When you get tired of walking, you can sit down and write your impressions, and there is the “post” to receive your letter, or if it be Friday or Saturday, you may, if you choose, rest yourself by hearing a lecture from Professor Anstead; and then before leaving take your last look, and see something that you have not before seen.  Every thing which is old in cities, new in colonial life, splendid in courts, useful in industry, beautiful in nature, or ingenious in invention, is there represented.  In one place we have the Bible translated into one hundred and fifty languages; in another, we have saints and archbishops painted on glass; in another, old palaces and the altars of a John Knox, a Baxter, or some other divines of olden time.  In the old Temple of Delphi, we read that every state of the civilized world had its separate treasury, where Herodotus, born two thousand years before his time, saw and observed all kinds of prodigies in gold and silver, brass and iron, and even in linen.  The nations all met there on one common ground, and the peace of the earth was not a little promoted by their common interest in the sanctity and splendour of that shrine.  As long as the Exhibition lasts, and its memory endures, we hope and trust that it may shed the same influence.  With this hasty scrap, I take leave of the Great Exhibition.

LETTER XIX.

Oxford—­Martyrs’ Monument—­Cost of the Burning of the Martyrs—­The Colleges—­Dr. Pusey—­Energy, the Secret of Success.

OXFORD, September 10th, 1851.

I have just finished a short visit to the far famed city of Oxford, which has not unaptly been styled the City of Palaces.  Aside from this being one of the principal seats of learning in the world, it is distinguished alike for its religious and political changes in times past.  At one time it was the seat of Popery; at another, the uncompromising enemy of Rome.  Here the tyrant, Richard the Third, held his court, and when James the First, and his son Charles the First, found their capital too hot to hold them, they removed to their loyal city of Oxford.  The writings of the great Republicans were here committed to the flames.  At one time Popery sent Protestants to the stake and faggot; at another, a Papist King found no favour with the people.  A noble monument now stands where Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, proclaimed their sentiments and faith, and sealed them with their blood.  And now we read upon the Town Treasurer’s book—­for three loads of wood, one load of faggots, one post, two chains and staples, to burn Ridley and Latimer, L1 5s. 1d.  Such is the information one gets by looking over the records of books written three centuries ago.