In speaking of the religious associations of Oxford it is impossible to omit the author of "The Christian Year." To Corpus Christi College Keble was deeply attached, and to that group of illustrious men with whose renown his own is associated. The following are the lines which he wrote on leaving his beloved college when he was elected to a fellowship at Oriel. They were addressed to his friend Sir J. T. Coleridge, who had lately won the Latin prize poem:

"How soft, how silent has the stream of time
Borne me unheeding on, since first I dream'd
Of poetry and glory in thy shade,

Scene of my earliest harpings? There, if oft
(As through thy courts I took my nightly round,
Where thy embattled line of shadow hid

The moon's white glimmerings) on my charmed ears
Have swelled of thy triumphant minstrelsy
Some few faint notes; if one exulting chord
Of my touch'd heart has thrill'd in unison,
Shall I not cling unto thee? Shall I cast
No strained glance on my adopted home,
Departing? Seat of calm delight, farewell!
Home of my muse and of my friends! I ne'er
Shall see thee but with such a gush of soul
As flows from him who welcomes some dear face
Lost in his childhood. Yet not lost to me
Art thou for still my heart exults to own thee,

And memory still and friendship make thee mine."

Here is a quaint and rather enigmatical Sonnet, written, we are told, "From Bagley, at eight A.M.," and entitled

OXFORD.

"The flood is round thee; but thy towers as yet
Are safe, and, clear as by a summer's sea,
Pierce the calm morning mist, serene and free,
To point in silence heavenward. There are met
Thy foster-children;-there in order set

Their nursing fathers, sworn to heaven and thee
(An oath renewed this hour on bended knee)
Ne'er to betray their mother nor forget.-

Lo! on the top of each aërial spire

What seems a star by day, so high and bright,
It quivers from afar in golden light;

But 'tis a form of earth, though touch'd with fire
Celestial, raised in other days to tell

How, when they tired of prayer, apostles fell."

Here again is an extract from some beautiful lines which he sent to a friend accompanying the "Lives of Ridley and Cranmer :"

"These are they

Who arm'd themselves with prayer, and boldly tried
Wisdom's untrodden steeps, and won their way,
God's Word their lamp, his Spirit was their guide.
These would not spare their lives for fear or ruth;
Therefore their God was with them, and the glare
Of their death-fires still lights the land to truth,
To show what might is in a martyr's prayer.
Read and rejoice; yet humbly: for our strife
Is perilous like theirs; for death or life."

We lastly add some very touching lines which he wrote in the album at Cuddesdon Palace :

"Whoe'er from Cuddesdon's pastoral shade

Shall seek the green hill's point, and gaze
On Oxford in the watery glade,'

And seem half lost in memory's maze,
Much wondering where his thoughts of good
Have flown, since last in that lone nook he stood;

But wondering more untiring love should be

So busy round the unworthiest ;-let him see,

There hath before him been one musing e'en as he."

The fleeting gene

So far these recollections of Oxford have belonged to religious history and literature. But most Oxonians beyond these have a store of recollections hardly less sacred. rations of college life flow rapidly past, the youth and fleeting career contrasting strongly with the hoar antiquity of the collegiate homes they inhabit; and only a brief time elapses before the chief charm of Oxford to the whilom Oxonian is

that of memory. As he passes up what Wordsworth calls "the stream-like windings of the glorious street," it is true for him in the words of another poet :

"I see a hand you cannot see,

I hear a voice you cannot hear."

For him memory paints "with all the magic of a moonlight view." Once more to pass along the familiar streets, to pace the lone, deserted quadrangles, to see the wilderness of spires reddening to the setting sun and its wan gleam reflected on the Isis or the Cherwell-to hear "the thunder-music rolling shake the prophets blazoned on the pane"-is to unlock the portal of bygone associations: all the burial-places of memory yield up their dead. We think perhaps fondly of that time when the intellect and affections were both most actively exercised. Perhaps we recall the goodness and love of those with whom the lapse of years may have wrought a long separation. Perhaps we think of those who, in the tender phrase of ancient time, have gone over "to the majority." Their memory dimly but hopefully mingles with that great cloud of witnesses who from Oxford halls and colleges have carried truth and goodness to countless English homes and we think of them in that prayer in which we thank God" for all his servants departed this life in his faith and fear, beseeching Him to give us grace so to follow their good examples that with them we may be partakers of his heavenly kingdom."

OXFORD LOCALITIES.

HE town and neighbourhood of Oxford abound with memories and associations many of which possess a national as well as a local interest, and have their own place in literature and history. It has even occasionally happened that London itself has been thrown into the background; and, for a time, the supreme interest of events fixed at Oxford. Such was certainly the case in the time of Henry III., in Simon de Montfort's Parliament, when the famous Provisions of Oxford were enacted. The residence of Charles I. at Oxford, when the Lords assembled in the Divinity School, and the Commons in Christ Church Hall, for a long time made the University city, as it were, a metropolis to the Royalist party. We do not wonder that writers of fiction have often seized upon this period as permitting the use of vivid contrasts and strong lights and shadows; bringing before us the quiet bands of students and the fiery cavaliers of Prince Rupert-the cloistral seclusion of the colleges broken upon by the ladies of the court of Queen Henrietta-while the groves, and rivers, and water-meadows were all alive with an unwonted and ominous activity. At other times the court and parliament have removed to Oxford, when the plague or sweating sickness has been desolating London.

The parliament which Charles II. summoned at Oxford towards the close of his reign is tragically fertile in dramatic incidents.

The municipal history of Oxford is also highly curious. Such a history, if fully narrated, would exhibit the long-standing feud, of which traces remain to this day, which existed between the burghers and the irregular army of students, issuing in many a lawless and bloody fray, and even more than once involving the loss of the city charter.

Then, again, the antiquities of Oxford, beyond those immediately connected with the Colleges, present rare treasures to the archæologist. On some of these we have lightly touched, as in the case of the fragment of the old city wall in the gardens of New College; but the antiquarian will be able to trace almost their entire circuit. He will discover the site of many nowforgotten halls, will study the ruins of Rewley and Oseney Abbeys, and will investigate ancient customs, and the many changes which time has wrought.

But it is chiefly with localities of literary and biographical interest that we are concerned. And first of those quiet and enduring landmarks-the churches. The churches of Oxford are numerous, some of them being remarkable for their architectural beauty, and some only for their exceeding plainness. We have already spoken of the church of St. Mary the Virgin, which is, at once, the church of a parish and of the University. On the east is the interesting old church of St. Michael, which presents no less than seven or eight periods of construction, and the tower of which is probably a relic of Saxon times. It used to be rich in wellendowed chantries, swept away at the Reformation; the porch and the niches in the Lady Chapel are valuable pieces of antiquity, and there are busts in good preservation of Richard II. and Isabella his queen.

Nearly adjoining the tower of this church was the celebrated Bocardo, the north gate of the city, and the most strongly