"How sweet the landskip! where in living trees, Here frowns a vegetable Hercules; There famed Achilles learns to live again And looks yet angry in the mimic scene; Here artful birds, which blooming arbours shew, Seem to fly higher whilst they upwards grow." The gateway was designed by Inigo Jones, and the figures of Charles I. and II. were added later, the expense being defrayed out of the fine levied upon Anthony Wood for his libel upon Clarendon. About the same time that Osney Abbey was finished the palace which Henry Beauclerk had been building at Beaumont, outside the north gate of the city, was finished also. To satisfy his love of hunting he had already (1114) constructed a palace and park at Woodstock. Within the stone walls of the enclosure there he nourished and maintained, says John Rous, lions, leopards, strange spotted beasts, porcupines, camels, and such like animals, sent to him by divers outlandish lords. The old palace at Beaumont lay to the north-east of Worcester College. Its site, chosen by the King "for the great pleasure of the seat and the sweetness and delectableness of the air," is indicated by Beaumont Street, a modern street which has revived the name of the palace on the hill,--Bellus mons. When not occupied with his books or his menagerie, the Scholar-King found time to grant charters to the town, and he let to the city the collective dues or fee-farm rent of the place. Henry II. held important councils at Beaumont. The one romance of his life is connected with Woodstock and Godstow. One of the most charming of the many beautiful excursions by road or river from Oxford takes you to the little village of Godstow, "Through those wide fields of breezy grass Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames." To sail here from Folly Bridge or the Upper River, to fish here, to play bowls or skittles here, to eat strawberries and cream here, has for centuries been the delight of Oxford students. "So on thy banks, too, Isis, have I strayed A tasselled student, witness you who shared My morning walk, my ramble at high noon, My evening voyage, an unskilful sail, To Godstow bound, or some inferior port, For strawberries and cream. What have we found In life's austerer hours delectable As the long day so loitered?" Just opposite the picturesque old Trout Inn and the bridge which spans the river here you may see an old boundary wall, enclosing a paradise of ducks and geese, at one corner of which is a ruined chapel with a three-light perpendicular window. These are the only remaining fragments of the once flourishing Nunnery, which was the last home of Rosamund, Rosa Mundi, the Rose of the World. During his residence at Oxford, Henry granted the growing city an important charter, confirming the liberties they had enjoyed under Henry I.,