archdeacon, with more of the character of its locality, than the visual aspect of Magdalen represents the beautiful city to one in its entirety.  It seems a sort of metonymy; Maudlin put for Oxford.  The walk is, after all, but a sober path, worthy by association with one of the walks of Eden.  Yet it shows no gay foliage, nor “shade above shade a woody theatre,” such as is seen on a mountain declivity.  It is a simple shadowy walk—­shadowy to richness, cool, tranquil, redolent of freshness.  There the soul feels “private, inactive, calm, contemplative,” linked to things that were and are not.  The mellow hue of time, not yet stricken by decay, clothes the buildings of this college, which, compared with other edifices more steeped in maturity of years, occupies, as it were, a middle term in existence.

The variety of building in this city is amazing, and would occupy a very considerable time to study even imperfectly.  At a little distance no place impresses the mind more justly with its own lofty pretensions.  The towers, steeples, and domes, rising over the masses of foliage beneath, which conceal the bodies of the edifices, seen at the break of morning or at sunset, appear in great beauty.  Bathed in light, although not the “alabaster tipped with golden spires” of the poet, for even the climate of Oxford is no exception to the defacement of nature’s colouring, everywhere that coal smoke ascends; but the tout ensemble is truly poetical and magnificent.

Oriel still, they say, maintains its precedency of teaching its students how to conduct themselves with a view to university honours, and to the world’s respect.  The preliminary examinations there have proved a touchstone of merit, and elevated Oriel College into something near the envy of every other in this country.  Worthy Oriel, the star of Oxford.  “I don’t know how it is,” said the Rev. C. C., walking down High Street one day, “but Oriel College is all I envy Oxford.  It is the richest gem in the ephod of the high-priest (vice-chancellor) of this university.  I should like to steal and transplant it to my Alma Mater among the fens.”

There was formerly a Welsh harper in Oxford, whom the collegians sometimes denominated King David.  He was the first of the Cymri brotherhood I ever heard perform.  Since that distant day I have often heard those minstrels in their native land, particularly in North Wales, at Bedd Gelert, Caernarvon, and other places, but I confess I never was so much struck as by this Oxford harper.  He often played at the Angel, where the university men used to group round him, for he excited general admiration.  His music was not of so plaintive a character as that in his own land, or else the scenery of the latter had some effect in saddening the music there through association—­perhaps this difference was, after all, only in fancy.