tained glass; it stands in the middle of the woods in a charming
situation, with picturesque elm trees overhanging the old Tudor
building. Radley House is now a training-school for Oxford, and it has a
swimming-school attached, in which have been prepared several of the
most famous Oxford oarsmen, swimming being here regarded as a necessary
preliminary to boating. Near by is Bagley Wood, the delicious resort of
the Oxonians which Dr. Arnold loved so well. The village of Sunningwell,
not far from Radley, also has a church, and before its altar is the
grave of Dean Fell, once its rector, who died of grief on hearing of the
execution of Charles I. From the tower of this church Friar Bacon, the
hero of the story of the brazen head, is said to have made astronomical
observations: this renowned friar, Roger Bacon, has come down to us as
the most learned man that Oxford ever produced. Bacon's Study was near
the Folly Bridge, across the Thames on the road to Oxford, and it
survived until 1779, when it was taken down. Among the many legends told
of Bacon is one that he used such skill and magic in building the tower
containing this study that it would have fallen on the head of any one
more learned than himself who might pass under it. Hence, freshmen on
their arrival at Oxford are carefully warned not to walk too near the
Friar's Tower. Bacon overcame the greatest obstacles in the pursuit of
knowledge; he spent all his own money and all that he could borrow in
getting books and instruments, and then, renouncing the world, he became
a mendicant monk of the order of St. Francis. His _Opus Majus_--to
publish which he and his friends pawned their goods--was an epitome of
all the knowledge of his time.

[Illustration: RADLEY CHURCH.]

Other famous men came also from Abingdon. Edmund Rich, who did so much
to raise the character of Oxford in its earlier days, was born there
about the year 1200; his parents were very poor, and his father sought
refuge in Eynsham Abbey. We are told that his mother was too poor to
furnish young Rich "with any other outfit than his horsehair shirt,
which she made him promise to wear every Wednesday, and which probably
had been the cause of his father's retirement from their humble abode."
Rich went from Eynsham to Oxford, and soon became its most conspicuous
scholar; then he steadily advanced until he died the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Chief-Justice Holt, who reformed the legal procedure of
England, was