Let nothing be said of the river between Medley and Folly Bridge. What should one say of gas-works in these pages, or of other evidences that we are not living in ancient times, and that the city of Oxford is a populous place, and up-to-date in all respects except that of its University? Folly Bridge serves to mark the limits of the Upper and the Lower river, as well as its prime purpose of carrying the road to Abingdon across the stream; and it stands in the minds of many for the enterprising and industrious Salter, whose steamboats and whose row-boats are centred thereby. The real original name of Folly Bridge, dating back to Norman times, is “Grand Pont,” that is to say, Great Bridge; great according to the ideas of those times. Even so lately as 1844, when the first Great Western railway-station was opened near this point, the bridge was still well known by its old name, in addition to the other, for the station was called after it, “Grandpont”; but, in the years that have passed since then, the name of “Folly Bridge” alone has survived, and you might expend the whole of a day asking for it by its original style, and not find any one who knows it. In the middle of the old bridge stood an ancient tower known traditionally as “Friar Bacon’s Study,” where that learned man had been accustomed to take astronomical observations. It straddled across the roadway and formed, in fact, one of the gateways of the city. A strange saying was current of this tower, to the effect that when a man of greater learning than Bacon passed under it, the tower would fall. It never did fall, but was pulled down by the city corporation, as an obstruction to the road, in 1779. Years before that date, it had been let to a person named Welcome, who not only repaired it, but built another storey. The citizens of Oxford then called it “Welcome’s Folly.” The bridge was rebuilt between the years 1825 and 1827; but, although Welcome is forgotten, his supposed folly still, as we perceive, gives the place a name. There can be no doubt that, to many uninquiring people, the name of the bridge seems to be a satire on the pleasure-seeking life of those so-called scholars, the University men, to whom boating and the “bumping” races are more than all the wisdom of the schools. Below Folly Bridge begins that long line of glorified house-boats, headquarters of the various college boating-clubs, known as the “University Barges,” stationary along the left bank of the river, by Christ Church meadows. The ethics of bumping or being bumped, and the sporting politics of the Torpids or the Eights are subjects by themselves, and not to be discussed here.