reshmen outside the walls be unvisited by the university
from wariness in the offenders, or the impossibility of
controlling them, they are certain to meet with a just
estimation of their demerit here; and, as before noticed,
this is perhaps the best mode of repressing them. The
assistance derived by the industrious student from the
university itself is invaluable. The very locality is an
aid to progress. Where can there be places more
favourable for thought than those noble buildings,
ancient halls, and delightful walks? Everything invites
to contemplation. Magdalen always seemed to me as
if soliciting the student's presence in a peculiar manner.
A favourite resort of mine, at certain times, was the road
passing the Observatory, leading to Woodstock. But
of all the college walks, those of Magdalen were the
more impressive and attractive. It appeared to embody
the whole of the noble city in its own personification,
as a single word will sometimes express the pith of an
entire sentence. The "Mighty Tom" in the olden
time, even of Walter de Mapes, if its metal was then
out of the ore, never sounded (then perhaps not nine)
but the midnight hour, to that worthy archdeacon, with
more of the character of its locality, than the visual
aspect of Magdalen represents the beautiful city to one
in its entirety. It seems a sort of metonymy; Maudlin
put for Oxford. The walk is, after all, but a sober path,
worthy by association with one of the walks of Eden.
Yet it shows no gay foliage, nor "shade above shade
a woody theatre," such as is seen on a mountain
declivity. It is a simple shadowy walk--shadowy to
richness, cool, tranquil, redolent of freshness. There
the soul feels "private, inactive, calm, contemplative,"
linked to things that were and are not. The mellow
hue of time, not yet stricken by decay, clothes the
buildings of this college, which, compared with other
edifices more steeped in maturity of years, occupies,
as it were, a middle term in existence.

The variety of building in this city is amazing, and
would occupy a very considerable time to study even
imperfectly. At a little distance no place impresses the
mind more justly with its own lofty pretensions. The
towers, steeples, and domes, rising over the masses of
foliage beneath, which conceal the bodies of the edifices,
seen at the break of morning or at sunset, appear
in great beauty. Bathed in light, although not the
"alabaster tipped with golden spires" of