side by the unlovely villas of a suburb.

No, the coaching days were the best for those who wanted to see what
Oxford looked like as a whole. From the top of the London coach, as
Headington Hill was reached, there must have been on a summer morning a
minute or two of ecstasy for those who first caught sight of the
glittering city at their feet. Not quite so fair a view, but beautiful
enough, was theirs who came by way of Cumnor from the Berkshire Downs;
but the coach top was the place, from whichever side the traveller came.

And yet there is something better still. I would have, could I arrange
it for my friend, a more gradual approach yet. I would take him off the
converging roads while yet Oxford was unseen. I would lead him in the
early morning of a summer day--it must ever be summer--away where the
river washes the feet of the old town of Abingdon, and thence by
pleasant paths through Sunningwell we would ascend Boar's Hill. There on
a grassy spot, a hanging wood partly revealed below us, we would lie
face downwards on the turf and gaze on Oxford lying far below--the
Oxford Turner saw--Oxford in fairy wreaths of light-blue haze, which as
they part, now here now there, reveal her sparkling beauty. There is no
other place so fit to see her first; no day too long to gaze on her from
here, and mark fresh beauties as the shadows change. Here we would lie
and marvel at the scene, then let the dreams of days gone by--the days
that wove the long romance of Oxford--enthral us till we hardly know
whether time is or was.

Away there to the east and south the river shines. Now in the heat of
summer well within its reedy banks, but often spreading itself in
flood-time far and wide. So those two Franciscans find it. They draw
near to Oxford, but when a mile or two from Abingdon are checked by many
waters, and take refuge in a house in a wood belonging to the monastery
of that place. Nearly seven hundred years ago! And yet they come into
the dream as if it all had happened yesterday, and they were still to
set on foot the labours of their order in the low wooden slums of St.
Ebbe's, and still to train such men as Duns Scotus and Roger Bacon.

And the scene changes as the eye follows the river to the city walls.
There is a mellower sunshine on the plain, and autumn mists hang lightly
over tower and spire. What is that slender blue column which rises above
the centre of the town and melts into the hazy air? Surely it is the
smok