A VISIT TO OXFORD AND WOODSTOCK.
A University a Thousand Years Old.--Woodstock.--Fair Rosamond.--Old
Ballad.--The Head of Brass that Spoke.
"Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Wyllys Wynn, as the city of Oxford
appeared in view. "It looks like a city of churches."
"It is indeed a city of institutions," said Master Lewis.
"It is a very old city, is it not?" asked Wyllys.
"It is said to have been the residence of Alfred the Great, and of
King Canute. The University of Oxford was, according to tradition,
founded by Alfred the Great."
"If it be so, what a monument the good king left behind him! It was
this king, was it not, whose mother offered a beautiful manuscript to
the one of her four sons who would first learn to repeat it from
memory? Alfred, although he was a mere child and could not read,
induced an instructor to teach him the manuscript, and so secured the
prize."
[Illustration: ALFRED AND HIS MOTHER.]
"This was the king," said Tommy Toby, "who, when flying from the
Danes in disguise, was left by a rustic's wife to watch some cakes
that were baking by the fire."
"And let them burn," said Wyllys.
"The woman," said Tommy, "gave him a gentle hint, saying that if he
was too lazy to watch them, he would be glad enough to eat them when
they were cooked. I have heard my mother make very similar remarks."
[Illustration: CANUTE AND HIS COURTIERS.]
"Canute, of whom you spoke, was the king who ordered his throne to be
placed on the margin of the sea," said Wyllys to Master Lewis, "and
then commanded the sea to rise no farther."
"But the sea rose," said Master Lewis, "and the king refused to wear
again his golden crown for ever, resolving to serve only that King who
rules the sea.
"The history of Oxford covers a period of a thousand years," continued
Master Lewis. "Here Queen Matilda, or the Empress Maud, as she was
called, because she had been the wife of the German Emperor, was
besieged by King Stephen, who had usurped the throne, and thence she
fled from him one snowy day, herself and attendants dressed in white
that they might not be discovered; here the people closed the gates
against William the Conqueror; here Richard I. was born, and here
Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were burned. The early history of nearly
all great English scholars for many centuries is associated with the
colleges in this place."
[Illustration: FLIGHT OF EMPRESS MAUD.]
"How green are the English meadows with their hedgerows and trees!"
said Wyllys.
"And how bright are the streams that run among them! An English
landscape is more rich and varied than an American."
"I never would tell of it," said Tommy. "Grass is grass, and we have
just as good grass at home as anywhere."
"We have no buildings at home that are quite equal to Warwick
Castle," said Frank.
"It is better to admit excellences frankly wherever one is," said
Master Lewis, "and never let any prejudice color an opinion. When one
is travelling it is well never to make a comparison."
Few scenes are more charming, especially on a long sunny summer
afternoon, than the college buildings of Oxford, separated by gardens,
meadows, and rows of venerable trees, the latter as old as the roofs
and spires that rise above them.
[Illustration: DEATH OF LATIMER AND RIDLEY.]
While at Oxford the boys were taken to Woodstock, a distance of some
eight miles. The old ballad of "Fair Rosamond" so haunted the mind of
Ernest Wynn, at Oxford, that he induced Master Lewis to make an
excursion to Woodstock, the scene of the fancied tragedy.
"I have seen Kenilworth, the scene of one of Walter Scott's romances,"
said Ernest; "have been among the associations of 'Ivanhoe,' and
'Peveril of the Peak,' and I shall always be glad to have seen the
place of the novelist's other English fiction."
The town of Woodstock once constituted a part of the royal demesnes.
Here Ethelred held a council, and Alfred the Great translated the
"Consolations of Boethius." The history of the old palace of Woodstock
is associated with dark romances, splendid cavalcades, and crumbled
kings and queens.
Not a vestige of the palace now remains; its site is merely marked by
two sycamore trees.
The famous Rosamond's Bower, Maze, or Labyrinth seems to have
consisted of a succession of under-ground chambers, and is thought to
have existed before the time of King Henry II., who is supposed to
have used it to hide Fair Rosamond from his jealous queen. There was
but one way into it, though there were many ways that would lead
astray any one who should try to find the right passage. It may have
been like the following diagram, which may puzzle the reader who
attempts to find an open way to the centre.
[Illustration: {ROSAMOND'S BOWER.}]
Henry II. had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of bad reputation,
full of craft and wickedness, whom the French king had put away. But
he gave his affections to Rosamond Clifford, whose beauty had charmed
him when he first met her in the valley of Wye. It is said that she
supposed herself wedded to him; but however this may be, she and not
Eleanor was the spouse of his heart. She pined away in the seclusion
that the king provided for her, but he was true to her in her illness;
he hovered around her sick bed, and at last, when she was laid away to
rest in the chapel at Edstowe Nunnery, he kept her grave bright with
lights and sweet with flowers. The story of her being poisoned by
Queen Eleanor is a fiction, although it is said the Queen discovered
her place of concealment, and administered to her a severe reproof.
[Illustration: A STUDIOUS MONK.]
The atmosphere of learning dispels superstition, but history clings
fondly to the fine old legends of the past that gather around them
unreal lights and shadows. It is not strange that Oxford, the quiet
valley town, hidden even to the bases of its pinnacles, spires, and
towers in ancient groves, through which glide the waters of the
Thames, should still preserve traditions of the wonder-working gifts
of its early philosophers, whom ignorance associated with the magical
arts and regarded as more than men.
It is related that two old Oxford monks made a head of brass that
spoke.
These wise monks discovered from their wonderful books (the like of
which are not now to be found in any of the twenty colleges) that if
they were able to make a head of brass that could speak, and if they
could _hear_ it speak within a month, they would be given the power to
surround England with a magic wall of brass.
So they studied their folios, and found out the chemistry of making
the wonderful head.
[Illustration: AN OLD TIME STUDENT.]
They listened to hear it three weeks, and then became irresistibly
sleepy. So they intrusted a servant to listen, and to wake them if the
statue should begin to speak.
When they were well asleep, the head said,--
"Time is."
Then it said,--
"Time was."
The servant, not knowing the secret of the monks, failed to awake them
as he had been ordered to do, and down came the figure with a fearful
crash; and England has remained without any other wall of brass than
enters into an Englishman's composition to this day.