OXFORD IN THE SHORT VACATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2660, 8 March 1905, Page 85

OXFORD IN THE SHORT VACATION.

By E. Sbarle Grossmann, M.A. H.

Two companion views of Oxford stand out in my memory, a morning piece and

The morning scene was

a night piece.

from the great circular gallery of the Bodleian. The city lay below, spire and steeple and tower and dome and a hundred' roofs indistinct and cloudlike in an element of white river fog, with bluish curls of smoke rising out of the mist, a pale blue winter sky above, and silvery sunshine -making gleams of brightness where it fell; in distances that seem dim and remote in that atmosphere, the outlines of little hills could be faintly traced.

Gradually the buildings took more de-

finite shape, and the eye made out the tall tower of Magdalen, iue many-pinnacled spire of St. Mary-the-Virgins, the decorated dome of Queen's college, and then one chapel and then another. Down below -was the quiet garden of All Souls. Looking at this plot in the vacation, when all is silent, 'is like looking into a space shut off from the world and life. This view from a commanding height gives one the sensation of having taken the little scene by surprise, gazing at it while it is unconscious of onlookers. The black-gowned student or don crossing from cloister to cloister adds to the effect instead of interrupting it. At night the vagueness of the mist gives way to the still— more suggestive vagueness of the dark. But the eye is first attracted to the places that are most brightly lit up. Carfax andHhe Cornmarket and the commercial part of the High street are dotted with silvery globes 'of electric

lamps. It is a great pleasure to roam these streets. Oxford is not just mart for buying and selling the commonplace comforts and luxuries of material chilisation. Even its shops show the character of the place. They are not showy nor elaborately got up like those in London, but just the sort of shops an artist or a student or a not too fashionable

author would love to stroll into.

are many shops of antiques, and shops of artistic furniture and ornaments, bowls of bronze and of brass, carved cabinets,

and screens and chairs, old blue china and art draperies ; windows rich with silver or copper or^brass. Then there are picture shops with engravings and etchings and copies of some gorgeous saint or angel or virgin from the old chapel windows, or from some altar piece, views in sepia or water colour of cloisters and arched gateways, or some single fragment of richly carved sculpture, perhaps of a decorative porch, or a famous reredos or pulpit or pillared nave or choir, or leafy walks under grand old trees. The booksellers her are no^ advertising the latest rage as they do in London. Nothing so ephemeral as fashion can agitate Oxford. There is something like a partial annihilation of time here. " Books of art abound, and one sees in y the windows some work on Raphael with fine illustrations, or per-

liat>s it is Alantegna, Durer, or Holbein. Still more numerous are the classics of all ages and all tongues — English, French, German, and Latin — and the books published by the city's famous press. All the associations and images of deep study, so dear and familiar toHhe minds of scholars, rise up againand bring back the half-for : gotten days of youth. But these shops are after all only the fringe of the real Oxford. So I turned from them before long to the unfrequented and half -lit streets of colleges and chapels. A matter-of-fact tourist would scarcely enjoy wandering here by night : but then the ordinary sight-seer ought not to come to Oxford. And to another sort of visitor the darkness leaves only the ampler space for the imagination. Night is appropriate to antiquity, and gives the charm of mysteriousness to lofty walls and curving streets, and the noble, solemn buildings of scholasticism. Here the rays of a street

lamp catch portions of some twisted coil of stone or stone pillar, deepening the Interspaces of the sculpture and the

shadows of the unlit side, and making

porch or projecting, wall stand out prominently from the dark mass of the rest where no more detail is visible by the eye, but all is suggested. All that curve of the High street from St. Mary-the-Virgins to Magdalen tower and bridge lay in deep shadow with broad bands of light. The massive oaken doors opened on to dark grass quadrangles, with now and then a glimpse of chapel windows lit for evening service. Above the irregular ridge of roofs the nio-ht clouds were piled in heavy masses with the horn of the mooii half buried in them. Off the main streets I wandered into dark an dsil.pnt lanes, where first one building; and then another was helf revealed and half concealed — square, solid towers of old churches and chapels, the Bodleian majestic in the sloom, the walls of Balliol, the Martyrs' •Monument. Night is uncritical of defects ; all now looks ancient and solemn and grand. What the eye loses ifcfi ?uad gains.