OXFORD AND HER COLLEGES
RADCLIFFE LIBRARY.
OXFORD
AND HER COLLEGES
A View from the Radcliffe Library
BY
GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L.
AUTHOR OF "THE UNITED STATES: AN OUTLINE OF
POLITICAL HISTORY," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
New York
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND LONDON1895
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1893,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.
Norwood Press:
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE.
The writer has seldom enjoyed himselfmore than in showing an Americanfriend over Oxford. He has felt somethingof the same enjoyment in preparing,with the hope of interesting someAmerican visitors, this outline of the historyof the University and her Colleges.He would gladly believe that Oxford andCambridge, having now, by emancipationand reform, been reunited to the nation,may also be reunited to the race; andthat to them, not less than to the Universitiesof Germany, the eyes of Ameri[Pg vi]cansdesirous of studying at a Europeanas well as at an American University mayhenceforth be turned.
It was once the writer's duty, in theservice of a Royal Commission of Inquiry,to make himself well acquainted with thearchives of the University and its Colleges.But he has also availed himselfof a number of recent publications, suchas the series of the Oxford HistoricalSociety, the history of the University byMr. Maxwell Lyte, and the volume onthe Colleges of Oxford and their traditions,edited by Mr. Andrew Clark, aswell as of the excellent little Guide publishedby Messrs. James Parker and Co.
OXFORD AND HER COLLEGES.
o gain a view of Oxford from acentral point, we mount to the topof the Radcliffe Library. Wewill hope that it is a fine summer day,that, as we come out upon the roof, theold city, with all its academical buildingslying among their gardens andgroves, presents itself to view in itsbeauty, and that the sound of its bells,awakening the memories of the ages, is inthe air. The city is seen lying on thespit of gravel between the Isis, as the[Pg 2]Thames is here called, which is the sceneof boat races, and the Cherwell, famed forwater-lilies. It is doubtful whether thename means the ford of the oxen, or theford of the river (oxen being a corruptionof ousen). Flat, sometimes flooded, is thesite. T