He collects a world of "surfaces," impressions that well portray himself. He is a newsletter also. Monstrous births, escapes, blazing stars, scandals among the venerable, hangings, suicides, and all manner of deaths: ballads and all processions royal and funereal all pageantries and dignified masquerades- -are meat and drink to him; nor ever fails he narrowly to scrutinise the hatchments on coffins and tombs, and mete sarcasm to false displays of arms. Meanwhile he is daily dredging and ravaging college archives, with fierce tenacity, for fifty years. The mind had therefore no leisure strongly to react on the vast material amassed, and this failure is reflected in his style.

He has been charged with partiality to Romanist writers in the Athena; but while his leanings would no doubt be rather to the richer older cult than toward Puritan iconoclasm, he stands, in truth, secluded as far as circumstances will permit from the great religious controversies of his age; and, despite loyalty to Oxford, is plainly determined by the pursuit of historic truth about her. Regardless of envy or fame, he applies a sound burgess commonsense to monkish legend. In examining the tradition which assigned a certain tower to the banished Roger Bacon, he points out the unlikelihood of the retirement of the necromancer to practise secret magic upon the common highway. Wood does not test his problems with brevity. Not till he has confuted at length a statement by some annalist is he content to show that no such annalist ever really existed. Nor does he test authorities with modern severity. Nevertheless, on the whole, he is very trustworthy.

His style has no pretensions to form, and presents few notable features. Throughout it is more or less disjointed by scrappy treatment, and marred by the jerkiness of the habitual notetaker, and lengthy passages of continuous prose seldom occur. He is hampered by a painful accuracy which loads the unpremeditated sentence with parentheses. In the Athenæ it is most continuous, and on the whole the best, becoming less full of cumbrous gravity as he approaches the writers of his own generation. In the History of the University it is disfigured by intricacy of arrangement. There is a passage about Camden's edition of Asser Menevensis which may be taken as a pattern of confusedness. Nevertheless, on subjects where he is, by long thinking, easily master, as for instance in settling the rival claims to antiquity of University College and his own Merton, he is clear and brief and

business-like. The History of the City in its early parts is full of youthful grandiloquence; the treatise on Colleges and Halls marred by interjected notes of controversy and the desperate local inconsequence of a guide-book; the Diaries suffer less from weight of matter, and are easy and natural in language, but their extreme interest is rather personal and picturesque than literary. Compared, however, to that of Dryden, Wood's style is clownish and uncourtly, the antiquated dress of the "meer scholar." It is thick with old legal phrases and Latinisms. The omission of pronouns is such a Latinism ::- -“If any dislike might be discovered to their choice [it] should not cross them." Another perhaps is the frequent use of absolute constructions :- "Some of the stone-work of the Temple Church blown down and the lead blown up and shrivelled they mended it." There are of course many traces of archaicism, for to him an old word had the sacred relish of a relic; and there is also the pleasant old use of verbals, thus :— "Both of whom struggling for the way, Pelham unhorsed him, so that his horse trampling on his breast, he died." Cudworth somewhere describes a school of divines as those that "boggle at the Trinity." Such quaint Jacobean incongruities of diction are plentiful and refreshing in Wood. He rails at the governors of the University as "lazy, proud, scarlatical doctors," the "scarleteers," He praises a grove as affording "much recreation to the defatigated student by continuall chirping of the winged choire." It is prose half a century behind its time-behind that of the delicate and courtly Halifax-but a robust survival, like that of ancient timbered houses. Dragons and grape-vines ramp along its face of black beams, and armorial carvings nod over its cobbled archway. Folios and parchments stifle its long, uncertain passages, and centuries have bowed the back of its stone-slatted roofs. It leans forward, curious and crabbed, into the street, and its gable is crowned by the little sooty figure of a crumbling knight.

F. H. TRENCH.

ANCIENT OXFORD

SUCH, it seems, is the envy of time and vicissitude of things who have long since worn out their memories and committed their ruins to the grave. To tell you of all the varieties of arts and sciences that have anciently been presented and delivered to us by the learnedest of all ages will perhaps now, by reason of the longinguity of time, seem incredible. To tell you also of the injunctions of our old statutes, concerning the continual reading here of the three philosophical, and seven liberal arts and sciences, from the north part of St. Mary's Church even to the north wall of the city, will also, to those that converse with the actions but of yesterday, seem riddles and chimæras; but verily they are all so full of truth and obvious to every man's capacity, that if he doth but peep in our old statutes, or in the least give glance upon our ancient scripts, he cannot but conclude this place to be like the Areopagus at Athens, and style it by no other name than Vicus Minervalis. Here, had we lived in those old days, we might have beheld with what great emulation our old philosophers would open their packs of literature (as I may say) to their hungry auditors. Here also, each order in our University at their first coming and plantation, would with great pride endeavour to blazon their parts, and give the world approbation of their profound knowledge and philosophy. Every corner porch, entry, hall, and school, in this street, was so wholly dedicated and sacred for the use only of the gown, that it was a great piaculum for an apron to approach its borders. What shall I say? all things in relation towards the soul and accomplishment of man was here (only with the price of patience and endeavour) to be obtained. And so far was it different from the street at Paris, where the philosophical professors taught, in the time of Dante the poet, and which, because of the continual noise of the disputants there was by Petrarcha termed Vicus Fragosus, that every cell, cavern, or cubicle of this place had a

pleasant consort and concenter of parts therein. In the grammar schools that were here (besides those in other places) you had the masters and regents in that faculty still inculcating to you the propriety of words; in the rhetoric, the several tropes and figures contained therein; in the logic, the deduction of consequences and the unravelling the mysteries therein, that thou mightest hereafter artificially open the several places of the scripture; in the mathematic and geometry those abstruse and sublime recondita, to increase thy reason and fortify thy judgment; and in the theological those continual expositions and readings on the sacred writ to munite thee against heresies and upstart notions that continually present themselves unto thee; and the like. Of all which, with several other exercises performed, as also of the schools here I have more at large laid down in my discourse of the schools. (From History of City and Suburbs.)

THE KING'S COMING TO OXON

ABOUT one or two of the clock in the afternoon, upon notice of the King's (Charles II.) approach, went from the Cross Inn and other inns adjoining James (Bertie) Lord Norrys, Lord Lieutenant, with the loyal gentry of the county, to meet his majesty coming from Windsor (across the road) by Tetsworth to meet the queen, who came straight from London. He (the said Lord Norrys) had two or three horses of state led before him, richly adorned. After him went Sir Thomas Spencer, Bt., in the head of one of the militia troops of the county. And after him Captain Henry Bertie (the lord lieutenant's brother) in the head of another troop, with two horses of state in the like livery as those before; with trumpets sounding, having the lord's livery on, and flags to their trumpets containing the lord's arms and quarterings. Between two and three of the clock proceeded by twos on foot from the Guildshall down the High Street about eighteen constables of the city and suburbs of Oxon with their painted and gilt staves. Next to them were the four sergeants-at-mace, two on foot and two on horseback, with their silver staves erected. Then the macebearer, and town-clerk (John Paynton) with a chain of silver gilt about his neck (a Royalist this day, and when the times serve a Cromwellian). After these rode the loyal mayor, John

Bowell, Esq., in his scarlet gown, and a livery on one side walking by his horse, and on the other the recorder on horseback in his black gown. After them the aldermen, thirteen baylives, and such that had been baylives, to the number of about twenty-four, all in scarlet gowns, faced with fur, and each person with a livery servant by his side, to lead their horses in case they should strike out and disturb the formality. After these rode, by twos also, the rest of the house and common council (about sixty in number) in their black gowns, faced with fur. All which being come to the east gate made a stop. Soon after the king approaching within the gate, the mayor, recorder, and some of the scarleteers alighted, while the rest put themselves out to march before the king. The coach being by the king commanded to stand, the mayor and recorder knelt down on a mat by the coach side, the latter of which (being the city mouth), very smoothly spake an English speech. Which, being concluded, the mayor surrendered up the gestamen of his authority. Which being graciously returned (and thereupon a rich pair of gloves was delivered to his majesty and another to the queen) they mounted and marched bare-headed the same way they went, not in like order as they went down, but the black first, then the scarleteers next, and just before the king's coach the mayor with the mace on his shoulder, respectively put thereon by the mace-bearer. Behind their majesties' coach marched the life-guard and after them other coaches of his majesty's retinue. Then went the lord - lieutenant, high sheriff, gentry of the county, and their liveries ; among whom was one of the knights of the shire called Sir Philip Harcourt, who though of most ancient and noble extract and of a generous and sweet nature, yet fame tells us that he is tinged with Presbyterian leaven, but whether he will appear so in the parliament house we cannot yet tell. And lastly went the county troops, buff-coated and well horsed. In this order they passed to Quatervoys (the market place) and thence down the South Street to Christ Church, where their majesties intend to lodge during their abode in this place. But that which is most to be noted is that all the way the king passed were such shoutings, acclamations, and ringing of bells, made by loyal hearts and smart lads of the laity of Oxon, that the air was so much pierced that the clouds seemed to divide. The general cry was "Long live King Charles," and many drawing up to the very coach window cried "Let the king live, and the devil hang up all Round