The famous Rosamond's Bower, Maze, or Labyrinth seems to have consisted of a succession of under-ground chambers, and is thought to have existed before the time of King Henry II., who is supposed to have used it to hide Fair Rosamond from his jealous queen. There was but one way into it, though there were many ways that would lead astray any one who should try to find the right passage. It may have been like the following diagram, which may puzzle the reader who attempts to find an open way to the centre. [Illustration: {ROSAMOND'S BOWER.}] Henry II. had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of bad reputation, full of craft and wickedness, whom the French king had put away. But he gave his affections to Rosamond Clifford, whose beauty had charmed him when he first met her in the valley of Wye. It is said that she supposed herself wedded to him; but however this may be, she and not Eleanor was the spouse of his heart. She pined away in the seclusion that the king provided for her, but he was true to her in her illness; he hovered around her sick bed, and at last, when she was laid away to rest in the chapel at Edstowe Nunnery, he kept her grave bright with lights and sweet with flowers. The story of her being poisoned by Queen Eleanor is a fiction, although it is said the Queen discovered her place of concealment, and administered to her a severe reproof. [Illustration: A STUDIOUS MONK.] The atmosphere of learning dispels superstition, but history clings fondly to the fine old legends of the past that gather around them unreal lights and shadows. It is not strange that Oxford, the quiet valley town, hidden even to the bases of its pinnacles, spires, and towers in ancient groves, through which glide the waters of the Thames, should still preserve traditions of the wonder-working gifts of its early philosophers, whom ignorance associated with the magical arts and regarded as more than men. It is related that two old Oxford monks made a head of brass that spoke. These wise monks discovered from their wonderful books (the like of which are not now to be found in any of the twenty colleges) that if they were able to make a head of brass that could speak, and if they could _hear_ it speak within a month, they would be given the power to surround England with a magic wall of brass. So they studied their folios, and found out the chemistry of making the wonderful head. [Illustration: AN OLD TIME STUDENT.] They listened to hear it three weeks, and then became irresistibly sleepy. So they intrusted a servant to listen, and to wake them if the statue should begin to speak. When they were well asleep, the head said,-- "Time is." Then it said,-- "Time was." The servant, not knowing the secret of the monks, failed to awake them as he had been ordered to do, and down came the figure with a fearful crash; and England has remained without any other wall of brass than enters into an Englishman's composition to this day. CHAPTER XI.