ead over what he had written. I did not care to peer
over his shoulder at MS. which, though written in my room, was not
intended for my eyes. But the writer's brain was open to me; and he had
written "I, the undersigned Edward Joseph Craddock, do hereby leave and
bequeath all my personal and other property to Zuleika Dobson, spinster.
This is my last will and testament."

He gnawed his pen, and presently altered the "hereby leave" to "hereby
and herewith leave." Fool!

I thereby and therewith left him. As I emerged through the floor of the
room above--through the very carpet that had so often been steeped in
wine, and encrusted with smithereens of glass, in the brave old days
of a well-remembered occupant--I found two men, both of them evidently
reading-men. One of them was pacing round the room. "Do you know," he
was saying, "what she reminded me of, all the time? Those words--aren't
they in the Song of Solomon?--'fair as the moon, clear as the sun,
and... and...'"

"'Terrible as an army with banners,'" supplied his host--rather testily,
for he was writing a letter. It began "My dear Father. By the time you
receive this I shall have taken a step which..."

Clearly it was vain to seek distraction in my old College. I floated out
into the untenanted meadows. Over them was the usual coverlet of white
vapour, trailed from the Isis right up to Merton Wall. The scent of
these meadows' moisture is the scent of Oxford. Even in hottest noon,
one feels that the sun has not dried THEM. Always there is moisture
drifting across them, drifting into the Colleges. It, one suspects,
must have had much to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxford
spirit--that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear to
them who as youths were brought into ken of it, so exasperating to them
who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this mild, miasmal air, not less
than the grey beauty and gravity of the buildings, that has helped
Oxford to produce, and foster eternally, her peculiar race of
artist-scholars, scholar-artists. The undergraduate, in his brief
periods of residence, is too buoyant to be mastered by the spirit of
the place. He does but salute it, and catch the manner. It is on him
who stays to spend his maturity here that the spirit will in its fulness
gradually descend. The buildings and their traditions keep astir in his
mind whatsoever is gracious; the climate, enfolding and enfeebling him,
lulling him, keeps him careless