xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE BARN AT BROADWELL, NEAR STOW-ON-THE-WOLD. 146 152 AT BROADWELL, NEAR STOW. 155 HOUSE IN MARKET SQUARE, STOW-ON-THE-WOLD 157 160 Emp. "Trust me, Plantagenet, these Oxford schools The mountains full of fat and fallow deer, -GREENE, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. THE Oxford Almanack for the year 1808 displays a view by Turner, in which the London coach is seen descending Headington Hill. Of all the approaches to Oxford this was the most striking, but the prospect which Turner has sketched, and on which the gaze of his outside passengers is fixed, has long E B been concealed by the enclosures and plantations of Headington Hill Hall. In the foreground are the few picturesque houses which then formed the suburb of St. Clement's; in the middle distance are the groves of Magdalen, from the centre of which rise the New Buildings, then some fifty years old, and still the finest thing of its kind in Oxford; and on the left are seen the glorious tower and the bridge. Further still to the left rise the towers of Merton and of Christ Church, while on the right predominant are the spires of All Saints' and St. Mary's, and the great dome of the Radcliffe Library. In the background the scene is closed by the long line of the green-muffled Cumnor hills and the dark wooded heights of Wytham. Such would have been the picture spread before us had we been journeying down the steep descent of Headington Hill in 1808, and we should have reached our comfortable quarters at the Angel or the Mitre without encountering anything to break the spell of first impressions. Nor were these impressions the less enchanting from the fact that they had surpassed any mental picture of the scene which we had been trying to form. For this the long and leisurely journey from London had given us ample time. As the coach crawled down the rugged slope of the Chilterns, and as the coachman strove to make his eight or nine miles an hour across the plain which divides the chalk range from the heights of Shotover, there was nothing but the sign-posts to indicate our approach to the enchanted city of our imagination: anticipation had long to be nursed, curiosity long held in suspense, until at a turn of the road, hardly more than a mile away, the magic vision was suddenly revealed. ! All this is altered now: you take your seat in the express at Paddington, and have hardly scanned your newspaper through, when you are gliding past reservoirs and gas works into Oxford station. If the stranger is resolute enough to close his eyes at Kennington Island and refuse to open them till his cab deposits him at his hotel, he will be the happier man. Then let him ascend the roof of the Radcliffe, or, |