stood a tower used by Friar Bacon as an observatory. It was demolished long ago, and Folly Bridge, at the foot of St. Aldate's Street, now takes its place. Here the college races begin, sweeping past the University Boat-house on the right (or Berkshire) bank, and so down the river towards Iffley. The reward of prowess is an evening procession of boats with their crews in vivid uniforms, who here pass in order the winning eight, and salute by the difficult feat of tossing their oars in air.

We had sought in vain for Banbury cakes at our hotel, as well as at the restaurant of one Boffin, who here "drops into " cookery rather than poetry. It seemed odd not to find them here, since Banbury (cross and all) is only a score of miles away, near Sulgrave, the ancestral home of the family of George Washington. But cakes were not the only deficiency in our bill of fare. We had been sent to the Mitre, as the ancestral inn of Oxford, and so it proved. Its proprietors claim for it an age varying anywhere from four to six hundred years, apparently according to the taste and fancy of the moment. Either number will answer every purpose, and is tolerably well borne out by its rambling passages, where one

meets inequalities in the floors, and odd steps up and down, that made us think we were aboard ship. Our rooms were like a bit out of Kate Greenaway. The ancient washbowl (there was indeed a pair of them) was more like a bathtub; and we surnamed it the Oxford Vase, for it measured twenty-two inches across its top, and was nine inches deep! Flowers abounded, and glimpses of quaint corners revealed themselves at every turn. But one cannot exactly satisfy an American culinary taste with flowers, or the picturesque respectability of age, nor yet with constant bread and beef et preterea nihil (except at dinner); nor were matters improved when the long-extended bill appeared. Whether or not it was the constant divergence of English table standards from our own which at last, like a galling harness, became unbearable and awoke a protest, we utilized our first stopping-place beyond Oxford to relieve our feelings by composing doggerel, of which the following is a stanza that ought to put us to shame

"We've had baked potatoes and chops,
And bread and butter and tea;
They've drowned us with English slops
Till we're poor as poor can be.

For we've just come from the Mitre,
Where the managers are tighter

Than the man that " (but I refrain).

Sunday trains are rare in England, — more so than on the Continent. We achieved one, however, and sped away southward toward Southampton, for our quest was well nigh over, and our vessel waited for us. The ideal way to leave Oxford is by boat to Windsor, between which towns there are seventy miles, over thirty locks, and plenty of good lodgings, besides luxurious house-boats, which Hawthorne described as "life without the trouble of living." The great international July regatta is held at Henley, half way down, where the fashionable world for a time makes life a gorgeous water pageant. And near there is the Red Lion Inn, on whose window Shenstone scratched his famous line, asserting that "he still has found the warmest welcome at an inn." Just below Henley is Great Marlow, where the Duke of Westminster's famous seat of Clieveden is now the possession of our expatriated countryman, Waldorf Astor. Quite near him once lived the jolly Vicar of Bray, who in troublous times thrice changed his creed, and did not hesitate to avow it. And in the neigh

borhood is Beaconsfield, whose earldom Burke declined and Disraeli accepted, and where both are buried. We went on by rail to Reading, where the Great Western Hotel made us happy. Why should it not, when Huntley and Palmer make their famous biscuits there? The old Benedictine abbey, now in ruins, but once very wealthy, covers the grave of its founder, Henry I., and was the seat of several early Parliaments, which were then more peripatetic than even our own Congress was once wont to be. Not far from Basingstoke Junction lies Strathfieldsaye, Wellington's home, and Eversley, where Charles Kingsley spent more than half his life ministering to a rural congregation. The Bishop of Winchester lives at Farnham Castle, close by the great military camp at Aldershot, and only a mile or so from Moor Park, where Swift courted Stella, when he was secretary to Sir William Temple; and the stately episcopal residence has been the home of bishops since centuries before Domesday Book. But the see city itself, whither we were bound, lies twentyfive miles farther on; and the evening lights were twinkling in the valley as we reached time-honored Winchester.

IX

WINCHESTER-SALISBURY

ITH the escort of two bright boys who

W carried our hand-luggage, we made

our way down the hill from the station to the Black Swan Hotel, and then, though it was near bed-time, strolled down the High Street to the cathedral. The entrance to the close is by a narrow passage, easy to be missed even by day, round a picturesque corner at which stands the rich City Cross, an erection of the fifteenth century. There was no light but the stars as we almost groped our way about the huge minster's bulk that loomed out of the darkness, a portentous reminder of an age-long history. The elm-lined walk, long only in name, approaches the west front diagonally, in much the same manner as at Holy Trinity, Stratford, and graves surround it here as there. One cannot pass around the eastern and southern sides, as the deanery and other cathedral buildings crowd upon