ful city with
affectionate veneration. There were more than local
attractions to render it interesting. There were the
recollections of those who ceased in the interval to be
denizens of this world. These could not but breathe
sadness over the noble edifices that recalled men,
conversations, and convivialities which, however long
departed, shadowed upon the mind its own inevitable
destiny. Again were those venerable buildings before
me in their architectural richness. There were tower,
and roof, and gateway, in all their variety of outline,
defined with the sharp light and shade peculiar to
ecclesiastical architecture. There were tufted groves
overshadowing the haunts of learning; and there, too,
was old Magdalen, which used to greet our sight so
pleasantly upon our approach to the city. I began
to fancy I had leaped no gulf of time since, for the
Cherwell ran on as of old. I felt that the happy allusion
of Quevedo to the Tiber was not out of place here,
"The fugitive is alone permanent." The same river ran
on as it had run on before, but the cheerful faces that
had been once reflected in its stream had passed away.
I saw things once familiar as I saw them before; but
"the fathers, where were they ?" I was in this respect
like one awaked from the slumber of an age, who found
himself a stranger in his own land.

I walked through High Street. I entered All Souls'
and came out quickly, for the quadrangle, or rather one
glance round it, was sufficient to put "the past to pain."
I went over the different sites, and even paced Christ
Church meadows. But I could not deceive myself for
a moment. There was an indescribable vacuum somewhere
that indicated there was no mode of making the
past the present. What had become of the pleasant
faces, the cheerful voices, the animal spirits, which
seemed in my eyes to give a soul to those splendid
donations of our forefathers to learning in years gone
by? That instinct--soul, spirit, whatever it be--which
animates and vivifies everything, and without which the
palace is not comparable to the hovel possessing it,--
that instinct or spirit was absent for me, at least. At
length I adjourned to the Star, somewhat moody, more
than half wishing I had not entered the city. I ordered
my solitary meal, and began ruminating, as we all do,
over the thousandth-time told tale of human destiny by
generation after generation. I am not sure I did not
greet with sullen pleasure a heavy, dark, de