The Roebuck Inn is an extremely fine piece of architecture. The great window on the left lights a still finer room. Indeed this chamber, with which the low door communicates, is one of the most beautiful apartments of the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in England. It is exceedingly rich in ornament, and all the ornaments are in excellent taste. It is now used as a club room, or for any large gathering that the inn—which is a very unassuming hostelry—may have to accommodate. The inn faces the street, and the beam on the upper part of the picture is the end of the passage leading to the courtyard in which this room is situated. The room was the council-chamber of Oliver Cromwell after the taking of Banbury Castle. The quaint gables that form the subject of the next illustration are very characteristic of the town. There seems to be no particular history connected with them, but they were not very new at the siege of Banbury. There is one rather singular house here with three even gables in the front, which project into the street to an enormous distance, and are enriched in parquetry. Three circular bow windows, also projecting into the street, are exactly under them, and stop on their soffits, but the gables project considerably beyond the bow windows.
Entering Oxford from the railway we cross over a bridge, and under it is the picturesque scene here given. The houses are rather old, and not perhaps very desirable as residences, but the effect is very good indeed, and much resembles a view on the Witham in Lincoln, that will form the subject of another engraving.
Tetsworth, on the London and Oxford road, is a perfect specimen of an old English coaching town, but its glories have declined, of course, since the days of railroads. Dorchester is an ancient village, and contains the cathedral church of St. Peter and St. Paul, full of venerable memorials, and the embankments called Dyke Hills were thrown up as old fortifications in the Roman times.
But, of course, the chief interest of the county centres in the capital city. The great Oxford historian Anthony-a-Wood tells us that many of the students were “mere varlets, who pretended to be scholars, who lived under no discipline, neither had any tutors, but only for fashion sake would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools of ordinary lectures; and when they went to perform any mischief, then they would be accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves from the jurisdiction of the burghers.” This was the benefit of clergy! The professors of learning there, Franciscan friars, were men of very high character, and free from any suspicion of worldly ambition; indeed Chaucer well describes them in the Oxford Clerk. “The hilly nature of the roads,” says the topographer, “leading to Oxford, makes the city present a magnificent appearance to the traveller as he approaches it, for stretched out before him lies a succession of spires, towers, domes, and public edifices, between which and the rivers extend a number of beautiful luxuriant meadows; nor is he disappointed upon his entrance into the city, for each street presents some building which compels him to stop and admire either its construction or its antiquity. Entering by the London road, and thus traversing Oxford from east to west, we pass Magdalen College with its tower of eight pinnacles, University College, Queen’s College, All Souls’ College, St. Mary’s Church, and All Saints’ Church, a picturesque series of colleges and churches interspersed with antique and modern houses. From
the Abingdon branch of the London Road the entrance is not quite so effective, but the line of streets running from north to south contains St. Giles’ Church, etc.; the Martyrs’ Memorial, erected in memory of the burning of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, in Queen Mary’s reign. The quiet which characterises its streets, the constant sound of bells summoning to study or prayer, and the absence of heavy traffic, distinguish it from ordinary cities.”
But the college that is perhaps the most beloved by Englishmen is Magdalen, owing to its spirited opposition to the attempts which James II. made to tyrannise over its authorities and rights. The tower of Merton Chapel, here given, is extremely well proportioned, and forms a pleasing object in High Street. The tower and transept seem to have more recent characteristics than the body of the chapel, which is Late Decorated, and not very happy. Speaking of the foundation of this college, a careful writer says: “No regular plan of the regime of Oxford can be found till the foundation of Merton College by Roger de Merton in 1247, but his statutes were gradually adopted with alterations by other succeeding colleges. These facts, on the whole, give us a kind of glimpse of the foundation of the present university. And comparatively rude and simple as the arrangements no doubt were, as compared with the elaborate system that now prevails, there is one startling fact in connection with this foundation or revival of University College—there were then 15,000 scholars at the university of Oxford. It is a common remark that this and the 30,000 students of the reign of Henry III. are mere exaggerations, but apparently the assertion is made on no better foundation than the fact that no such state of things prevails now. All Souls’ College, a little farther on, has a fine irregular