The elm trees of the “Grove” of Magdalen College show to the extreme left of the picture. The buildings of the College do not appear. To the right of the “Grove” are the two spires of the Cathedral and the University Church of St. Mary, with the Radcliffe dome and the “Schools” tower farther on. The view is looking west, at sunset in corn harvest.] walker, who is content to sit under a hedge and wait for the best things, to make his gods. The lanes are peopled with no fairies such as in Wales and Ireland nimbly feed the fantasy, which here, in consequence, is apt to take flight in wonderful ways. I remember one (and Ovid was not at all in his mind) who was all but confident that he saw Persephone on flat pastures and red ploughlands, gleaming between green trees, when the hawthorn was not yet over and the roses had begun, and the sapphire dragon-fly was afloat, on the Cherwell, as the boat made a cool sound among the river’s hair, betwixt Water Eaton and Islip. On the quiet, misty, autumn mornings, the hum of threshing machines was solemn; and there at least it was a true harmony of autumn, and the man casting sheaves from the rick was exalted-- Neque ilium Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo. Everywhere the fancy, unaided by earlier fancies, sets to work very busily in these fields. I have on several afternoons gone some way towards the beginning of a new mythology, which might in a thousand years puzzle the Germans. The shadowy, half-apprehended faces of new deities float before my eyes, and I have wondered whether Apollo and Diana are not immortal presences wheresoever there are awful trees and alternating spaces of cool or sunlit lawn.... In the lanes there seems to be another religion for the night. There is a fitful wind, and so slow that as we walk we can follow its path while it shakes the heavy leaves and dewy grass; and we feel as if we were trespassing on holy ground; the land seems to have changed masters, or rather to have One. Often I saw a clean-limbed beech, pale and slender, yet firm in its loftiness, that shook delicately arched branches at the top, and below held out an arm on which a form of schoolboys might have sat,--rising out of fine grass and printing its perfect outlines on the sky,--and I could fancy it enjoyed a life of pleasure that was health, beauty that was strength, thought that was repose.