The material beauty of Oxford is great--the situation, in a rich valley bounded by softly flowing rivers, fine--the domes, and spires, and old grey towers rising in clusters, prepare the mind of the approaching traveller for the city where the old colleges and churches, planting out and almost composing it, afford at every bend of the long streets, at every turn of the narrow thoroughfares, some grand picture, or charming architectural effect; even our Quakers are proud of Oxford in England when they travel in America. Then Oxford is so decorously clean, so spotlessly free from the smoke of engines and the roar of machinery; the groves and gardens, and trim green turf seen through richly-carved and corbeled archways, give such a feeling of calm study, and pleasant leisure, that we will defy the bitterest radical and the sourest dissenter not to be softened and charmed by his first impressions. To those who arrive prepared to be pleased, stored with associations of the past, fortunate enough to have leisure and introductions to some affable don long resident, and proud to display the treasures and glories of his beloved Alma Mater, Oxford affords for many days a treat such as no other city in the world can supply to an Englishman. The best known route from London is by the Great Western Railway, which, according to the original plan, would have passed close to the city. But all the University and ecclesiastical dignitaries were up in arms; they saw, in their mind's eye, the tender, innocent undergraduates flying from the proctor-guarded precincts, where modesty, virtue, and sobriety ever reign, to the vice-haunted purlieus of London, at all hours of the night and day. The proctors and professors triumphed; the railway was obliged to leave a gap of ten miles of common road between its invading, unhallowed course, and the sacred city; and great was the rejoicing in the Convocation Chamber, and many the toasts in the Senior Common Rooms to the health of the faithful sons of Oxon, who in Parliament had saved the city from this commercial desecration. But as even Grosvenor-square was at length glad to admit gas after abiding longest of all in the genteel gloom of oil lamps, so was Oxford in the end glad to be put on a branch, as it could not be put on a main line; and now, beside the rail on which we are travelling, Worcester, Banbury, and Wolverhampton, and two roads to London and Birmingham are open to the wandering tastes of the callow youth of the University; as may be ascertained by a statistical return from the railway stations whenever a steeple-chase or Jenny Lind concert takes place in or near any of the towns enumerated.