Holbein;--the stately Handel, by Hodson;--and Hugo Grotius, with his acute, crafty, and yet high chivalrous face, more that of an energetic man of the world than of a man of letters. These are the subjects that struck me the most. _January 9th._ To-day I have walked all over Oxford; and I cannot express with what intense delight I wandered from cloister to cloister, and refreshed myself at this living spring of antiquity. There is a magnificent avenue of elms, which like the buildings around it, dates from the year 1520. From this queen of avenues, in which not a single tree is wanting, and which leads through a meadow to the river, you see on one side a charming landscape, on the other a part of the city, with five or six of the most beautiful Gothic towers,--ever a noble view, but to-day rendered almost like a picture of fairy enchantment: the sky was overcast, the wind drove the black fantastic clouds, like a herd of wild beasts, across it; at length the most beautiful rainbow, vaulting from one tower and descending on another, spanned the whole city. From this ancient seat of the Muses of England, from all its colleges,--each different from the other,--each enclosing a spacious court, and adorned with noble towers,--each with its own more or less beautifully ornamented church, its library and picture-gallery, all in their kind of new and varied interest,--I carry away the most agreeable recollections. If you can bear to drink again and again from the old cup, you shall accompany me in my rambles. My first walk was to the Ratcliffe Library; a round and modern building,--erected, that is, in the last century, at Dr. Ratcliffe's cost,--nearly in the centre of the town. The interior is simply a rotunda in three stages or stories, with a cupola and two open galleries, whence side-rooms radiate from the inner, to the outer circles. Below are casts of the best antiques. A small winding staircase leads to a side tower, from the roof of which you have a splendid view of the Gothic palaces pointing to heaven with their hundred spires. The surrounding country is cheerful, fertile, and well wooded. There are four-and-twenty colleges (a sort of cloister for education,) and thirteen churches in this small town, containing only sixteen thousand inhabitants.