be seen in the Bodleian Library. There, also, are preserved documents which may help to explain his fall. They are the written dialogues which passed between him and his master at the board of the Privy Council, and they show that Clarendon, having been the political tutor of Charles the exile, too much bore himself as the political tutor of Charles the king. In the Clarendon are the University Council Chamber and the Registry. Once it was the University press, but the press has now a far larger mansion yonder to the north-west, whence, besides works of learning and science, go forth Bibles and prayer-books in all languages to all quarters of the globe. Legally, as a printer of Bibles the University has a privilege, but its real privilege is that which it secures for itself by the most scrupulous accuracy and by infinitesimal profits.

THE BODLEIAN.

Close by is the University Library, the Bodleian, one of those great libraries of the world in which you can ring up at a few minutes' notice almost any author of any age or country. This Library is one of those entitled by law to a copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom, and it is bound to preserve all that it receives, a duty which might in the end burst any building, were it not that the paper of many modern books is happily perishable. A foundation was laid for a University Library in the days of Henry VI., by the good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, who gave a collection of books. But in the rough times which followed, the Duke's donation perished, only two or three precious relics being saved from the wreck. Sir Thomas Bodley, a wealthy knight and diplomatist of the time of James I., it was who reared this pile, severely square and bare, though a skilful variation of the string course in the different stories somewhat relieves its heaviness. In the antique reading-room, breathing study, and not overthronged with readers, the bookworm finds a paradise. Over the Library is the University Gallery, the visitor to which is entreated to avert his eyes from the fictitious portraits of founders of early Colleges, and to fix them, if he will, on the royal portraits which painfully attest the loyalty of the University, or, as a relief from these, on Guy Fawkes's lantern. Beneath the Library used to be the Schools or examination-rooms of the University, scenes of youthful hopes and fears; perhaps, as the aspirants to honours were a minority, of more fears than hopes; and at those doors formerly gathered the eager crowd of candidates and their friends to read the class lists which were posted there. But the examination system has outgrown its ancient tenement and migrated to yonder new-built pile in High Street, more fitted, perhaps, by its elaborate ornamentation for the gala and the dance, than for the torture of undergraduates. In the quadrangle of the Bodleian sits aloft, on the face of a tower displaying all the orders of classical architecture, the learned King and royal theologian. The Bible held in his hand is believed to have fallen down on the day that Mr. Gladstone lost his election as Member for the University of Oxford and set forth on a career of liberalism which has since led him to the disestablishment of the Church. We stand on the Radcliffe, formerly the medical and physical library, now a supplement and an additional reading-room of the Bodleian, the gift of Dr. Radcliffe, Court Physician and despot of the profession in the times of William and Anne, of whose rough sayings, and sayings more than rough, some are preserved in his "Life." He it was who told William III. that he would not have His Majesty's two legs for his three kingdoms, and who is said to have punished the giver of a niggardly fee by a prediction of death, which was fulfilled by the terrors of the patient. Close at hand is the Ashmolean, the old University Museum, now only a museum of antiquities, the most precious of which is King Alfred's gem. Museum and Medical Library have together migrated to the new edifice on the north side of the city.

University College.

St. Mary's Church.

Queen's College.

THE HIGH STREET.

But of all the University buildings the most beautiful is St. Mary's Church, where the University sermons are preached, and from the pulpit of which, in the course of successive generations and successive controversies, a changeful and often heady current of theology has flowed. There preached Newman, Pusey, and Manning; there preached Hampden, Stanley, and the authors of "Essays and Reviews."

Oxford and Cambridge were not at first Universities of Colleges. The Colleges were after-growths which for a time absorbed the University. The University of Oxford was born in the twelfth century, fully a century before the foundation of the first College. To recall the Oxford of the thirteenth century, one must bid vanish all the buildings which now meet our eyes, except yonder grim castle to the west of the city, and the stern tower of St. Michael's Church, at once the bell tower of the Church and a defence of the city gate facing the dangerous north. The man-at-arms from the castle, the warder from the gate, looks down upon a city of five or six thousand inhabitants, huddled for protection under the castle, and within those walls of which a fine remnant is seen bounding the domain of New College. In this city there is a concourse of students brought together to hear a body of teachers who have been led, we know not how, to open their mart of knowledge here. Printing not having been invented, and books being scarce, the fountain of knowledge is the lecture-room of the professor. It is the age of an intellectual revival so remarkable as to be called the Mediæval Renaissance. After the migrations and convulsions, by which the world was cast in a new mould, ensues a reign of comparative peace and settled government, under which the desire of knowledge has been reawakened. Universities have been coming out all over Europe like stars in the night; Paris, famous for theology and philosophy, perhaps being the brightest of the constellation, while Bologna was famed for law and Salerno for medicine. It was probably in the reign of Henry I. that the company of teachers settled at Oxford, and before the end of the thirteenth century students had collected to a number which fable exaggerates to thirty thousand, but which was really large enough to crowd the little city and even the bastions of its walls. A light had shone on youths who sat in the shadow of feudal servitude. There is no more romantic period in the history of human intellect than the thirteenth century.

The teachers, after the fashion of that age, formed themselves into a guild, which guarded its monopoly. The undergraduate was the apprentice; the degree was a license to teach, and carried with it the duty of teaching, though in time it became a literary title, unconnected with teaching, and coveted for its own