te equal to Warwick
Castle," said Frank.

"It is better to admit excellences frankly wherever one is," said
Master Lewis, "and never let any prejudice color an opinion. When one
is travelling it is well never to make a comparison."

Few scenes are more charming, especially on a long sunny summer
afternoon, than the college buildings of Oxford, separated by gardens,
meadows, and rows of venerable trees, the latter as old as the roofs
and spires that rise above them.

[Illustration: DEATH OF LATIMER AND RIDLEY.]

While at Oxford the boys were taken to Woodstock, a distance of some
eight miles. The old ballad of "Fair Rosamond" so haunted the mind of
Ernest Wynn, at Oxford, that he induced Master Lewis to make an
excursion to Woodstock, the scene of the fancied tragedy.

"I have seen Kenilworth, the scene of one of Walter Scott's romances,"
said Ernest; "have been among the associations of 'Ivanhoe,' and
'Peveril of the Peak,' and I shall always be glad to have seen the
place of the novelist's other English fiction."

The town of Woodstock once constituted a part of the royal demesnes.
Here Ethelred held a council, and Alfred the Great translated the
"Consolations of Boethius." The history of the old palace of Woodstock
is associated with dark romances, splendid cavalcades, and crumbled
kings and queens.

Not a vestige of the palace now remains; its site is merely marked by
two sycamore trees.

The famous Rosamond's Bower, Maze, or Labyrinth seems to have
consisted of a succession of under-ground chambers, and is thought to
have existed before the time of King Henry II., who is supposed to
have used it to hide Fair Rosamond from his jealous queen. There was
but one way into it, though there were many ways that would lead
astray any one who should try to find the right passage. It may have
been like the following diagram, which may puzzle the reader who
attempts to find an open way to the centre.

[Illustration: {ROSAMOND'S BOWER.}]

Henry II. had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of bad reputation,
full of craft and wickedness, whom the French king had put away. But
he gave his affections to Rosamond Clifford, whose beauty had charmed
him when he first met her in the valley of Wye. It is said that she
supposed herself wedded to him; but however this may be, she and not
Eleanor was the spouse of his heart. She pined away in the seclusion
that the king provided for her, but he was true to her in her illness;