I

VIEWS OF OXFORD

3

better still, walk to the top of Shotover, before he attempts to explore the city in detail.

But there are other distant views of Oxford besides that from Shotover. I have seen them all, and the best to my mind is the one (to be strictly accurate there is more than one, each with its special charm) from Stow Wood on the way to Beckley. If the day is a stormy one, and you are lucky enough to seize the moment when, from a rent in the black clouds which fill the valley and shroud the distant landscape, the sun breaks forth and lights up the towers and spires into bold relief, you will have seen a picture which you will never forget. From Stow Wood and Shotover your survey is from the north-east and west, but the famous view from the south must not be neglected, either from the meadow ground above the Hinkseys, or from the Abingdon Road, as you ascend to Boar's Hill; here, however, the suburbs assert their unblushing presence, and the foreground is more commonplace, but at any rate you see Oxford as it is from end to end, a city rising from the midst of a valley just at the point where the hills on either side, east and west, approach each other most nearly. It thus forms the gate through which all must pass who intend to accompany me into the land we are to explore in the present volume.

Oxford is so well known to the outside world as the seat of one of our two ancient Universities, that people are in danger of forgetting that it is also the capital of a flourishing county, and the cathedral city of an extensive diocese. Its latter dignity is of course a comparatively modern thing, but it was a town of considerable political and strategic importance for three hundred years at least before the University was heard of. When its name first appears in history, early in the tenth century, it was already a place of some note, and for a long period subsequent to this it constituted, with Wallingford and Windsor, one of the three great fortresses that guarded the line of the Thames above London. The proximity to the royal manor of

4

THE UNIVERSITY

CHAP.

Woodstock, of which we shall have something to say in the next chapter, brought it into immediate relation with the Court, and the king had a palace just outside the city boundary, the name of which is still preserved in the street which passes over its site.1 The early history of the University is the history of the struggle of a body of students, under royal and ecclesiastical patronage, to secure corporate independence and autonomy, as against the municipality-a struggle which by the opening of the sixteenth century had terminated in favour of the former. The wars of the Roses had but little effect on the fortunes either of the City or the University, but in no place in the kingdom were the changes brought about by the Reformation more extensive, or more profoundly felt. Two wealthy abbeys, one priory, four friaries, and four colleges belonging to monastic orders disappeared; the thirty years which followed the dissolution saw the foundation of four new colleges, and the priory church of St. Frideswide became the cathedral church of the new diocese of Oxford, carved out of the huge diocese of Lincoln, the original seat of which had been but ten miles away from Oxford at Dorchester-on-Thames. The municipal and academic repose of the century which succeeded the Reformation was broken by the religious persecutions and the Civil War. After the reaction of the Restoration and the passing cloud of the Revolution, Oxford settled down into the lettered (and unlettered) ease of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At last, in 1854, the trumpet sounded 2 which gave the signal for the passing away of the old order and the inauguration of the new era, in which the University, no longer a close corporation with aims and interests limited by those of the aristocracy and the church, has widened its sympathies, and extended its influence, till it has become in the truest sense a national institution. But the task of adjusting its machinery to the ever-increasing demands of the age has been long and laborious, and though the exactions thus made on the 1 Beaumont Street.

2 The first University Commission.

I

TERM AND VACATION

5

time and energies of a learned body are perhaps hardly consistent with the ideal of a University, there are at present no signs of rest or relaxation.

It is of course impossible within the limits of a single chapter to attempt to tell the story of Oxford, or to undertake a perambulation in any detail either of the City or the University. The best advice I can give to those who can spare a few days to spend in Oxford before starting with me northwards, is to arm themselves with Mr. Wells's handy and useful pocket-volume on Oxford and its Colleges-a complete vade mecum which will not allow them to miss anything they ought to see, or leave untold anything they ought to know on a first general survey.

The great difference between Oxford in Term and Oxford in Vacation cannot fail to strike the most hurried visitor. Three times a year the streets leading from the railway station to the academic quarters of the town are crowded with vehicles bearing the undergraduate and his fortunes to pass a brief eight weeks in the bosom of Alma Mater, and three times a year the same vehicles may be seen bearing him away. In the interval he reads, rows, runs, rides-and is examined. The splendid palace, dedicated to the goddess of Examinations, richly dight with sculptures, frescoes, marble mosaics, electric lights, and electric clocks, occupies a commanding position in the High Street, and will be one of the first wonders to be visited by the stranger. As for the ceremonies here conducted, and the previous course of probation required, these are high matters on which he must seek for information elsewhere. How the future examinee spends his days he may partly guess from the gowned figures, each provided with its note-book, which he will see flitting along the pavement from college to college, or later on from the spectacle of the same figures, now clad in the airy costume of the athlete, wending their way to the river and the running grounds. If the crews are in training for the boat-races, he will do wisely to make for the towing-path,

6

THE WOMAN STUDENT

CH. I

and he will there understand how the virtues of fortitude and endurance are still taught at Oxford.

It is not, however, only members of the University who are to be met thronging the streets on their way to lecture; troops of the other sex, whom the magnanimity of Professors has admitted to the privilege of discipleship, will be seen hastening either on foot or on cycle to the same fountains of knowledge: like the men, you may know them by their note-books, the pages of which, I suspect, are less often desecrated by sketches and caricatures; such follies they leave to their brothers, and I should not be surprised to hear that the lecturer often finds among them the most appreciative as well as the most critical part of his audience. The woman student hails from the great suburb known as North Oxford, which owes its existence to the great feminine invasion of the last thirty years. This invasion has been threefold: first, there are the families unconnected with the University who have settled here in Oxford, as a pleasant centre for concerts, lectures, libraries, museums, and tea-parties; formerly they would have chosen Cheltenham or Leamington. Secondly, there is the married fellow, now a very numerous species, but in the old times a rara avis; and lastly there are the colonies of women students. Hence, whereas the town used to come to an end just beyond St. Giles's Church, it now spreads over nearly the whole space between the canal and the Cherwell, and extends northwards for two miles till it includes the once rural hamlet of Summertown.

Should the visitor be less curious to see Oxford life than Oxford itself, and should he long to revel undisturbed in the silence that broods over College Quads and College Gardens, he will of course choose the Vacation. Then, indeed, like Elia, he "can play the gentleman and enact the student. In moods of humility he can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises he can strut a gentleman commoner, in graver moments proceed Master of Arts, and in Christ Church reverend quadrangle be content to pass for nothing short of a