Close by is the University Library, the Bodleian, one of those great libraries of the world in which you can ring up at a few minutes' notice almost any author of any age or country. This Library is one of those entitled by law to a copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom, and it is bound to preserve all that it receives, a duty which might in the end burst any building, were it not that the paper of many modern books is happily perishable. A foundation was laid for a University Library in the days of Henry VI., by the good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, who gave a collection of books. But in the rough times which followed, the Duke's donation perished, only two or three precious relics being saved from the wreck. Sir Thomas Bodley, a wealthy knight and diplomatist of the time of James I., it was who reared this pile, severely square and bare, though a skilful variation of the string course in the different stories somewhat relieves its heaviness. In the antique reading-room, breathing study, and not overthronged with readers, the bookworm finds a paradise. Over the Library is the University Gallery, the visitor to which is entreated to avert his eyes from the fictitious portraits of founders of early Colleges, and to fix them, if he will, on the royal portraits which painfully attest the loyalty of the University, or, as a relief from these, on Guy Fawkes's lantern. Beneath the Library used to be the Schools or examination-rooms of the University, scenes of youthful hopes and fears; perhaps, as the aspirants to honours were a minority, of more fears than hopes; and at those doors formerly gathered the eager crowd of candidates and their friends to read the class lists which were posted there. But the examination system has outgrown its ancient tenement and migrated to yonder new-built pile in High Street, more fitted, perhaps, by its elaborate ornamentation for the gala and the dance, than for the torture of undergraduates. In the quadrangle of the Bodleian sits aloft, on the face of a tower displaying all the orders of classical architecture, the learned King and royal theologian. The Bible held in his hand is believed to have fallen down on the day that Mr. Gladstone lost his election as Member for the University of Oxford and set forth on a career of liberalism which has since led him to the disestablishment of the Church. We stand on the Radcliffe, formerly the medical and physical library, now a supplement and an additional reading-room of the Bodleian, the gift of Dr. Radcliffe, Court Physician and despot of the profession in the times of William and Anne, of whose rough sayings, and sayings more than rough, some are preserved in his "Life." He it was who told William III. that he would not have His Majesty's two legs for his three kingdoms, and who is said to have punished the giver of a niggardly fee by a prediction of death, which was fulfilled by the terrors of the patient. Close at hand is the Ashmolean, the old