The buildings stand, to mark by their varying architecture the succession of the changeful centuries through which the University has passed. In the Libraries are the monuments of the successive generations of learning. But the tide of youthful life that from age to age has flowed through college, quadrangle, hall, and chamber, through University examination-rooms and Convocation Houses, has left no memorials of itself except the entries in the University and College books; dates of matriculation, which tell of the bashful boy standing before the august Vice-Chancellor at entrance; dates of degrees, which tell of the youth putting forth, from his last haven of tutelage, on the waves of the wide world. Hither they thronged, century after century, in the costume and with the equipments of their times, from mediæval abbey, grange, and hall, from Tudor manor-house and homestead, from mansion, rectory, and commercial city of a later day, bearing with them the hopes and affections of numberless homes. Year after year they departed, lingering for a moment at the gate to say farewell to College friends, the bond with whom they vowed to preserve, but whom they were never to see again, then stepped forth into the chances and perils of life, while the shadow on the College dial moved on its unceasing round. If they had only left their names in the rooms which they had occupied, there would be more of history than we have in those dry entries in the books. But, at all events, let not fancy frame a history of student life at Oxford out of "Verdant Green." There are realities corresponding to "Verdant Green," and the moral is, that many youths come to the University who had better stay away, since none get any good and few fail to get some harm, saving those who have an aptitude for study. But the dissipation, the noisy suppers, the tandem-driving, the fox-hunting, the running away from Proctors, or, what is almost as bad, the childish devotion to games and sports as if they were the end of existence, though they are too common a part of undergraduate life in the University of the rich, are far from being the whole of it. Less than ever are they the whole of it since University reform and a more liberal curriculum have increased, as certainly they have, industry and frugality at the same time. Of the two or three thousand lamps which to-night will gleam from those windows, few will light the supper-table or the gambling-table; most will light the book. Youthful effort, ambition, aspiration, hope, College character and friendship have no artist to paint them,--at least as yet they have had none. But whatever of poetry belongs to them is present in full measure here. INDEX. Addison, Joseph, 136. Aldrich, Henry, 128. Alfred (King), 24, 51. All Souls' College, 67 _et sq._ Amusements, mediæval, 43. Antiquity, apparent, of the buildings, 3. Architectural revival at Oxford, 147, 148. Aristotle, 31. Ashmolean Museum, 24.