[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH--PECKWATER QUADRANGLE Through the opening between the west end of the College Library on the right, and some houses inhabited by Masters of the College on the left, appears the spire of the University Church of St. Mary. Part of the pediment of the buildings on the north side of Peckwater Quadrangle shows beneath. The piece of masonry on the extreme right of the picture is part of the wall of the passage leading to Tom Quadrangle. Two undergraduates converse to the left.] ring. The college historians often entitle one of their eighteenth-century chapters the “dark” or “iron” age; and indeed, as a “school of universal learning,” the Oxford of that day might be called in question. It was more aristocratic and exclusive, perhaps, than it had ever been, and it failed to justify itself. “What class in life”--it was a song by a fellow in a play of the period-- What class in life, tho’ ne’er so great, With a good fellowship can compare? And in the same play, says one, of Horace, “He was a jolly _utile dulci_ dog, and I believe formerly might be fellow at a college.” Yet in our backward glances over Oxford history, how often do we stop when we reach that age! whether we are drinking from an old reminding tankard with the date 17--, or looking at one of its books, or living in one of the rooms which it wainscotted or furnished, heavily but how genially! “You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson,” said Edwards, his college friend. “I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” Cheerfulness broke in pretty often in Oxford. And that was a time when there was more love of Oxford than ever before. Even the wealthy Fellows of All Souls’ (“that Eden to the fruitful mind,” as Lady Winchilsea called it at that time) never bought their college; and when one of them was taunted with the quip that Oxford was less learned than Bath, he was able to reply that it was also more fashionable. I find, too, in its love of the past, as in its love of nature, something heartier, though I daresay less mystical, than our own. Johnson’s love of Pembroke is an example. He had lived there as an undergraduate only fourteen months, and there seems to have been little that was tangible, to take hold of him in so short a time. Yet when he came back long after, and heard old Camden’s grace after meat--which they still use--he was at home. It is true that men of that age could as little appreciate its blank verse as we can compose it, but there were many who could then appreciate what we can now only describe. The country (in summer)--antiquity--good living--were fine things; but when they wrote, it was theology, or morals, or inaccurate philology. There was a man, long ago with God, who after much waiting obtained a fine coveted room at New College: instead of writing a sonnet forthwith, he expressed a wish to kick some one downstairs incontinently. On one