A visit to Magdalen School, and a subsequent dinner with the scholars, (who are the singers in the chapel), was another of my pleasures, from which I derived fresh convictions of the superior training of English school-boys, alike in physical, mental, and moral discipline. Everything was done with method and precision. The boys looked fresh and rosy, and perfectly happy, and yet their master was as evidently strict with them, as he was also kind. Some of them will win scholarships in the college, and from that, fellowships; and so will make their way to the highest posts of honour and usefulness, for which they will be thoroughly furnished in all respects. There is a new Educational College at Radley, several miles from Oxford, of which the projector and founder is the well-known Mr. Sewell, of Exeter—by whose kind invitation I went out, one day, to visit it. I was kindly accompanied by a distinguished Fellow of Oriel, who with several young men, whom he had enlisted for the purpose, gave me a row up the Thames to Iffley. We took our boat, in Christ Church meadows, and so went over the scene of the race which I have endeavoured to describe. I was unfortunately made steersman, and more than once found myself running the bow of the boat into the bushes, while I stared around me, at every beast and bird, and at every wall, and every bush, and at every green thing, with a greener look no doubt, to my unlucky companions, than anything in the scene besides. It was the Thames—or the Isis if you please—it was the river of the Oxonians; and I lost myself, in contemplations, on the most trifling suggestion of novelty, or of age, which surrounding objects presented. This little voyage was realizing to me the dreams of many years; and when we landed near the picturesque old mill, with which so many drawings and engravings have made every one acquainted, I felt that anything but my pilotage was to be credited with our escape from shipwreck. My conscience accuses me of having paid attention to everything except my immediate duty.
Iffley Church, as every Ecclesiologist will tell you, is a study of itself. Five windows in this Church are said to present the characteristics of five periods of pointed architecture, extending through as many centuries; while the details of enrichment and design afford innumerable specimens of inventive art, embracing somewhat of the rude and elemental Saxon, with the riper and more varied beauties of Norman embellishment. The church is supposed to have been built in the earlier part of the twelfth century; it affords many interesting examples of subsequent alteration and repair; and has lately received much attention, in the way of retouching and restoring its olden beauties. In the churchyard is the remnant of its ancient cross, and also a yew tree scarcely less aged, but much decayed. The font, which stands near the door, is of large dimensions and of very curious construction, generally supposed to be Norman, and of the same date with the Church. Although the beautiful interior retains some useless appendages of mediæval rites no longer practised, it is a most fitting and becoming Anglo-Catholic church, and one in every way satisfactory, as it stands, to the purposes of the English Liturgy. Without and within, it was, at the time I visited it, the most interesting object of its kind which I had ever seen.
On resuming our boat, which had been lifted above the dam by means of a lock, we rowed about a mile further up the river, and then, taking to the fields, went across them to Radley. Here I met Mr. Sewell, and went with him to see Radley Church, a picturesque little temple, and then over his college, chapel and grounds. This college is a very interesting experiment, and aims to combine, on a plan somewhat novel, several important elements of academic and religious life. The taste which has presided over its establishment is very apparent, and not less the benevolence and piety of its founder. I was surprised to find it, although so entirely new, presenting everywhere the appearance of age and completeness. The architecture of the chapel especially, though plain in comparison with that of almost all older structures of a similar kind, is yet very effective; and the service, as performed in it, by the aid of the pupils, was exceedingly inspiring and refreshing. After a visit which I was kindly led to protract beyond my intent, I returned to Oxford on foot, in the company of Mr. Sewell. Our path lay through Bagley-Wood, and never shall I forget the charming conversational powers of my guide, or the pleasure of wandering, with such a companion, through the tangled and briery copse, and intervening glades of that academic forest. At last we struck the Abingdon road, and entered Oxford by the bridge under the Tower of Magdalen.
Amid so many recollections of a graver character, there is one connected with Oxford which never revives without exciting a smile. I went one day into the House of Convocation, where the Vice-Chancellor was conferring degrees, in a business way, very few, besides those immediately interested, being present. Among the candidates was one very portly individual, who, either from his advancing years, or because of some new preferment, had felt it his duty to incur the expense of being made, in course, a Doctor of Divinity. It was evidently many years since the proposing Doctor had been familiar with University forms and ceremonies; and it appeared to me that some very rustic parish had probably, in the meantime, enjoyed the benefit of his services. When the performance required him to do this, or that, it was apparent that the worthy divine was not a little confused, while it was still more painfully clear, that his confusion afforded anything but feelings of regret to the junior portion of the academical body which surrounded him. When required to kneel before a very youthful looking proctor, an audible titter went the rounds, as his burly figure sank to the floor, amid the balloons of silk with which he was invested, to say nothing of the gaudy colours which he now wore, for the first time, with ill-suppressed satisfaction. But the Oath of Abjuration was to be administered, and this proved the most critical part of the proceedings: for, oath as it was, it was made almost a farcical formality, by the manner in which it was taken. As this oath is a little antiquated, at any rate, and seems hardly demanded by the present relations between a powerful sovereign and the mere shadow of a pontiff who now apes Hildebrand, on the Seven Hills, it would seem good taste to go through with it with as little display of furious Protestantism as possible. So evidently thought the proctor, but not so the Doctor elect, whose powerful imagination probably suggested to him that Victoria was Queen Elizabeth, and Dr. Wiseman a Babbington, as no doubt he is. If her Majesty labours under similar impressions, she has at least one loyal subject, and it would have done her heart good to have heard the utterance of his loyalty on this occasion; for with most earnest emphasis did he swear, that “he did from his heart detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position, that princes excommunicated by the Pope, may be deposed or murthered by their subjects,” &c., &c. So, no doubt, thought and felt all present; but as the Doctor seemed to consider himself, for the moment, a sort of Abdiel, and spoke with an epic dignity somewhat unusual to the Convocation house, it was irresistibly ludicrous to behold the smothered merriment of the youthful Oxonians, who shook their sides while the Doctor fulmined, and who seemed to think both him and the Pope a little too old for Young England and the nineteenth century.
My excursion to Nuneham Courtenay proved but the preface to a much more important episode, in company with the same agreeable friend who was my guide on that occasion, and who now drew me into a change of plans and purposes, to which I owed much subsequent pleasure. We were at breakfast together, in the rooms of a common friend at Merton, when the scheme was perfected for a drive through Oxfordshire, in his private carriage, and for several subsequent excursions, of which the centre should be his residence, near Cheltenham. A friend, then keeping his terms for a Master’s degree, at New Inn Hall, gave us his company for a few hours, on the way; and a delightful companion he proved, not only for his essential qualities as such, but because he happened to have been a tourist in America, and was able to imagine, in some degree, how an American must regard the contrast continually furnished him by a tour in England. Our road first took us over a corner of Berkshire, through a pleasing variety of hills and vales, sighting Cumnor on the left, and passing Wytham on the other hand, and so again entering Oxfordshire, by a bridge over the Thames, which here makes a bend among the little mountains. Our first stage was complete when we arrived at Eynsham, where we drew up at the village inn, and contrived to pass an hour very pleasantly, although, from the appearance of the place, one would say, at first, it was fit only to sleep in. How quiet a village can be, even in populous and busy England, and so hard by Oxford! There stood the slender market-cross that had survived the storms of centuries, and the more violent batterings of Puritan iconoclasts. Broken and bruised as it was, it seemed good for centuries more, amid so peaceful a community as now surrounds its venerable tutelage. Whether the exemplary character of the present inhabitants be owing at all to the parish stocks, which stand near the cross, in most Hudibrastic grouping with surrounding objects, I cannot determine; but there they are, and I could fancy a stout brace of Puritans, of Butler’s sort, undergoing its salutary penance; or even one of Hogarth’s unlucky wights experiencing the rude sympathies of men and boys in the passiveness of its bondage. How speaking a picture of rigorous parochial justice those queer old stocks, under lee of the market-house, afforded to my imagination! How many vagrant feet and ankles have there been relieved from the curse of Cain! how many a vagabond they have furnished with persuasives to rest and meditation! Really—one could not be properly pensive, in sight of such a commentary on human guilt and misery: for the parish stocks are but of distant kin to gallows and guillotine, and hardly more than little brothers of whipping-post and pillory; their ignominy being rather that of ridicule than of scorn, and their severity being the very least of all the penalties of law. I did not know that such instruments of wholesome discipline were still in existence under the English sceptre, and hence my amusement and surprise to behold them, and to find so many memories of their history reviving at the sight; among which were prominent those classical verses of the Anti-Jacobin—
“Justice Oldmixen put me in the parish-
Stocks, for a vagrant.”
Verily a queer old place is Eynsham, from the days of King Ethelred, the Unready, who had a villa here, and those of King Stephen, who gave it the very equivocal privilege of a market “on the Lord’s day,” under the patronage of its Abbot and its monks. On inquiring for the remains of the Abbey, we were informed that some new relics of its ancient chapel and cemetery had just been discovered in a neighbouring field. We had therefore the pleasure of seeing, sure enough, the encaustic tiles of its sanctuary, just laid bare, after ages of concealment in the earth. They were of various patterns and devices, St. George and the Dragon forming, apparently, a conspicuous part of the design. But the old gardener who showed us these discoveries, went on to tell us that in digging further, he had just laid bare some frames which he should like to have us see, and so leading us to another part of the ground, he showed us the frames, indeed, which proved to be nothing less than the skeletons of the old monks of Eynsham, protruding from their graves. Often had these same “frames” sung in the choir, and walked over those same tiles we had just been viewing. How old they might be we could not say; but they were the bones of old Christians, and most probably of Christian priests, and there they had been laid in hope of the Resurrection, so that it seemed to me almost profane to be staring at them, as if they were a show. Requiescant in pace.
The village church had been an appurtenance of the Abbey, and was, no doubt, comely in its day. It had suffered not a little, however, from whitewash, and other Churchwarden-isms. There had evidently been a fine rood-loft, but every vestige of it was gone, save that there was the solid stair-way in the wall, and there again the door-way, still open, through which the ancient Gospeller used to make his appearance in the loft, to read the Holy Evangel for the day. ‘Poor fellow,’ thought I, ‘when did he climb those steps, and issue from that door, for the last time? Was he indeed a Gospeller, grateful for a chance thereafter to read the Word of God, in the vulgar tongue; or was he some Marian Monk, who had raked the coals about Latimer and Ridley, in Oxford, and who trembled, while he sung his Latin Missal, lest the news of Elizabeth’s accession should prove too true?’ How strange it would seem to an American priest, to find himself officiating, Sunday after Sunday, in a church whose very walls are a monument, not only of the Reformation, but of “Hereford Use,” and “Salisbury Use,” or other usages now forever superseded, but which had a long existence, and have left their mark, alike in stone and timber, and in the vernacular Liturgy of the Church of England!
We left the little village, and pursued our journey very pleasantly till we met the Oxford coach coming down, in full drive, but stopping as we hailed it, in behalf of our friend of New Inn Hall. He was obliged to return, for sleeping a single night out of Oxford, during his term, would disqualify him for his degrees. So we reluctantly saw him climb to a lofty seat, among a motley crew of passengers, and whirl away, as we waved him our adieu. We continued our journey to Witney, where again we paused, to survey its ancient cruciform Church—which would make a fine cathedral in America—and to take our luncheon with the good vicar, who received us very hospitably. I was surprised at the greatness of the Church, and the beauty of many of its details, but I believe it was once an Abbey Church, and its architectural merits are such as to have furnished not a few favourite examples to ecclesiological publications. The village itself is a decayed one, having formerly been of consequence as the seat of a famous blanket manufacture, which made “Witney” a household word with housewives, especially in cold weather. Our drive next brought us to Minster-Lovel, the scene of the “Old English Baron;” and next to a “deserted village,” which looked as little like Auburn as possible, for it had been built by a pack of infidels, to show the world what a village ought to be, and so had speedily become as dead as Pompeii. It was now “for sale,” but no one seemed disposed to buy, and I suspect it may yet be had at a bargain. England is no soil for fools to flourish in; and it is a pity that when they find it out, they are so wont to come to America, where they join the Mormons, or set up for superfine republicans, and vent their hatred of England in our newspapers, which are then quoted by the writers in the London Times, as proof of American feelings towards the mother country.