occasion, it is said, the head of a college, and a great lover of Oxford, who was jocund and recumbent after a feast, was with great circumstance invited by several wags “to accept the crown of this old and famous kingdom, since King George has resigned.” To which he slowly replied, without surprise, that “if we can hold our Court of St. James’s in this Common Room, we shall not demur.” Warton’s _Companion to the Guide_ and Wood’s _Modius Salium_ are full of what we should call poor Oxford humour; but I think there is sufficient indication of the laughter it caused, to make us pause in any condemnation of it as compared with our own “thoughtful mirth,” which [Illustration: THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OR CAMERA BODLEIANA, FROM ALL SOULS’ COLLEGE Across the picture runs a cloistered screen separating the green quadrangle of All Souls’ College from Radcliffe Square. Over an entrance to the College to the left rises an octangular ogee roof, protecting some beautiful wrought-iron gates. To the right of this is the grand sweeping entablature of the Camera, bearing its majestic dome and lantern. This dome may compare with some of the finest in Europe. The time is morning. ] inspires mainly a desire to say something more mirthful and less thoughtful. And for those who care for none of these things, what sweeter or more dignified picture of quietness and study is there than at Lincoln in Wesley’s time, or at University under Scott, or Christ Church under Jackson? What handsomer than the Camera which was built in the middle of that century, or better to live in than Fisher’s buildings at Balliol? Or what inheritance more agreeable than the old bowling-greens, so happily celebrated in the Sphæristerium; or than the college gardens, which are nearly all eighteenth-century gifts? It has been said that the only movement in the eighteenth century was a very slow ascent to the nineteenth. That is not quite so, as many will agree who look at the re-fronting of University College chapel and hall, which was done when the wonderful century was reached at length. In fact, if we condemn the eighteenth century, we have to disown a large part of the nineteenth. In Oxford that is especially so. The destruction of the old chapels at Balliol and Exeter, and of the Grove at Merton, was carried out only fifty years ago; so long have the dark ages lingered in Oxford. As for the new buildings at New College, Christ Church, Merton, etc., they have been so widely condemned that it is to be presumed there is some merit in them, which an age nearer the millennium will praise.