A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 147 



peregrination may be made fuller than a six months' 

 voyage of the ordinary travelled man. Thus I found 

 my late journey into Oxfordshire to contain more 

 matter than a cruise among the Cyclades in far-off 

 Wanderjahre. At Oxford I found the perennial 

 new buildings which vex the conservative soul ; a 

 vast civic pile in St. Aldate's, and some puzzling 

 demi-colleges off Holywell ; St. Mary's new apex 

 gleaming like a nightcap amid the new pinnacles, 

 frigid mechanisms 



" Icily regular, splendidly null." 



I mused whether it would be possible, before any 

 more of the old features vanish, to move the whole 

 modern business of the University to Brompton 

 Schools, Professors, Delegacies, Extension Meetings 

 and there make them happy in beautiful new buildings. 

 With them might go the trams, the stone-saw, the 

 paper-boy, and a hundred other energies of the time, 

 leaving behind them the Genius loci they insult, the 

 relics of Oxford's immemorial grace, to rest through 

 quiet terms and slumberous vacations, educational in 

 a way which perhaps not even Endowed Research 

 has yet discovered. 



When I am in Oxford, I generally find that my 

 ramblings about the town follow more or less a 



