and made a deacon, and so cured of the mistaken enthusiasm which was evidently the misfortune of the tinker, and not the natural bent of the man.