So it is with Oxford. Heaven knows the place is often enough shrouded in cold, wet mist: for weeks together the streets are muddy beyond all other streets: at the beginning of each term (save that one by courtesy called "summer") the chemists' shops are (or used to be) filled with rows of bottles of quinine, to enable the poor undergraduate to struggle against a depressing climate. But who remembers all these things in after years? The man of fifty hears Oxford mentioned, and there comes back to him at once a place where old grey buildings throw shadows across shaven lawns; where the young green of the chestnut makes a brilliant splash of colour above the college garden wall; where cool bright waters wind beneath ancient willows, and it is good to bask in flannels in a punt. In fact it is the few days of real summer--the two or three in each "summer" term--that he remembers in accordance with memory's happy scheme, in which it is the fittest that survive. It is in summer, then, that we draw near to feast our eyes more intimately on Oxford's charms. Not first of all upon those which she hides away within her outer cloak of beauty, but upon the garment which she borrows from Dame Nature, and wears with such inimitable grace. Meadows, gardens, rivers, trees: these are the materials of which the robe is woven, and to each belong at least some names that have become famous beyond the boundaries of Oxford. Who has not heard of Port Meadow--the town's meadow, as the name infers? Low it lies on the river bank to the north-west of the town. For hundreds of years--since the time, indeed, of the _Domesday Book_--it has belonged to the freemen of Oxford, and to-day may still be seen their flocks of geese, white patterned on a ground of green, with here and there a horse with tired feet ending his days where grass is soft and plentiful. The Isis, the Upper River as here it is commonly called, has a special beauty as it flows along the edge of Port Meadow, for above it hang the Witham woods, and on its edge is the little hamlet of Binsey, giving a touch of human interest and rural picturesqueness to the scene. It is worth while to row or sail against the stream until the whole of the meadow is passed by, for then comes Godstow, where Fair Rosamond found refuge, and where she was at last laid to rest. It must in all honesty be confessed that to the average undergraduate the place was reckoned desirable, not so much on account of the historical interest just mentioned, as because, after a long pull up the river on a summer afternoon, it was possible to obtain at the little inn upon the river bank what was euphemistically called "eel tea", a meal which, as a matter of fact, consisted of stewed eels washed down by unlimited libations of cider-cup!