great City by the Sea; and velvet and filigree headdresses, and jewels and bits of tapestry from Flem

ish cities. Perhaps a minstrel if the revenues of the family cannot retain one-will stroll up to the castle-gates of an evening, giving foretaste of his power by a merry snatch of song about Robin Hood, or Sir Guy, or the Nut Brown Maid.

Some company of priests with a lordly abbot at their head, journeying up from St. Albans, may stop for a day, and kindle up with cheer the great hall, which will be fresh strown with aromatic herbs for the occasion; and so some solitary palmer, with scollop shell, may make the evening short with his story of travel across the desert; or - best of all

some returning knight, long looked for-half doubted shall talk bravely of the splendors he has seen in the luxurious court of Charles of Anjou, where the chariot of his Queen was covered with velvet sprinkled with lilies of gold, and men-at-arms wore plumed helmets and jewelled collars; he may sing, too, snatches of those tender madrigals of Provence, and she-if Sister Nathalie has taught her thereto may join in a roundelay, and the min

strel and harpist come clashing in to the refrain.

Then there is the home embroidery-the hemming of the robes, the trimming of the mantles, the building up of the head pieces. Pray-in what age and under what civilization has a young woman ever failed of showing zeal in those branches of knowledge?

So, we will leave England-to-day- upon the stroke of thirteen hundred years. When we talk of life there again, we shall come very swiftly upon traces of one of her great philosophers, and of one of her great reformers, and of one of her greatest poets.

CHAPTER III.

N our last chapter I spoke of that Geoffrey of

IN

Monmouth who about the middle of the twelfth century wrote a history-mostly apocryphal - in which was imbedded a germ of the King Arthur fables. We traced these fables, growing under the successive touches of Wace and Map and Layamon into full-fledged legends, repeated over and over; and finally, with splendid affluence of color appearing on the literary horizon of our own day. I spoke of King Richard I. and of his song loving, and of his blood loving, and of his royal frankness: then of John, that renegade brother of his- of how he granted Magna Charta, killed poor Prince Arthur, and stirred such a current of war as caused the loss of Normandy to England. I spoke of the connection of this loss with the consolidation of the language; of how Robert of Gloucester made a rhyın

ing history that was in a new English; of how the name of Sir John Mandeville was associated with great lies, in the same tongue; how the religious houses made books, and fattened on the best of the land, and grew corrupt; and last-of how we, if we had lived in those days, would have found disport for our idle hours and consolation for our serious

ones.

Roger Bacon.

Starting now from about the same point in time where we left off, our opening scene will take us to the old University town of Oxford. It is a rare city for a young American to visit; its beautiful High Street, its quaint Colleges, its Christ Church Hall, its libraries, its Magdalen walks and tower, its charming gardens of St. John's and Trinity, its near Park of Blenheim, its fragrant memories-all, make it a place where one would wish to go and long to linger. But in the far-away time we speak of it was a walled city, with narrow streets, and filthy lodging houses; yet great parliaments had been held there; the royal domain of Woodstock was near by with its Palace; the nunnery was standing, where was edu

cated the Fair Rosamund; a little farther away was the great religious house of Abingdon and the village of Cumnor; but of all its present august and venerable array of colleges only one or two then existed-Merton, and perhaps Balliol, or the University.*

But the schools here had won a very great reputation in the current of the thirteenth century, largely through the scholarship and popularity of Grosseteste, one while Bishop of Lincoln, who held ministrations at Oxford by reason of his connection with a Franciscan brotherhood established here; and among those crop-haired Franciscans was a monk-whom we have made this visit to Oxford to find named Roger Bacon. He had been not only student but teacher there; and a few miles south from the King's Arms Hotel in Broad Street, Oxford, is still standing a church tower, in the little parish of Sunningwell, from which—as tradition affirms

Roger Bacon studied the heavens: for he

* College Statutes of Merton date from 1274; those of University from 1280; and of Balliol from 1282. Paper of GEORGE C. BRODERICK, Nineteenth Century, September, 1882.