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    Oxford: City and University
    Oxford: City and University
    Oxford: City and University
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Oxford: City and University

    By Andrew Lang

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    About this ebook

    Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a prolific Scots man of letters, a poet, novelist, literary critic and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the collector of folk and fairy tales. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford. As a journalist, poet, critic and historian, he soon made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of the day. Lang was one of the founders of the study of "Psychical Research," and his other writings on anthropology include The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (1897), Magic and Religion (1901) and The Secret of the Totem (1905). He was a Homeric scholar of conservative views. Other works include Homer and the Epic (1893); a prose translation of The Homeric Hymns (1899), with literary and mythological essays in which he draws parallels between Greek myths and other mythologies; and Homer and his Age (1906). He also wrote Ballades in Blue China (1880) and Rhymes la Mode (1884).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Classics
    Release dateApr 11, 2014
    ISBN9781609776756
    Oxford: City and University
    Author

    Andrew Lang

    Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a Scottish scholar and writer, best known for his folklore and mythological tales. After college, he moved to London and began working as a journalist. He began collecting fairytales and folklore stories for his first collection, The Blue Fairy Book. The Fairy Books contained hundreds of pages of folklore stories, which Lang edited while his wife helped translate. Receiving acclaim, the books totaled in 427 stories combined in twelve collections. Lang also produced his own original writing, including novels, literary criticism, and poetry, but his work did not attain the same literary recognition.

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    Reviews for Oxford

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    • 4/5
      “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of believe. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all going direct to heaven. We were all going direct the other way.” The Tale of Two Cities was originally serialized in the author's own periodical All the Year Round beginning in 1859. Dickens uses a period of history roughly 70 years earlier to parallel present times. He is warning England of the dangers of revolution as occurred in the French Revolution. Doing history was a way of capturing the pressure of the time. "The weight of this time must we obey; Speak what we feel and not what we aught to say."As one who likes the detail with which Dickens develops a story, I did seem to get bogged down in the middle of a Tale of Two Cities. The point in the story where everyone is confessing his love for Lucie seemed to stall for me. I was already there with most of the characterization that was being portrayed by these various confessions. “In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance—and shall thank and bless you for it—that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!” Sydney Carton has resurrected his poor drudged self into a savior for the love of remembrance. Memory plays a key role in this history of the French Revolution as seen through the eyes of an English novelist 70 years later. It is the memory of the evils of nobility that forge the vengeance that the Defarges shape into Revolution. As in many of Dickens novels, memory in a Tale of Two Cities revolves around one event that the main characters share in. It’s a small world after all.Recalled to LifeAs Dr. Manette was buried alive so did Charles Evremonde bury his past to become Charles Darnay only to join Dr. Manette’s earlier fate. But, there is the ever-present Jerry Cruncher to dig him out again. It seems all the characters experienced individual resurrection of some sort or other. By the end of the novel, Darnay is one of three characters that have experienced a spiritual rebirth, and it is resurrection with decidedly Christian overtones that comprises the salient theme of the novel. Intertwined together in the theme of resurrection and renewal, life, death and rebirth in this story of the French Revolution. Dickens implores his readers to undertake their own spiritual renewal, to shun the desire for revenge and to act in a spirit of Christian compassion and self-sacrifice towards those in their midst.
    • 4/5
      First of all, Dickens deserves some credit for creating the popular image of the French Revolution. Its portrayal in movies and other books such as The Scarlet Pimpernel series is based far more on A Tale of Two Cities than on reality. He also earns some points for the fact that, being Dickens, he shows remarkable sympathy for the poor in France leading up to the revolution. Even if once the revolution begins he tends to depict them as fiendish vultures and the the entire period of the republic as just as bloody as the most intense weeks of the Terror, he shows the justification for the revolution more than many of the authors who followed him did. The story itself is serial melodrama, but it's very good serial melodrama, and holds up to rereading.
    • 3/5
      The story of a group of Englishmen and French expatriates at the time of the French Revolution.
    • 3/5
      The least Dickensy of Dickens's novels. Not my favorite, but still better than Barnaby Rudge.
    • 4/5
      Liked it! The ending had me turning pages until I was done. I found the end notes extremely distracting to the flow of reading,a necessary evil tho. Classic Dickens.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating story about the parallels between Paris and London during the French revolution particularly with respect to class differences. An eminently quotable book.
    • 4/5
      A drunkard loser lawyer is pulled into the drama of the Darnay family, who foolishly returned to post-revolutionary France. Sydney Carton defends them as best he can, but the wheels of revolution and vengeance will not be stopped for long.
      My second favorite Dickens novel.
    • 4/5
      I was quite surprised at how much I liked this novel, but have written so many reviews today, I'm spent. Suffice to say that I particularly liked the ending.
    • 5/5
      I know that Dickens is an acquired taste and for many of you reading this your interest in any of his novels is minimal at best. But I hope you'll hear me out as I gush about my favorite Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities. Yes, it's his most famous work. That is for a very good reason. It's absolutely phenomenal. The story is told before and during the French Revolution and focuses on a key group of characters who one instantly feels are real. Your heart aches for Dr. Manette, you stand a little straighter with Darnay, and you are filled with hope for the future by Carton. A story of loss, love, and liberty; A Tale of Two Cities can't be beat.
    • 5/5
      It is nearly twenty years since I previously read this novel of the French Revolution and I had forgotten how wonderful it is. It is more accessible for the general reader than many other Dickens novels, with a dramatic narrative full of colour and incident, no significant sub-plots and a much less extensive cast of minor characters than probably any other full length Dickens novel. The author's voice rings out strongly against all forms of oppression and tyranny, whether of the ancien regime, whose representatives such as the Marquis St Evremonde treat the peasantry with less consideration than they do their dogs and horses; or of the revolutionary authorities and their local representatives such as Mme Therese Defarge, with their implacable thirst for vengeance and retribution against all members of aristocratic families, regardless of those members' individual guilt and innocence for acts of oppression. It is a warning against endless cycles of bloodfeuds and vengeance, and the tendency of many political and social movements in extremis to view and judge people en masse, and not as living, breathing individuals. As powerful today as it was when first published in 1859. Wonderful stuff.
    • 4/5
      This is Charles Dickens’ classic tale of resurrection and redemption set against the backdrop of the French Revolution. The plot is far too complicated to relate quickly. Suffice to say that various characters are introduced and their interconnectedness does not become fully evident until the last hundred pages. The central characters are: Charles Darnay, nephew of the hated Marquis Evremonde; Sydney Carton, an insolent alcoholic attorney; Dr Manette, a brilliant physician who spent eighteen years in the Bastille; Lucie Manette, his daughter who grew up as an orphan in England and who embodies compassion.

      It wouldn’t be Dickens without a huge cast of supporting characters, several twists in the plot, secret identities, unexpected connections, and long discourses wherein the characters expound on various issues, while the reader is anxious for the action to continue.

      But don’t let that dissuade you. It’s a marvelous story and the last hundred pages just flew by for me. I love how certain characters redeem themselves and rise to the occasion, showing great reserves of moral strength and fortitude. I also love how Dickens surprises us with a villain or two we didn’t expect; or a supposed villain who did the right thing. It is no wonder his works have endured for over 150 years.

      The hardcover edition I got out of the library to accompany my audio book included many of the original illustrations that accompanied the text when first published in serial form. I deliberately waited to look at those drawings until after I had listened to the text and formed a “picture” of those scenes in my mind.

      Frank Muller does a wonderful job performing the audio book. There are so many different characters, and his skill as a voice artist is really put to the test. But he was easily able to give each person a unique voice – whether a young child or an elderly crone, a peasant or an aristocrat, a Frenchman or a British subject.
    • 5/5
      Wordy, yes. It is Dickens, after all! It has been very worthwhile reading and listening to these classic books. Not only does it put the quotable phrases we all know into their proper place, but it gives us the entire quote. Best of time and worst of times: yes, but so much more. And It is a far far better thing I do than I have ever done....I'm not sure I ever realized that was also from "A Tale..."Superbly narrated by Simon Vance.
    • 4/5
      The story is a classic, the book is beautifully written, there are plenty of amusing and thought provoking passages and overall, it's a charming novel. The only downside is that some of the main characters - Lucy, Charles and Lucy - are extremely one dimensional, way too noble & nice, and entirely unrealistic. Fortunately, there are a number of more well rounded and imperfect characters in the story, such as Dr. Manette, the Defarges, Sydney Carton, and Jerry, and they really help keep things lively.
    • 4/5
      A classic from Dickens that differed from those others I have read (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and the Christmas Stories). The plot seemed tighter the characters truer and less grotesque, and the stylish writing between scenes much more telling. On a whole, I would say this was one of his better if not best book. 4.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      "It was the best..."
      "Tis a far, far better rest I go to now."
      I loved it.
    • 5/5
      It’s been days now since I finished Tale of Two Cities, but still having a hard time shaking it. The opening of the book – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” foreshadows up the conundrum to come – how can a story of so much horror also be a story of so much love, nobility, and self-sacrifice? I postponed reading the book much longer than I should have because, frankly, I worried for my emotional well-being. Having barely survived the death of Little Nell, I wasn’t sure I had the intestinal fortitude to handle a Dickens novel set during the horrors of the French Revolution. The inescapable irony, of course, is that great love/nobility/sacrifice can only exist in the midst of horror. And so it is in this riveting, heartwarming/heartbreaking tale of (with apologies to The Princess Bride) “true love” in all its forms – selfish, platonic, filial, romantic, unrequited. As I expect most folks already know, the tale centers around a triumvirate of characters – the beautiful, virtuous Lucie Manett, her psychologically fragile old father Doctor Manette, and Charles Darney, an honorable young French nobleman who has moved to England in order to renounce any association with the atrocities of the Revolution. And since this is Dickens, they are kept company by a bakers dozen other brilliantly imagined and realized characters, from the coarse but faithful Crusher to the stolid-businessman-with-a-heart-of-gold Lorry, from the ambitious French revolutionary DeFarge to his ghastly wife Madame DeFarge, from self-aggrandizing lawyer Stryver to perhaps one of Dickens’ most tragic characters, the self-destructive university student Sidney Carton. Inevitably, our young lovers Charles and Lucie end up in the hands of the Revolution, whereupon I headed for the tissue box, foreseeing the tragic end. But because this is Dickens (again), I should have expected that the tragedy would be a complex thing: that heroes would turn out to be flawed, that villains would turn out to be less heartlessly villainous as they may at first have appeared, and that otherwise ordinary people would turn out to be capable of extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice. As in many other Dickens novels, the author doesn’t shy away from realistically portraying the cruelty and brutality of which human society is capable. Some of the people and scenes depicted in this tale are simply appalling. And yet, somehow, Dickens always manages to pilot us through the morass to a place where human decency ends up triumphing over all the obstacles set against it. Am not sure why Sidney Carton doesn’t get the press that other literary greats – Gatsby, Ahab, Heathcliff, Atticus Finch, etc. – have garnered, because I feel like he more than deserves a spot in the pantheon. Be that as it may, he’s definitely earned a spot in my list of great characters in literature, and whether or not he’s enjoying the far, far better rest he wholeheartedly deserves, I know I’m a far better and richer person for having met him and for allowing Dickens, once again, to whisk me away on an unforgettable journey.
    • 4/5
      Dunno why this is listed as a Most Difficult book on the g-r list. Just a lot of Victorian digressions to get through, but that can't be why.
    • 4/5
      Another great book by Dickens. I haven't read a Charles Dickens book since high school, and I felt that it was time to get back into it. After reading a couple easier books, I wanted a challenge. So this is what I picked.

      It definitely wasn't an easy read. Took me a couple weeks to get through. But I especially loved the themes presented in the book. The love triangle, for instance, between Lucie, Charles Darnay, and Sidney Carton, is quite heartwrenching at times. The idea of loving someone and doing anything for them, even sacrificing your own life, is a timeless theme that is constantly expressed in many current pieces of literature.

      And of course, just like the title implies, the story is about a tale of two cities. Not just literally, but if you look at it from a caste system point of view, Dickens does splendid work in expressing this. Or, if you prefer to focus on the characters themselves, then you can find that in them as well. Everyone has their good and their bad sides, and each character must figure out themselves before they can be of any use to others. This battle within the character is illustrated throughout the text.

      Overall, I really liked the book. Kinda slow in the beginning, but got really exciting by the third book. Sparknotes also helped me a lot in the analysis of the story, so at least that's always available for those that want a classroom translation of the text.
    • 5/5
      'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,' so begins Dickens' stirring story of self-sacrifice. Charles Dickens is a great story teller, full of period detail and strong emotions. This book moved me so much I was in tears, reading the ending on the tube on my way back home from working in South Kensington. It is a tale of London and Paris and of Mr Sydney Carton, who finds there is one thing he can do with his life which will really be for the greater good. The book also ends with another deep and much quoted line, 'It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known'.
    • 4/5
      I thought it was about time I read a classic.
      I loved the opening passage "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ..."
      At the end it was just as good a page turner as modern novels.
      An eye opener, I was astounded at the brutality of the revolution, the inhumanity of the revolutionaries. I presume quite historically accurate.
      Good portrayal of characters and subtle revelation of relationships.
    • 5/5
      The first Dickens book I've read in a long time, aside from my in-depth, tear-apart-and-lose-all-enjoyment-therefore-culminating-in-another-go-in-many-years read of Hard Times for University, and I was excited to read it, purely because, having seen the ITV adaptation on telly a while ago, I could re-enact the Sydney Carton senarios using the face of the delectable Dirk Bogarde. (FYI Dirk Bogarde versus Richard Attenborough in a black-and-white bout of fisticuffs would only cause me to faint like a Eighteenth Century dandy witnessing the revealing of a piano's ankles.)

      Though set in the late-Eighteenth Century surrounding the Reign of Terror that was the French Revolution, Dickens has still encapsulated everything that matters to those less fortunate than others (in this scenario it's French peasants). There is an interesting love triangle, though not at the forefront of the plot to begin with, makes it mark toward the end, with a scoop of suitors to boot, along with a collective of amusing old men and fiesty women. Very Dickens.
    • 5/5
      First read this 46 years who, in high school. I listened to the audio this time. Excellent book by Dickens!
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite classics!
    • 4/5
      One of Dicken's best known stories, set amidst the bloody chaos of the French Revolution, and deftly spanning two countries, multiple generations, and a myriad of characters, in less space than any of his other novels occupied. The story begins with a rainy journey of Mr. Jarvis Lorry, a banker, who has received a mysterious message and is setting off to France. He picks up a beautiful young girl en route, and together they meet a poor prisoner who has recently been released from the Bastille. The deranged man is Dr. Manette, once a renowned physician in France, and the beautiful girl is Lucie Manette, the doctor's daughter who had believed her father dead until her visit with Mr. Lorry. The doctor is quite undone from his countless years in prison, locked away as a secret prisoner, and is fixated on the shoe making he took up during that time. Nonetheless, Lucie manages to make an impression on her father where all others had failed, and she and Mr. Lorry spirit him back to England, where Lucie had been living, before he can be locked up again by the anonymous antagonist who had him imprisoned in the first place.The story then jumps some years into the future, picking up in the middle of an intense trial against a supposed traitor to the British crown. Charles Darnay has been accused of being a spy for France, and despite the unsavory and untrustworthy nature of his chief accuser, the proceedings don't look good for the noble Darnay. The reader meets Lucie Manette and her father again, this time as unwilling witnesses against the defendant. Exposition reveals that Alexandre Manette has recovered his intellect and strength of character while living in England with his daughter, and that Lucie is clearly in love with the prisoner rapidly heading to a death sentence. However, a last minute reveal by Darnay's lawyers, motivated by the genius of dissolute Sydney Carton, saves the man and frees him from all charges against him!A peaceful interlude for the main protagonists then ensues, although the author intersperses scenes from back in France, where dark rumblings suggest the horrible events that are about to unfold. In England, however, all is well. Lucie and her father have found a small house in a peaceful pocket of London, where they visit with Mr. Lorry, who has become an intimate of the family. Charles Darnay also frequently visits, as does Sydney Carton and Mr. Stryver, the lawyer who was in charge of Darnay's case. A handful of minor characters are also introduced and developed. such as Mr. Lorry's every man Jerry Cruncher, and Lucie's attendant Miss Pross. Dickens uses this space to weave his masterful characterization, painting these people with varied and complicated personalities, and observing several humorous episodes along the way. Eventually, Lucie and Charles marry, they honeymoon and return, never knowing that Lucie's father had a complete breakdown while they were away, and then the novel again fast forwards to a future point in time.Charles Darnay is concerned. Although he lives happily under his assumed name in England, rumors of the unrest from his home have reached him, and he feels an obligation to the peasants. It is revealed in the novel that Darnay is actually an aristocrat, in a family who he despises for their cruelty and greed. Now that his malicious uncle is dead, his estates have been abandoned. Darnay learns about the signs of a peasant revolt and believes he can go to them and help ease their hard situation in life; he has always sympathized with them, but been able to help because his father and then uncle ruthlessly suppressed all compassion. Of course, Darnay is deluded in his imaginations of how the peasants will receive him; as soon as he arrives on French soil, he is apprehended, brought to the Bastille, and locked away. During his long voyage over sea, the revolution had surged to a pinnacle of bloodshed and overthrow, but since he couldn't receive news on the ship, he had no idea how bad everything had become. From this point on, the reader is immersed in the terror and suspense of the French Revolution.
    • 3/5
      This is my second book by Charles Dickens. Compared to "Great Expectations", book moves relatively fast, yet each characterization still takes few chapters and narrative builds slowly. Since story is moderately fascinating but very slow moving, narrative long and reading dreg, enjoyment while reading is only related to style of writing and word play. But those aren't any more memorable after reading is finished. So one wonders why should book like this be read at all, except that it is a big classic?Story does pick up speed by third part of book and book becomes pager turner. While end is predictable almost from first moment you get hint of escape plan, build up is laid out well and last chapter ends on emotionally high note. Dr. Manette's letter was a surprise twist. Overall, okay read and not bad.[Spoilers Ahead]Most characters are consistent but some characters and episodes could be dropped. Like events around Jerry's wife and episode of lawer planning to marry Lucy and then dropping the idea could be edited out. Only other problem is that book has too many too many well timed coincides. Madam Defarge turns out to be the wronged sister. No explanation is given why Sydney Carton is in France just at right time, and he happens to be conveniently placed where Solomon Pross is recognized as Barsad, the spy, and also overhears Madam Defarge's plan to have Lucy killed. Jerry digging the right grave is also coincidence. And so is Miss Pross's killing of Madam Defarge at right time.
    • 5/5
      Hands down my favorite Dickens' novel. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, this tale tells of the love, anger, jealousy, corruption and sacrifice. I don't want to ruin too much, but trust me- this is worth the read.
    • 3/5
      The best part of the book can be summed up with two words: Sydney Carton. Immediately he seemed like he'd be the most disappointing, useless character in the whole story but that soon changed by the ending. His lines were the best and beautiful. All the other characters, except maybe Lucy and her husband and child, seemed to fill space in the heinous way of the Revolution.
    • 2/5
      Beautiful plotline. Beautiful descriptive paragraphs.

      Way too long of a read for me. I like my books to flow quickly. Beautiful book for anyone with patience. I'm glad I can say I've read it, but I don't want to put myself through that again!
    • 4/5
      Charles Dickens created a vivid picture of the chaos and massive bloodshed of the French Revolution in this book. Most of the characters basically possess one main characteristic (a remarkable physical feature, odd habit, catchphrase, personality trait, etc.) with the exception of the lawyer Sydney Carton who had a personality several layers deep. The awesomely grim vision of La Guillotine just makes you hate the thing, which you might as well.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book! It gets better every time I read it!

    Book preview

    Oxford - Andrew Lang

    PREFACE

    These papers do not profess even to sketch the outlines of a history of Oxford. They are merely records of the impressions made by this or that aspect of the life of the University as it has been in different ages. Oxford is not an easy place to design in black and white, with the pen or the etcher's needle. On a wild winter or late autumn day (such as Father Faber has made permanent in a beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, and leaving them once more in shadow. The melancholy mist creeps over the city, the damp soaks into the heart of everything, and such suicidal weather ensues as has been described, once for all, by the author of John-a-Dreams. How different Oxford looks when the road to Cowley Marsh is dumb with dust, when the heat seems almost tropical, and by the drowsy banks of the Cherwell you might almost expect some shy southern water-beast to come crashing through the reeds! And such a day, again, is unlike the bright weather of late September, when all the gold and scarlet of Bagley Wood are concentrated in the leaves that cover the walls of Magdalen with an imperial vesture.

    Our memories of Oxford, if we have long made her a Castle of Indolence, vary no less than do the shifting aspects of her scenery. Days of spring and of mere pleasure in existence have alternated with days of gloom and loneliness, of melancholy, of resignation. Our mental pictures of the place are tinged by many moods, as the landscape is beheld in shower and sunshine, in frost, and in the colourless drizzling weather. Oxford, that once seemed a pleasant porch and entrance into life, may become a dingy ante-room, where we kick our heels with other weary, waiting people. At last, if men linger there too late, Oxford grows a prison, and it is the final condition of the loiterer to take this for a hermitage. It is well to leave the enchantress betimes, and to carry away few but kind recollections. If there be any who think and speak ungently of their Alma Mater, it is because they have outstayed their natural welcome while, or because they have resisted her genial influence in youth.

    CHAPTER I

    THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY

    Most old towns are like palimpsests, parchments which have been scrawled over again and again by their successive owners. Oxford, though not one of the most ancient of English cities, shows, more legibly than the rest, the handwriting, as it were, of many generations. The convenient site among the interlacing waters of the Isis and the Cherwell has commended itself to men in one age after another. Each generation has used it for its own purpose: for war, for trade, for learning, for religion; and war, trade, religion, and learning have left on Oxford their peculiar marks. No set of its occupants, before the last two centuries began, was very eager to deface or destroy the buildings of its predecessors. Old things were turned to new uses, or altered to suit new tastes; they were not overthrown and carted away. Thus, in walking through Oxford, you see everywhere, in colleges, chapels, and churches, doors and windows which have been builded up; or again, openings which have been cut where none originally existed. The upper part of the round Norman arches in the Cathedral has been preserved, and converted into the circular bull's-eye lights which the last century liked. It is the same everywhere, except where modern restorers have had their way. Thus the life of England, for some eight centuries, may be traced in the buildings of Oxford. Nay, if we are convinced by some antiquaries, the eastern end of the High Street contains even earlier scratches on this palimpsest of Oxford; the rude marks of savages who scooped out their damp nests, and raised their low walls in the gravel, on the spot where the new schools are to stand. Here half- naked men may have trapped the beaver in the Cherwell, and hither they may have brought home the boars which they slew in the trackless woods of Headington and Bagley. It is with the life of historical Oxford, however, and not with these fancies, that we are concerned, though these papers have no pretension to be a history of Oxford. A series of pictures of men's life here is all they try to sketch.

    It is hard, though not impossible, to form a picture in the mind of Oxford as she was when she is first spoken of by history. What she may have been when legend only knows her; when St. Frideswyde built a home for religious maidens; when she fled from King Algar and hid among the swine, and after a whole fairy tale of adventures died in great sanctity, we cannot even guess. This legend of St. Frideswyde, and of her foundation, the germ of the Cathedral and of Christ Church, is not, indeed, without its value and significance for those who care for Oxford. This home of religion and of learning was a home of religion from the beginning, and her later life is but a return, after centuries of war and trade, to her earliest purpose. What manner of village of wooden houses may have surrounded the earliest rude chapels and places of prayer, we cannot readily guess, but imagination may look back on Oxford as she was when the English Chronicle first mentions her. Even then it is not unnatural to think Oxford might well have been a city of peace. She lies in the very centre of England, and the Northmen, as they marched inland, burning church and cloister, must have wandered long before they came to Oxford. On the other hand, the military importance of the site must have made it a town that would be eagerly contended for. Any places of strength in Oxford would command the roads leading to the north and west, and the secure, raised paths that ran through the flooded fens to the ford or bridge, if bridge there then was, between Godstowe and the later Norman grand pont, where Folly Bridge now spans the Isis. Somewhere near Oxford, the roads that ran towards Banbury and the north, or towards Bristol and the west, would be obliged to cross the river. The water-way, too, and the paths by the Thames' side, were commanded by Oxford. The Danes, as they followed up the course of the Thames from London, would be drawn thither, sooner or later, and would covet a place which is surrounded by half a dozen deep natural moats. Lastly, Oxford lay in the centre of England indeed, but on the very marches of Mercia and Wessex. A border town of natural strength and of commanding situation, she can have been no mean or poor collection of villages in the days when she is first spoken of, when Eadward the Elder incorporated with his own kingdom the whole Mercian lands on both sides of Watling Street (Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. i. p. 57), and took possession of London and of Oxford as the two most important parts of a scientific frontier. If any man had stood, in the days of Eadward, on the hill that was not yet Shotover, and had looked along the plain to the place where the grey spires of Oxford are clustered now, as it were in a purple cup of the low hills, he would have seen little but the smoke floating up through the oakwood and the coppice,

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    The low hills were not yet cleared, nor the fens and the wolds trimmed and enclosed. Centuries later, when the early students came, they had to ride through the thick forest and across the moor, to the East Gate of the city (Munimenta Academica, Oxon., vol. i. p. 60). In the midst of a country still wild, Oxford was already no mean city; but the place where the hostile races of the land met to settle their differences, to feast together and forget their wrongs over the mead and ale, or to devise treacherous murder, and close the banquet with fire and sword.

    Again and again, after Eadward the Elder took Mercia, the Danes went about burning and wasting England. The wooden towns were flaming through the night, and sending up a thick smoke through the day, from Thamesmouth to Cambridge. And next was there no headman that force would gather, and each fled as swift as he might, and soon was there no shire that would help another. When the first fury of the plundering invaders was over, when the Northmen had begun to wish to settle and till the land and have some measure of peace, the early meetings between them and the English rulers were held in the border- town, in Oxford. Thus Sigeferth and Morkere, sons of Earngrim, came to see Eadric in Oxford, and there were slain at a banquet, while their followers perished in the attempt to avenge them. Into the tower of St. Frideswyde they were driven, and as men could not drive them thence, the tower was fired, and they perished in the burning. So says William of Malmesbury, who, so many

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