cure
records, enable one to see the town of the twelfth or thirteenth
century. The church of St. Martin in the very heart of it, at the
"Quatrevoix" or Carfax where its four roads meet, was the centre of the
city's life. The Town-mote was held in its church yard. Justice was
administered by mayor and bailiff sitting beneath the low shed, the
"penniless bench" of later times, without its eastern wall. Its bell
summoned the burghers to counsel or to arms. Around the church lay the
trade-guilds, ranged as in some vast encampment; Spicery and Vintnery to
the south, Fish Street falling noisily down to the Bridge, the corn
market occupying then as now the street which led to North-gate, the
stalls of the butchers ranged in their "Butcher-row" along the road to
the castle. Close beneath the church to the south-east lay a nest of
huddled lanes broken by a stately synagogue and traversed from time to
time by the yellow gaberdine of the Jew, whose burying-place lay far
away to the eastward on the site of the present Botanic Garden. Soldiers
from the castle rode clashing through the narrow streets; the bells of
Osney clanged from the swampy meadows; long processions of pilgrims
wound past the Jewry to the shrine of Saint Frideswide. It was a rough
time, and frays were common enough,--now the sack of a Jew's house, now
burgher drawing knife on burgher, now an outbreak of the young student
lads, who grew every day in numbers and audacity. But as yet the town
seemed well in hand. The clang of the city bell called every citizen to
his door, the summons of the mayor brought trade after trade with bow in
hand and banners flying to enforce the king's peace. Order and freedom
seemed absolutely secure, and there was no sign which threatened that
century of disorder, of academical and ecclesiastical usurpation, which
humbled the municipal freedom of Oxford to the dust.

THE HOME OF OUR ANGEVIN KINGS.

For those who possess historic tastes, slender purses, and an exemption
from Alpine mania, few holidays are more pleasant than a lounge along
the Loire. There is always something refreshing in the companionship of
a fine river, and whatever one may think of its summer sands Loire
through the spring and the autumn is a very fine river indeed. There is,
besides, the pleasantest variety of scenery as one wanders along from
the sombre granite of Brittany to the volcanic cinder-heaps of Auvergne.
There is the picturesque contrast between t