defined with the sharp light and shade peculiar to ecclesiastical architecture.  There were tufted groves overshadowing the haunts of learning; and there, too, was old Magdalen, which used to greet our sight so pleasantly upon our approach to the city.  I began to fancy I had leaped no gulf of time since, for the Cherwell ran on as of old.  I felt that the happy allusion of Quevedo to the Tiber was not out of place here, “The fugitive is alone permanent.”  The same river ran on as it had run on before, but the cheerful faces that had been once reflected in its stream had passed away.  I saw things once familiar as I saw them before; but “the fathers, where were they ?” I was in this respect like one awaked from the slumber of an age, who found himself a stranger in his own land.

I walked through High Street.  I entered All Souls’ and came out quickly, for the quadrangle, or rather one glance round it, was sufficient to put “the past to pain.”  I went over the different sites, and even paced Christ Church meadows.  But I could not deceive myself for a moment.  There was an indescribable vacuum somewhere that indicated there was no mode of making the past the present.  What had become of the pleasant faces, the cheerful voices, the animal spirits, which seemed in my eyes to give a soul to those splendid donations of our forefathers to learning in years gone by?  That instinct—­soul, spirit, whatever it be—­which animates and vivifies everything, and without which the palace is not comparable to the hovel possessing it,—­ that instinct or spirit was absent for me, at least.  At length I adjourned to the Star, somewhat moody, more than half wishing I had not entered the city.  I ordered my solitary meal, and began ruminating, as we all do, over the thousandth-time told tale of human destiny by generation after generation.  I am not sure I did not greet with sullen pleasure a heavy, dark, dense mass of cloud that at that moment canopied the city.  The mind finds all kinds of congenialities grateful at such moments.  Some drops of rain fell; then a shower, tolerably heavy.  I could not go out again as I intended doing.  I sat and sipped my wine, thinking of the fate of cities,—­of Nineveh the renowned, of the marbles lately recovered from thence with the mysterious arrowheaded characters.  I thought that some future Layard might exhume the cornices of the Oxford temples.  The deaths of cities were as inevitable as those of men.  I felt that my missing friends had only a priority in mortality, and that the law of the Supreme existed to be obeyed without man’s questionings.

But a sun-burst took place, the shower ceased, all became fresh and clear.  I saw several gownsmen pass down the street, and I sallied forth again.  Several who were in front of me, so full was I of old imaginings, I thought might be old friends whom I should recognize.  How idle!  I strolled to the Isis.  It was all glitter and gaiety.  The sun shone out warmly and covered the surface of the river with gold.  Numerous skiffs of the university-men were alive on the water, realizing the lines,—­