Seeing, shall take heart again!”
TOUCHING OXFORD.
A LETTER TO PROFESSOR NEBEL.
My dear Professor!—You see that I have not forgotten the note of admiration which your countrymen use at the beginning of letters when they address each other. It is an easy way of giving emphasis to the greeting, or of expressing the admiration of the writer for the character of the person written to. When I last saw you at Dummerjungenberg, I recollect I promised to write you down the impressions which an intended visit to my old University might make upon me, and I hasten to fulfil that promise now. It is superfluous for me to tell you that the two English universities are essentially different in their constitution from a German university, as you are well acquainted theoretically with the constitutions of both. I maintain that each kind is good, and answers its own end. The German university fully answers its purpose of making men learned, but the stamp of character which it affixes to the man is evanescent, and does not follow him through life. According to the language of the Bursch or German student, as soon as a man has ceased to be a student, he falls back again, as a matter of course, into the Philisterium, or limbo of the Philistines, which is the student’s term to designate the uncovenanted class, which comprises all mankind excepting the student. On the other hand, we speak of men for the whole of life as Oxford or Cambridge men much more than we do of them as Göttingen or Leipzig men, inferring by this mode of expression that they have been, as it were, fed on the milk of Alma Mater, which continues through the whole of life to affect their constitutions in a peculiar manner. So highly do some of our men think of this influence, that they dread too much infusion of the Germanic element, as dangerous to this peculiar quality of our universities of forming and stamping the whole man, instead of merely the logical part of him. I recollect well that at a meeting of Convocation at Oxford, when some material changes were brought under consideration, no sentiment was more highly applauded than one which concluded the Latin speech of a talented polemical churchman, when he said, “Hanc Universitatem Germanizari non volo”—“I protest against this university being Germanised;”—by which he plainly meant, not that he objected to the widening of its scope of teaching, but that he feared that mere instruction would usurp too much prominence in the scheme of education, and throw into the shade that general moral training which is now a most essential part of the system. One of the feelings, to speak individually, that I should be sorry to lose is that which this very name of Alma Mater implies. The word “Almus” is one of the most beautiful in the Latin language; it means that whose nature is to cherish, nourish, inspire with life. Thus, Venus is called “Alma” by the ancients, as representing the principle of life in nature; Ceres is also called “Alma,” as being the goddess that supplies the staff of life. If it be true, as Mr Carlyle says, that our word “lady” is derived from two old words, meaning a giver of loaves, it would be a good translation of the word “Alma.” And desirable it certainly is, that the word “lady” should bear this fulness of meaning; the function of woman, in her beautiful ideal, being to give life, to support life, and to make life worth living. And the poet saw the matter truly, as poets generally do the most truly, when he said—
“Woman, dear woman, in whose name,
Wife, sister, mother meet,
Thine is the heart by earliest claim,
And thine its latest beat.”
Now, to every Oxford man, his Lady Mother, or Alma Mater, in the transcendental sense, is his university, occupying nearly as high a place in his heart as Our Lady occupies in that of the devout Catholic. And this much I can say from experience. As Hercules could do nothing in wrestling against the giant Antæus, the son of the Earth, as long as he persisted in throwing him, seeing that whenever he fell in his mother’s lap he gained new strength, so is it with myself; the world never throws me,—I never am cast down by circumstances, but a thrill from the warm bosom of Alma Mater, as powerful but more enduring than galvanism, inspires me with a new life, and I rise with fresh courage and fresh heart to the wrestling-match of life.
I have lately visited my old University after a long absence, and found its outward aspect fair as ever—nay, rather fairer and fresher than ever. Changed it is undoubtedly, but changed for the better. Much that is new and tasteful, at the same time—a rare accident in our times—has been added, and the hand of Time has been arrested, and that which was decayed or destroyed has been restored with affectionate fidelity. One of the greatest improvements, to my mind, has been effected by the railroad, which was at first greatly feared as a revolutionary agent. It has diverted from the main thoroughfares that brawling stream of traffic which formerly flowed through them in the shape of stage-coaches, stage-waggons, and other properties and accessories of the stage, and left the town to its genuine academical character of a dignified repose. Although this change gives to the town, in the eyes of commercial travellers, a somewhat dead-alive appearance, and although a similar change in other places seems to take away truly the only life they possessed, it seems, on the contrary, to have withdrawn an unpleasant intrusion from Oxford, and left her to the dignified retirement from the world of bustle and action, in which she most delights.
Oxford is a town which, for its medieval beauty, deserves to be kept under a glass-case; and nothing can be more advantageous to its academical character, than diverting from its walls the turbid current of commerce which belongs to this much-bepraised nineteenth century. This the railroad has achieved most effectually. There is still abundance of life in the streets, but life in unison with the history of the place; and suddenly whirled as one is by the express train from the turmoil of London to the repose of Oxford, with its lines of venerable colleges, and troops of sombre but graceful gowned figures, one experiences a feeling as of having been transported in a trance on the carpet of the Arabian Nights from one place to another. Never did the High Street appear so broad or so beautiful as now that its area is uninvaded by the rattle of vulgar vehicles. The time to see it to perfection is when the sun happens to set behind the opening at Carfax Church, dazzling the eye at its focus, and forcing shafts of amber light out along the fronts of St Mary’s and All Saint’s churches, and the fantastic façade of Queen’s College. This is a condition which presents one of the finest town-views in the world that can be seen where there are no mountains in the case. There is much similarity between Oxford and the grand old Flemish towns; and the railway has been a boon to them, as it has been to her, in preserving their quiet character. Unlike other English towns, the inhabitants of which point with an ignorant pride to the substitution of stucco-fronted houses, and cockney plate-glass, for the cross-beamed gables and lattices, all the architectural changes which have taken place of late years in Oxford appear to have been for the better. One is certainly sorry to see the time-corroded and weather-beaten stone disappearing from the faces of the colleges, and new freestone appearing in its place; but this change, though one that we may sigh over as even over the seasonal changes of nature, is, in reality, of a conservative character, and its absolute necessity is an unanswerable plea. The nature of the stone of which most of the colleges are built being such as to peculiarly expose it to wear and tear of weather, we are not sorry to see it replaced by a material which looks durable in its novelty, and to many generations yet to come will become more beautiful with age. No expense has been spared in these reparations; and the stranger will be peculiarly struck with the manner in which they have been carried out in many of the principal buildings. In Oxford alone, of all the towns in England, domestic architecture appears properly subordinate to that devoted to public purposes; and as she grows in beauty with each addition, her inhabitants may be one day allowed to boast as the Romans of the olden time,