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Quia lapis de pariete clamabit, et lignum,

quod inter juncturas aedificiorum est, respondebit.

Standing at Carfax, and occasionally moving a step to one side or another, I see with my eyes, indeed, the west front of Christ Church, with Tom Tower; the borders of All Saints’ and St. Mary’s; and that grim tower of St. Michael’s; and the handsome curves of High Street and St. Aldate’s, which are part of the mere good fortune of Oxford: but, especially if a dawn light recall the first dim shining, or a sunset recall the grey and golden splendour of its maturity, I may also see the past of the University unrolled again. For at Carfax I am in sight of monuments on which is implied or recorded all its history. On the south, above Folly Bridge, is the gravelly reach that formed the eponymous ford; between that and Christ Church was the old south gate; and, through Wolsey’s gateway, lies the Cathedral, speaking of St. Frideswide, the misty, original founder—King’s daughter, virgin, martyr, saint—and, with its newly revealed Norman crypt, which perhaps[Pg 66] held the University chest in the beginning, representative of Oxford’s piety and generosity. On the east, in the High Street, University College and St. Mary’s and Brasenose speak clearly, although falsely, of King Alfred. There, by St. Peter’s in the East, was the old east gate; and in sight of these is Merton, the fount of the collegiate idea. On the north, in Cornmarket Street, St. Michael’s marks the place of the north gate, and while it is one of the oldest, is by far the oldest-looking place in Oxford, rising up always to our surprise, like a piece of substantial night left by the dark ages, yet clothed with green in June. On the west, the Castle tower, twin made with St. Michael’s by the first Norman lord of Oxford, lies by the old west gate; and the quiet, monstrous mound beyond recalls the days of King Alfred’s daughter’s supremacy in Mercia. At Carfax itself there is still a St. Martin’s church, a descendant of the one whose bells in the Middle Ages and again in the seventeenth century, called the city to arms against the University, but long ago deprived of its insolent height of tower, because the citizens pelted the scholars therefrom.

Moved by the presence of a city whose strange beauty was partly interpreted from these vigorous hieroglyphics, mediæval and later men, who had the advantage of living before history was invented, framed for it a divine or immensely ancient origin. Even kings, or such as quite certainly existed, were deemed unworthy to be the founders. We believe now that the first mention of Oxford was as an inconsiderable[Pg 68][Pg 67]

ST. GILES’S, LOOKING TOWARDS ST. MARY MAGDALEN (SOUTH)

Some picturesque houses on the left lead to the entrance of St. John’s College, seen through the trees. Farther on appears the tower of the Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Cornmarket. The mass to the extreme right above the cab shelter is part of the west side of St. Giles’s and the houses surrounding the Taylor Institution and new Ashmolean Museum.

The posts and rails in the foreground enclose a grassed space in front of St. Giles’s Church.

The time is sunset in summer.

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but progressive township in the reign of Edward the Elder, Alfred’s son: but those old lovers attributed to Alfred the restoration of a university that was in his time old and honoured; and some said that he endowed three doctors of grammar, arts, and theology, there; others, less precise than those who put the foundation of Cambridge at 4317 B.C., discovered that Oxford was founded by the Trojans who (as used to be well known) came to Britain from their burning city. But to Oxford the Trojans brought certain Greek philosophers, and at that early date illustrated the universal hospitality and independence of nationality and language that were so characteristic, before the place became a Stuart park. And as the Athenians had in their city and its attendant landscape all those natural beauties and utilities which make possible a peerless academy, so also had the Britons, says Anthony à Wood, herein agreeing with Polydore Vergil, “when by a remnant of the Grecians, that came amongst them, they or their successors selected such a place in Britain to plant a school or schools therein, which for its pleasant situation was afterwards called Bellositum or Bellosite, now Oxford.” Among these generous suppositions or dreams was the story that Apollo, at the downfall of the Olympians, flying now to Rome and now to Athens, found at last something congenial in the brown oak woods and silver waters of Oxford, and a bride in the puissant nymph of Isis; on which favoured site, as was fitting, there afterwards arose a place, with the learning and architectural beauty of Athens, the divine[Pg 72] inspiration of Delphi, and the natural loveliness of Delos. …

There is, said Anthony à Wood, “an old tradition that goeth from father to son of our inhabitants, which much derogateth from the antiquity of this city—and that is: When Frideswyde had bin soe long absent from hence, she came from Binsey (triumphing with her virginity) into the city mounted on a milk-white ox betokening innocency; and as she rode along the streets, she would forsooth be still speaking to her ox, ‘Ox forth,’ ‘Ox forth’ or (as ’tis related) ‘bos perge’ (that is, ‘ox goe on,’ or ‘ox (goe on) forth’)—and hence they indiscreetly say that our city was from thence called Oxforth or Oxford.”

But there has never been composed a quite appropriately magnificent legend that could be received by the faithful as the canonical fiction for Oxford, as the Aeneid is for Rome; and now there can never be.

There is, however, still a pleasant haze (that might encourage a poet or a herald) suspended over the early history of Oxford. It is unlikely that the place was of importance in Roman times; later, its position on a river and a boundary brought it many sufferings at the hands of Dane and Saxon. But no one need fear to believe that, early in the eighth century, Didan, an under king, and his daughter Frideswide established there a nunnery and built a church of stone, now perhaps mingled with the later masonry. It was rebuilt by Ethelred in the eleventh century with a quite exceptional fineness in the Saxon workmanship; and was girdled by the churches[Pg 74][Pg 73]

CHRIST CHURCH—INTERIOR OF LATIN CHAPEL

The Shrine of St. Frideswide appears in the middle of the picture, standing in one of the eastern bays of the north wall of the choir. The north side of the Shrine is seen, together with the ancient wooden watching-chamber above.

A tomb shows between the column and the seventeenth-century reading-desk at the right of the picture, also a glimpse of the choir.

The carved oak stall front immediately under the Shrine is probably of the time of Wolsey, and part of the furniture of his choir.

To the left is the east window of the Chapel—filled with stained glass representing scenes in the life of St. Frideswide, designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart., and executed by Mr. William Morris.

The two figures represent a visitor to the shrine of the saint and a verger.

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of St. Martin, St. George, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Mary the Virgin, St. Ebbe, St. Michael, and St. Peter in the East; and the last two, to one who had stood at Carfax in 1100, would still be recognised, if he visited the shadowed doorway and stern crypt of the one, and the tower of the other, though he might look in vain for what he knew in “The Seven Deadly Sins lane” and elsewhere.

Whatever learning then flourished in the city is now to be found in its architecture, in Prior Philip’s book on the miracles of St. Frideswide, and in the inestimable atmosphere of the place. We can guess that there was much that is worthy to be known, from the eloquent monkish figures of the corbels in Christ Church chapter-house; and can wistfully think of the wisdom that was uttered in Beaumont, the royal palace and learned resort, whose gardens lay at Broken Hays and near Worcester College; and in Osney Abbey, whose bells—Hautclere, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et John—made music that was known to the Eynsham abbot on May evenings, when it was a rich, calm retreat, and not as now, a shadowy outline and a sorrowful heap of stones beyond the railway station. More than the ghost of the abbey survives in the sketch of its ruined but still noble walls, in the background of that picture of its last abbot, in a window of the south choir aisle at Christ Church.

Before the Conquest Oxford had been visited by parliaments and kings; it now began to be honoured by learning and art. Olim truncus eram. … [Pg 78] maluit esse deum. It had often been violated or burned; in Doomsday Book it appears as a half desolate city, despite the churches; but it had already begun, though again checked by fire that flew among the wooden houses with such ghastly ease, to assume the proportions and the grace which were fostered by William of Wykeham and a hundred of the great unknown, and in the last few years by Aldrich and Wren and Jones—crowned by the munificence of Radcliffe—illuminated with green and white and gold and purple by the unremembered and by Reynolds, Morris, and Burne-Jones. The Saxon work at St. Frideswide’s was superseded or veiled by the Norman architects; the fine old pillars were in part altered or replaced; and the relics of the Saint herself were transferred ceremoniously and “with all the sweet odours and spices imaginable,” to a more imposing place of rest. Upon the base of the old fortifications probably now rose the bastions of the mediæval city wall, once so formidable but now defensive only against time, and unable any longer to make history, but only poetry, as they stand peacefully and muffled with herbage in New College Gardens, or at Merton or Pembroke, or by the churchyard of St. Peter’s in the East.

The history of that age in Oxford is indistinct, and recorded events therein have a suddenness, for modern readers, which is vivid and fascinating, but to the historian at least, painful and false. And so the birth of the University, in the midst of darkness and noise, is to us to-day a melodious sudden cry. It is as if a voice,[Pg 80][Pg 79]

ST. PETER’S-IN-THE-EAST

To the extreme right of the picture, through a huge buttress on the south side of the chancel, is pierced the doorway to the twelfth-century crypt, extending some 36 feet under the chancel of the Church.

To the west of this buttress, in the angle formed by another buttress, appear the remains of a Norman arcading, broken through for the insertion of the early fifteenth-century window. The windows of the nave showing in the picture are also of this date, as is the south porch.

It will be noted that this porch has a room over it—probably the lodgings of a priest. Across the graveyard and Queen’s Lane to the west are the buildings of Queen’s College; to the immediate left of the yew tree in the centre of the picture shows the east end of the Chapel; more to the north the dome of the campanile appears.

To the extreme left of the graveyard shows a portion of the ivy-covered north wall of St. Edmund’s Hall (see other picture).

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unexpectedly arose, calling—and the words are said to have been used by two poor Irish students in an ignorant and worldly land—“Here is wisdom for sale! Come, buy!” We know that famous lecturers from the continental universities came; but not with what eloquence and applause they spoke. It may confidently be surmised that there was something sweet to learned minds in the air or tradition of the place. The walls are fallen or forgotten that heard the prelusive lectures of Pullein and Vacarius; and the brilliant Franciscan house in St. Benedict’s is chiefly known by its influence in the founding of Balliol, and by the greatest schoolmen, its alumni. But if we go to the grey domestic little lodgings, with “arms and rebusses that are depicted and cut in stone over each door,” vestiges of a Benedictine scholastic house, at Worcester College, we may fancifully pierce beyond John Giffard’s foundation and the preceding Carmelites, to the earliest lovers of learning who loved Oxford too. At St. Mary’s the work of the fancy is easier and more sure. There the University books, and there a money chest, reposed. There were the highest deliberations and ceremonies. There a man was graduated, and from its porch he passed out a clerk of Oxford.

If the University was early associated with a place of holiness and beauty, still more firmly was it rooted in a becoming poverty. It had neither a roof nor a certain purse. For years it had not a name. The University was in fact but a spirit of wisdom and grace; men had heard of it and sought it; and where one or two were[Pg 84] gathered together to take advantage of it, there was her school and her only endowment. Now and then to such a group came in a legacy of books or gold. But that was a crop for which no one sowed, and before it was possible, it had been rumoured that there was something in Oxford not visible, yet very present and necessary; and scholars came with as great zeal as was ever cherished by reports of gold. They brought what in their devotion they came to seek. Thus Gerald of Wales came, and for three days read aloud his glorious book to large audiences. Every day was marked by sumptuous and generous feasts. It was, indeed, “a costly and noble act,” as he says himself, “for the authentic and ancient times of the poets were thus in some measure renewed.” Carmelites, Dominicans, and Franciscans, and vivid men from the University of Paris, came to teach. Even then, the University quarrelled with the town over the price of victuals and rooms, and invaded the extortionate Jew. There, about the streets, walked the magnificent Franciscans, Roger Bacon and Grosseteste, and the pure and gracious and learned St. Thomas Cantelupe.

Early in the nineteenth century there was a Chancellor set over the scholars by the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese Oxford lay. Very soon the Chancellor was elected by the University; and the Masters in congregation could legislate, and sometimes did, although questions were often effectually decided by a popular vote among the students—who also themselves chose by vote the heads of their hostels or halls. For there[Pg 85] were, at an early date, houses already associated with learning, and governed either by a common landlord or by a scholar of some standing and age. There a man might read, and comfort himself according to his means, and finally at night stamp up and down a passage, to warm his feet, before going to sleep in a crowded bed-chamber. On any day there was a chance that some splendid man, coming a little in the rear of his fame, would arrive in Oxford, and lecture or read a book. Should kings, or priests, or rude citizens interfere, the scholar could rusticate voluntarily—as he sometimes did—at Stamford, or Reading, or Maidstone, or Cambridge, and there, as best he might, by study and self-denial, as by a sacrament, recreate the University. The City, and until our own time the Crown, had to pay in round sums for such an insult as the hanging of several scholars; the money lined the bottom of St. Frideswide’s chest. A man with no possessions but the leaf of a manuscript, or a dagger, or a cloak, left it with the keepers of the chest as security for a loan, whether he were Welsh, or Hungarian, or Italian, or French.

An Englishman, William of Durham, who had enjoyed the University hospitality at Paris, first kindled the flame which was to be kept burning by so many afterwards, as a focus perennis for the homeless student. He left Paris after a town-and-gown quarrel, along with many French students, whom Henry III. welcomed to Oxford in 1229. William went to Rome, before returning to England, and remembered Oxford when he lay dying at Rouen—perchance reminded there of the city[Pg 86] which until fifty years ago was equal with it in ancient beauty, and has been clouded in the same way. He left in his will a sum of money to the University. It was employed in making more steadfast abodes for Oxford students; at a house, for example, that stood on the site of the bookseller’s shop opposite University College lodge. This act is counted the foundation of University College, with its original four masters, who shall be thought “most fit to advance or profit in the Holy Church and who have not to live handsomely without it in the state of Masters of Arts.”

There had previously been similar Halls, and many were afterwards founded—Hawk Hall, Perilous Hall, Elm Hall, Winton Hall, Beef Hall, Greek Hall, Segrim Hall; in fact so large a number that half the Oxford inns are or were perversions of the old Halls; and even tradesmen who are not innkeepers now make their rich accounts among the ghosts of forgotten principals. These had not in them the necessary statutes and “great bases for eternity” which a college deserves. But henceforward there were some fortunate students who might indeed have to sing or make Latin verses in order to earn a bed, or a crust and a pot of ale, while making their way to or from Oxford; but, once there, they were sure of such a home as no other place, unless, perhaps, the place of their nativity, could give.

“It is all,” says Newman, speaking of a college, “and does all that is implied in the name of home. Youths, who have left the maternal roof, and travelled some hundred miles for the acquisition of knowledge, find an[Pg 88][Pg 87]