_The illustrations in this volume were engraved and printed by the Carl Hentschel Colourtype, Ltd._ ON ENTERING OXFORD CHAPTER I ON ENTERING OXFORD Passing rapidly through London, with its roar of causes that have been won, and the suburbs, where they have no causes, and skirting the willowy Thames,--glassy or silver, or with engrailed grey waves--and brown ploughlands, elm-guarded, solitary, I approached Oxford. Nuneham woods made one great shadow on the land, one great shadow on the Thames. According to an old custom, it rained. But rain takes away nothing from Oxford save a few nice foot passengers. It transmutes the Franciscan habit of the city to a more Dominican cast; and if the foil of sky be faintly lighted, the rain becomes a visible beatitude. One by one the churches of St. Mary the Virgin and All Saints’, and the pleasant spire of the Cathedral, appear; with the dome of the Radcliffe Camera, Tom Tower of Christ Church, and that old bucolic tower of Robert d’Oigli’s castle on the west. For a minute several haystacks, a gasometer, and the engine smoke replace them. But already that one cameo from February’s hand has painted and lit and garnished again that city within the heart, which is Oxford. I think, when I see an old woodcut of a patron holding his towered foundation in his hand, about to bestow it as a gift,--as William of Wykeham is depicted, holding Winchester,--that even so Oxford gives to us the stones of church and college, the lawns and shrubs of gardens, and the waters of Isis, to be stored in the chambers of the soul--“Mother of Arts!” Mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess City or suburban, studious walks and shades. So ran my thoughts and Milton’s verse; and possessed, as it is easy to become in such a place, with its great beauty, thinking of its great renown, my mind went naturally on in the channel of that same stream of verse, while I saw the Christ Church groves, the Hinksey Hills, and the grey Isis-- See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the Summer long; There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls His whispering stream.