WHERE is the centre, the ?fa??? ??? of Oxford? The average undergraduate will probably place it within the walls of his own College; but we, detached observers whose salad days, presumably, are over, look for a definition worthy of more catholic acceptance. To us Oxford is not a city of Colleges only, but of noble streets and wide spaces. Them it is our purpose to explore, not with the hasty stride of one bound for lecture-room, or cricket-ground, or river, but leisurely and with discrimination; we are ready to be chidden for curiosity, so we incur not the gravamen of indifference. Where, then, shall we start on our pilgrimage, and from what centre? If there be in any city a place where four principal roads meet, as at the Cross in Gloucester, we may listen there for the pulsations of that city's heart.

Such a place there is in Oxford, Carfax,—Quatre voies,—the spot where four ways meet. This, not too arbitrarily, we will name the centre of Oxford, and thence will wend upon our pilgrimage. But let us pause a moment, before we set out, at the parting of the ways.

The old Church of St. Martin's at Carfax was pulled down in 1896, and only the tower left. St. Martin's was the church of the city fathers, as St. Mary's was (and is) the church of the University. Nowadays the civic procession winds its way to All Saints, a nearer neighbour of St. Mary's. Such propinquity would have sorted ill with the manners of mediaeval Oxford, when the enmity of town and gown, at times quiescent, was never wholly quelled. In an age when the clerks, regular and secular, fell out among themselves in the precincts of St. Mary's, even to the shedding of blood, it is idle to look for a more civil temper in the burgesses: and the bells of Carfax and St. Mary's summoned those who frequented them to battle as well as to prayer. They rang out with the former intention on the feast of St. Scholastica in 1354. It is sad to record that the quarrel arose in a tavern, where two gownsmen abused the vintner for serving them with wine of wretched quality. The conflict which ensued was of a very deadly nature. The scholars held their own until evening, when the citizens called the neighbouring villagers of Cowley and Headington to their aid, and the Gown were routed. As many as forty students were slain, and twenty-three townsmen. Then Edward III. took steps to protect the men of learning, lowering, among other measures, the tower of Carfax, because they complained that in times of combat the townsmen retired thither as to a castle, and from its summit grievously annoyed and galled them with arrows and stones. The burgesses also were forced to attend annually at St. Mary's Church, when mass was offered for the souls of the slain, bearing on their persons sundry marks of degradation; and though these were subsequently done away, it was only in 1825 that they were excused the indignity of attending the commemorative service.

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Such are some of the memories evoked by the Tower of Carfax, the best view of which is given in Mr. Matthison's first drawing. The second illustration is from a point rather farther to the eastward. Both give a glimpse of the Mitre Hotel, most picturesque of old Oxford hostelries, and the second a part of the front of All Saints. At this point we may for a moment leave the High Street (which we have begun to traverse, half insensibly, under the artist's guidance) and wander down "The Turl," as Turl Street is commonly called. "Turl" is said to be a corruption of Thorold, and Thorold to have been the name of a postern-gate in the old city walls. The quiet old street has Colleges on either hand, Lincoln, Exeter, and Jesus. Retracing our footsteps, we get the fine view of All Saints which is given in the third illustration. The history of this Church, known originally as All Hallows, goes back to the twelfth century, but the present building, designed by Dr. Aldrich, a former Dean of Christ Church, has only been in existence since 1708, the old one having been destroyed in 1699 by the fall of its spire. The present graceful tower and spire are a worthy memorial of Dean Aldrich's versatility.

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We now return to our exploration of "The High," whose magnificence of outline become more and more apparent as one walks eastwards. It was a poet bred at Cambridge, no less a poet than Wordsworth, whom the manifold charm of Oxford tempted "to slight his own beloved Cam"; and he it is who has written the most quotable description of "The High" in brief. "The streamlike windings of that glorious street," he writes: and indeed its curve suggests nothing so much as the majestic bend of some noble river. We may cite, too, Sir Walter Scott's testimony, who claimed that the High Street of Edinburgh is the most magnificent in Great Britain, except the High Street of Oxford. It is not at all difficult to assent to this opinion. As the view gradually unfolds itself, we have on our left successively the new front of Brasenose, St. Mary's, All Souls, Queen's, and Magdalen; on our right the long, dark front of University, and many old dwelling-houses, whose architecture does not shame their situation. Looking backward for a moment at Queen's College (perhaps when the west is rosy, as in Mr. Matthison's drawing), one sees substantially the same view which delighted Wordsworth in 1820; and we, if we are wise, shall take as much delight in it as he. Many thousand times since then has the sun set behind the spires of St. Mary's and All Saints, but the unaltered prospect obliterates the intervening years, and we are at one with the great poet in his admiration.

Contrast is always pleasant, and one may reach Broad Street (which certainly must not be neglected) by several thoroughfares totally unlike "The High." We may traverse Long Wall Street, with Magdalen Grove on our right, a pleasance hidden from the wayfarer by a high wall, but visible to such as lodge in upper rooms on the other side of the way; thence along Holywell Street, with its queer medley of old houses, many of them pleasing to the eye. Or, still greater contrast, we may go by Queen's and New College Lanes, with their rectangular turns and severe masonry on either side. Or, again, we may go through the Radcliffe square with its massive buildings on every hand—the Radcliffe dome in the centre, girt about with St. Mary's, Brasenose, All Souls, and the Old Schools. In any case we find ourselves, at the last, in Broad Street.

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It is a wide and quiet street, with comparatively little traffic, a street dear to meditation. Some such suggestion is conveyed by Mr. Matthison's sketch. He has not given us here the fronts of Balliol, Trinity, or Exeter,—views of the first two will be found later on,—but just the old houses (the one in dark relief is Kettell Hall, built by a President of Trinity in the seventeenth century) asleep in the sunshine, with the Sheldonian on the right, whose guardian figure-heads, traditionally said to represent the twelve CÆsars, seem by the expression of their stony countenances to be thinking hard of nothing in particular. At the other end of Broad Street, marked by a flat cross in the roadway, is the spot where tradition says the martyrs suffered for their faith.

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Their Memorial is a little distance off, in the neighbouring street of St. Giles'. It is an effective and graceful structure, with characteristic statues of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, and an inscription stating the manner of their death and the reasons for their martyrdom. It was erected in 1841, by public subscription, when also the north aisle of the adjacent Church of St. Mary Magdalen was rebuilt out of the same fund. The Memorial appears twice in Mr. Matthison's drawings; once at the approach of evening, looking towards the city, and once as it is seen in full daylight, with the widening vista of St. Giles' Street in the background. St. Giles' is surely the widest street in the three kingdoms; Broad Street is narrow when compared with it. Each September it is the scene of what is said to be the largest and the oldest fair in England. But we have not chosen a fair-day for our pilgrimage.