Our memories of Oxford, if we have long made her a Castle of Indolence, vary no less than do the shifting aspects of her scenery. Days of spring and of mere pleasure in existence have alternated with days of gloom and loneliness, of melancholy, of resignation. Our mental pictures of the place are tinged by many moods, as the landscape is beheld in shower and sunshine, in frost, and in the colourless drizzling weather. Oxford, that once seemed a pleasant porch and entrance into life, may become a dingy ante-room, where we kick our heels with other weary, waiting people. At last, if men linger there too late, Oxford grows a prison, and it is the final condition of the loiterer to take ‘this for a hermitage.’ It is well to leave the enchantress betimes, and to carry away few but kind recollections. If there be any who think and speak ungently of their _Alma Mater_, it is because they have outstayed their natural ‘welcome while,’ or because they have resisted her genial influence in youth. CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 19 ,, II. THE EARLY STUDENTS—A DAY WITH A 43 MEDIEVAL UNDERGRADUATE ,, III. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 67 ,, IV. JACOBEAN OXFORD 89 ,, V. SOME SCHOLARS OF THE RESTORATION 111 ,, VI. HIGH TORY OXFORD 133 ,, VII. GEORGIAN OXFORD 153 ,, VIII. POETS AT OXFORD: SHELLEY AND LANDOR 171 ,, IX. A GENERAL VIEW 191 ,, X. UNDERGRADUATE LIFE—CONCLUSION 209 CHAPTER I THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY