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“He that hath Oxford seen, for beauty, grace

And healthiness, ne’er saw a better place.

If God Himself on earth abode would make

He Oxford, sure, would for His dwelling take.”

Dan Rogers,

Clerk to the Council of Queen Elizabeth.

“Vetera majestas quædam et (ut sic dixerim) religio commendat.”

Quintilian.

IT is with cities as with men. The manner of our meeting some men, and the moment, impress them upon our minds beyond the ordinary. And the chance of our approach to a city is full also of significance. London approached by the Thames on an ocean-going steamer is resonant of the romance of commerce, and the smoke-haze from her factories hangs about her like folds of the imperial purple. But approach her by rail and it is a tale of mean streets that you read, a tale made yet more sad by the sight of the pale, drawn faces of her street-bred people. Calcutta is the London of the East, but Venice, whether you view her first from the sea, enthroned on the Adriatic, or step at dawn from the train into the silent gondola, is always different yet ever the same, the Enchanted City, Queen of the Seas. And many other ports there are which live in the memory by virtue of the beauty of the approach to them: Lisbon, with the scar of her earthquake across her face, looking upon the full broad tide of the Tagus, from the vantage ground of her seven hills; Cadiz, lying in the sea like a silver cup embossed with a thousand watch towers; Naples, the Siren City; Sidney and Constantinople; Hong-Kong and, above all, Rio de Janeiro. But among inland towns I know none that can surpass Oxford in the beauty of its approach.

Beautiful as youth and venerable as age, she lies in a purple cup of the low hills, and the water-meads of Isis and the gentle slopes beyond are besprent with her grey “steeple towers, and spires whose silent finger points to heaven.” And all around her the country is a harmony in green—the deep, cool greens of the lush grass, the green of famous woods, the soft, juicy landscapes of the Thames Valley.

You may approach Oxford in summer by road, or rail, or river. Most wise and most fortunate perhaps is he who can obtain his first view of Oxford from Headington Hill, her Fiesole. From Headington has been quarried much of the stone of which the buildings of Oxford, and especially her colleges, have been constructed.

Oxford owes much of her beauty to the humidity of the atmosphere, for the Thames Valley is generally humid, and when the floods are out, and that is not seldom, Oxford rises from the flooded meadows like some superb Venice of the North, centred in a vast lagoon. And just as the beauty of Venice is the beauty of coloured marbles blending with the ever-changing colour of water and water-laden air, so, to a large extent, the beauty of Oxford is due to this soft stone of Headington, which blends with the soft humid atmosphere in ever fresh and tender harmonies, in ever-changing tones of purple and grey. By virtue of its fortunate softness this stone ages with remarkable rapidity, flakes off and grows discoloured, and soon lends to quite new buildings a deceptive but charming appearance of antiquity.

Arriving, then, at the top of Headington Hill, let the traveller turn aside, and, pausing awhile by “Joe Pullen’s” tree, gaze down at the beautiful city which lies at his feet. Her sombre domes, her dreaming spires rise above the tinted haze, which hangs about her like a delicate drapery and hides from the traveller’s gaze the grey walls and purple shadows, the groves and cloisters of Academe. For a moment he will summon up remembrance of things past; he will fancy that so, and from this spot, many a mediæval student, hurrying to learn from the lips of some famous scholar, first beheld the scene of his future studies; this, he will remember, is the Oxford of the Reformation, where, as has been said,[1] the old world and the new lingered longest in each other’s arms, like mother and child, so much alike and yet so different; the Oxford also of the Catholic reaction, where the young Elizabethan Revivalists wandered by the Isis and Cherwell framing schemes for the restoration of religion and the deliverance of the fair Mary; the loyal and chivalrous Oxford of the Caroline period, the nursery of knights and gentlemen, when camp and court and cloister were combined within her walls; the Oxford of the eighteenth century, still mindful of the King over the water, and still keeping alive in an age of materialism and infidelity some sparks of that loftier and more generous sentiment which ever clings to a falling cause.

It is the Oxford, again, of the Tory and High Churchman of the old school; the home of the scholar and the gentleman, the Wellesleys, the Cannings, the Grenvilles and the Stanleys. But the Wesleys call her Alma Mater also, and, not less, Newman. Methodism equally with the High Church movement originated here. Old as the nation, yet ever new, with all the vitality of each generation’s youth reacting on the sober wisdom of its predecessor, Oxford has passed through all these and many other stages of history, and the phases of her past existence have left their marks upon her, in thought, in architecture and in tradition. To connect events with the traces they have left, to illustrate the buildings of Oxford by her history, and her history by her buildings, has been the ideal which I have set before myself in this book. Let our traveller then at length descend the hill and passing over Magdalen Bridge, beneath the grey tower of ever-changing beauty, the bell-tower of Magdalen, enter upon the “stream-like windings of that glorious street,” the High.

So, over Shotover, down a horse path through the thick forest the bands of mediæval scholars used to come at the beginning of each term, and wend their way across the moor to the east gate of the city. There is no gate to stop you now, no ford, no challenge of sentinels on the walls. The bell-towers of S. Frideswide and Osney have long been levelled to the dust, but the bells of Christ Church and Magdalen greet you.

But not altogether unfortunate, though perhaps with less time to ruminate, will he be who first approaches Oxford by means of the railway. If he is wise, he will choose at Paddington a seat on the off side of the carriage, facing the engine. After leaving Radley the train runs past low-lying water-meadows, willow-laden, yellow with buttercups, purple with clover and the exquisite fritillary, and passing the reservoir ere it runs into the station, which occupies the site of Osney Abbey, it gives the observant traveller a splendid view of the town; of Tom Tower, close at hand, and Merton Tower; of the spires of the Cathedral and S. Aldate’s; of S. Mary’s and All Saints’; of Radcliffe’s Dome and the dainty Tower of Magdalen further away; of Lincoln Spire and S. Michael’s Tower, and of S. Martin’s at Carfax. And at last, very near at hand, the old fragment of the Castle:

“There, watching high the least alarms,

The rough, rude fortress gleams afar

Like some bold veteran, grey in arms

And marked with many a seamy scar.”

Of the approaches to Oxford so much may be said; and as to the time when it is most fit to visit her, all times are good. But best of all are the summer months. In the spring or early summer, when the nightingales are singing in Magdalen walks and the wild flowers

Magdalen Tower from Addison’s Walk

spring in Bagley Woods, when the meadows are carpeted with purple and gold:

“The frail, white-leaved anemony,

Dark blue-bells drenched with dews of summer eves,

And purple orchises with spotted leaves;”

in June, in Eights’ Week, when the University is bravely ploughing its way through a storm of gaiety and athleticism into the inevitable maelstrom of examinations, when the streets are crowded with cricketers, oarsmen, and their sisters, when the Schools and College quads are transformed into ball-rooms and many a boat lingers onward dreamily in the golden light of the setting sun beneath the willows that fringe the Cherwell—at these times Oxford seems an enchanted city, a land where it is always afternoon. But you will come to know her best, and to love her perhaps more dearly, if you choose the later summer months, the Long Vacation. Then all the rich meadow-lands that surround her are most tranquil, green and mellow, and seem to reflect the peace of the ancient city, freed for a while from the turmoil of University life. Then perhaps you will best realise the two-sided character of this Janus-City. For there are two Oxfords in one, as our story will show, upon the banks of the Isis—a great county town besides a great University. And as to the mood in which you shall visit her, who shall dictate a mood in a place so various? Something of the emotion that Wordsworth felt may be yours:

“I could not print

Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps

Of generations of illustrious men

Unmoved. I could not always pass

Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,

Wake where they waked, range that inclosure old,

That garden of great intellects, undisturbed;”

or something of the charming fancifulness of Charles Lamb which may lead you to play the student, or fetch up past opportunities, and so “pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.” Or it may please you best to spend not all your time among the bricks and stone and mortar, ever-changing as they are in hue and aspect, or amid the College groves and gardens, rich as is their beauty, perfect as is their repose. The glories of the surrounding country may tempt you most. You may wander many happy miles through cool green country, full of dark-leaved elms and furzy dingles, with the calm, bright river ever peeping at you through gaps in woods and hedges, to Godstow, where Rosamund Clifford lived and died; to Cumnor, the warm green-muffled Cumnor Hills, and those oaks that grow thereby, on which the eyes of Amy Robsart may have rested. You may choose to track the shy Thames shore

“through the Wytham flats,

Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among,

And darting swallows and light water-gnats—”

and, with the poet, learn to know the Fyfield tree, the wood which hides the daffodil:

“What white, what purple fritillaries

The grassy harvest of the river-fields,

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,

And what sedged brooks are Thames’s tributaries.”

Whichever way you choose you will turn now and again to look back upon the spires and towers of Oxford and Radcliffe’s dome, clustering together among rich gardens and noble trees, watered by the winding, willow-fringed Cherwell and the silver stream of Isis, “rivulets,” as Wood quaintly phrases it, “which seem to the prying spectator as so many snakes sporting themselves therein.” And so gazing you will let your fancy roam and think of her past history and her future influence on thought and the affairs of State.

Within fifty years of their first landing the Northern hordes had conquered the greater part of Britain. Mercia, the border kingdom of the marches, had been formed, embracing the site of Oxford; its heathen King Penda had lived and died, the Mercians had embraced Christianity, and Dorchester had become the seat of a Christian bishop. But it was not till the eighth century A.D. that the vill of Oxford, an unfortified border town on the confines of the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, came into existence; it was not till the year 727, one hundred and thirty years after S. Augustine’s mission to England, that a religious community settled there. The history of that settlement is bound up with the story of S. Frideswide—Fritheswithe, “the Bond of Peace.” For although the details of the legend are evidently in part due to the imagination of the monastic chroniclers, yet there is no reason to doubt the main facts of time and place.

That Frideswide, the daughter of an under-king named Didan, founded a nunnery at a spot where a bank of gravel ran up from what is now Christ Church Meadow, and offered a dry site, raised above the wandering, unbarred streams, set amid lush meadows untainted as yet by human dwellings, and fringed by the virgin forests that clad the surrounding hills, we need not hesitate to believe, or that here Didan presently built a little church, some traces of which yet remain in Christ Church Cathedral. For the rest, how Frideswide escaped by a miracle to Binsey and lived there in the woods, in dread of the hot courtship of a young and spritely prince; how that prince was miraculously deprived of his sight when about to assault the city in revenge for his disappointment, and how from that time forward disaster dogged the footsteps of any king who entered Oxford; how the virgin Frideswide returned at last to Oxford, and, after performing many miracles there, died and was buried in her church—are not all these things told at length in the charming prose of Anthony Wood? The Lady Chapel of the Cathedral, on the north side of the choir aisle, is the architectural illustration of this story in Oxford. It was enlarged in the thirteenth century, and has the early English pillars and vaulting of that period, but the eastern wall carries us back to S. Frideswide’s day. And on the floor is a recent brass which marks the spot where the bones of the virgin Saint are now supposed to rest. Here too is the Shrine of S. Frideswide—that shrine which used to be visited twice a year by the Vice-Chancellor and the principal members of the University in solemn procession “to pray, preach and offer oblations at her shrine in the Mother Church of University and town.” This is the site of S. Frideswide’s first church. The Lady Chapel is in a line with what was the ancient nave, the central apse of that church, and there, at the east end of it and of the adjoining aisle, are the rough rag-stone arches which were built for her, and which led, according to the ancient Eastern plan, into three apses. And inseparably connected with S. Frideswide too is the adjacent Latin Chapel, by virtue of that window designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones, one of the earliest and one of the most beautiful of the artist’s designs, so lovely in its conception that, if you take each picture separately, it seems like some perfect poem by Rossetti translated into colour by a mediæval craftsman. But take it as a whole and the effect is quite other than this. It is so full of subjects and dabs of bright colour that it is dazzling and almost unintelligible.

Burne-Jones had not grasped, even if he had studied the glazier’s art. Apart from the fact that the great predominance of fiery reds offends the eye, the design is essentially one that has been made on paper and not in glass, drawn with pencil and brush and not in lead. Worked out on a flat, opaque surface the fussy effect of the window would not be foreseen; but the overcrowded and broken character of the design is painfully obvious when set up as a window. The scenes here depicted form an illustrated history of the story of S. Frideswide.

The splendid fourteenth-century glass of the Latin Chapel contains also, besides figures of S. Catherine, the patroness of students in divinity, two representations of S. Frideswide. This chapel was built on to the rest at two periods; the first bay from

Oxford Cathedral (Interior)

the west is part of the transept aisle, the second bay belongs to the thirteenth century, the third and fourth were added in the fourteenth, from which period the decorated vaulting, with its bosses of roses and water-lilies, dates. The chapel was used till recently as a lecture-room by the Regius Professor of Divinity. The carved wood-work of the stalls and desks should be noticed.

Didan’s or S. Frideswide’s Church was burnt on S. Brice’s Day, 1002, when the general massacre of Danes, which Æthelred the Unready, in a fit of misguided energy, had ordered to take place on that day throughout the country, was carried out at Oxford. The Danes in their extremity rushed to S. Frideswide’s Church, burst open the doors, and held the tower as a fortress against their assailants. The citizens failed to drive them out. As a last resource they set fire to the wooden roof and burned the church, “together with the ornaments and books thereof.” The Danes perished in the burning.

Nothing now remains, save the parts that I have mentioned, of the church which was then gutted. But after the massacre the King made a vow that he would rebuild S. Frideswide’s, and the church he then began to erect forms the main part of the Cathedral as we see it to-day.

Those arches, so plain and massive, over the western bays of the north choir aisle and Lady Chapel, were part of Æthelred’s transept aisle; the south transept aisle, now S. Lucy’s Chapel; the walls of the south choir aisle; the pillars of the choir and the open triforium of the south transept—these are the chief portions of the Cathedral which are thought to be unrestored parts of Æthelred’s work.

It is now generally admitted that the Saxons, at the date of the Conquest, were more advanced than the Normans in the fine arts. Their sculpture was more highly finished and their masonry more finely jointed. We need not therefore be surprised at the excellence and ornamentation of the work in Oxford Cathedral, which is attributed to this date, nor, when we remember that Æthelred was the brother-in-law of Richard-le-bon, the great church-builder of Normandy, need we wonder at the unwonted magnificence of Æthelred’s plans for this church.

The Danes soon took ample revenge for that treacherous massacre. They ravaged Berkshire and burned Oxford (1009). The climax came when Sweyn arrived. The town immediately submitted to him, and “he compelled the men of Oxford and Winchester to obey his laws” (Saxon Chronicle).

Æthelred’s work was interrupted by the coming of Sweyn, and the King’s flight to Richard’s court in Normandy. In the south-east pier of the Cathedral tower there is a noticeable break in the masonry, which marks, it is supposed, the cessation of building that coincided with the close of Anglo-Saxon rule.

When Sweyn died Æthelred returned, and for three years held Cnut in check. The work at S. Frideswide’s was probably resumed then. The richly carved, weather-beaten capitals of the choir, with their thick abaci and remarkable ornamentation, partly Saxon and partly Oriental in character, are eloquent of the exile of Æthelred and of the influence of the Eastern monks whom he met at the court of his brother in Normandy. And they speak not only of Byzantine influence, passing through Normandy into England, but also, through the existing traces of exposure to rain and wind, of the ruinous state into which the church had fallen when