ds, cutting
round and round, with less of drawback from the admixture of a squalid mob
than in any other locality.

And then again in the hunting season, take the ugliest road out of Oxford, by
the seven bridges, because there you may see farthest along the straight
highway from the crown of the bridges, and number the ingenuous youth as on
hunters they pace, or in hack or in dogcart or tandem they dash along to the
"Meet." Arrived there, if the fox does get away--if no ambitious youngster
heads him back--if no steeplechasing lot ride over the scent and before the
hounds, to the destruction of sport and the master's temper--why then you will
see a fiery charge at fences that will do your heart good. There is not such
raw material for cavalry in any other city in Europe, and there is no part of
our social life so entirely novel, and so well worth exhibiting to a
foreigner, as a "Meet" near Oxford, where in scarlet and in black, in hats
and in velvet caps, in top-boots and black-jacks, on twenty pound hacks and
two hundred guinea hunters, finest specimens of Young England are to be seen.

On returning, if the sport has been good, you may venture to open a chat with
a well-splashed fellow traveller on a beaten horse, but in going not--for an
Oxford man in his normal state never speaks unless he has been introduced.

The only local manufactures of Oxford, except gentlemen, are boots, leather-
breeches, and boats; these last in great perfection. The regattas and
rowing-matches on the Isis are very exciting affairs. From the narrowness of
the stream, they are rather chases than races; the winners cannot pass, but
must pursue and bump their competitors. The many silent, solitary wherries,
urged by vigorous skilful arms, give, on a summer evening, a pleasing life to
river-side walks, although that graceful flower, the pretty pink bonnet and
parasol, peculiar to the waters of Richmond and Hampton, is not often found
growing in the Oxford wherry. Comedies, in the shape of slanging matches
with the barges, are less frequent than formerly, and melodramatic fistic
combats still less frequent.

But old boatmen still love to relate to their peaceable and admiring pupils
how that pocket Hercules, the Honourable S--- C---, now a pious clergyman,
had a single combat with a saucy six foot bargee, "all alone by they two
selves," bunged up both his eyes, and left him all but dead to time, ignorant
then, and for months after, of the n