work of Hawkesmore at Queen’s and of Gibbs in the Radcliffe, the wonderful beauty of Mr. Bodley’s modern Gothic in St. Swithun’s Quad at Magdalen, and the skilful adaptation of old English tradition to modern needs by Sir Thomas Jackson at Trinity and at Hertford—­what other city can show such a series of architectural beauties?  And it must not be forgotten that Oxford disputes with York the honour of having the most representative sequence of painted glass windows in England.  Oxford, indeed, is a paradise for the student of Art.  Nowhere, except at Cambridge, can the series of architectural works be paralleled, and at both universities the charm of their ancient buildings is enhanced by their beautiful setting in college gardens.

It is not an accident that in the old universities more than anywhere else, so much of beauty has survived, nor is it to be put down as a happy piece of academic conservatism.  It is rather the natural result of their constitution and endowment.  What has been so fatal to the beauty of old England elsewhere has been material prosperity.  The buildings inherited from the past had to go, at least so it was thought, because they were not suited to modern methods, or because the site they occupied was worth so much more for other purposes.  But the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge could not carry on their work on different sites; “residence” was an essential of academic arrangements; and there was no temptation to the fellows of a college to make money by parting with their old buildings, for their incomes were determined by Statute, and any great increase of wealth would not advantage individual fellows.  Hence, while great nobles and great merchants sold their splendid houses and grounds, and grew rich on the unearned increment, and while non-residential universities moved bodily from their old positions to new and more fashionable quarters, Oxford and Cambridge colleges went on working and living in the same places.  Much the same reasons have preserved, in many old towns, picturesque alms-houses, to show the modern world how beautiful buildings once could be, while all around them reigns opulent ugliness.  Certain it is that only in one instance, in recent times, has an Oxford college contemplated selling its old site and buildings and migrating to North Oxford, and then the sacrilegious attempt was outvoted.  Hence, as has been said, the two old English Universities possess in an unique degree the

    “Strange enchantments of the past
     And memories of the days of old.”

The charms of Oxford for the historical student and for the lover of Art have been spoken of.  But a large part of the world comes under neither head; to it the charm of Oxford consists in the young lives that are continually passing through it.  Oxford and Cambridge present ever attractive contrasts between their young students and their old buildings, between the first enthusiasm of ever new generations, and customs and rules which date back to mediaeval times.