We were astonished at the enormous size of the mansion, in which, we heard, many art treasures were stored, and the woodman told us that the wall that enclosed the mansion and the park was more than eleven miles long.  A lofty column, with a statue of the great duke on the top, in the garb of a Roman warrior, had been erected in the park, the base of which monument was covered with inscriptions containing thousands of words, including more names of battles won than we had seen on any monument previously.  The Battle of Blenheim was fought in 1704, and forms the subject of Southey’s well-known poem in which he describes old Kaspar sitting before his cottage door on a summer evening after his day’s work was done, while his grandchildren, little Wilhelmine and her brother Peterkin, were playing on the green before him.  The children had found something in the stream hard by, and had brought it to Kaspar to explain to them what it was that they had found “that was so large and smooth and round.”  We could almost imagine we could see old Kaspar taking it up in his hand and explaining to the children that it was the skull of some poor fellow amongst the thousands who had been slain in that great battle, and describing the misery that followed it, to teach them, and all mankind, the curse of war.

[Illustration:  MONUMENT TO THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH.]

Then followed the questions of the little children, often difficult to answer as everybody knows, and which even puzzled, old Kaspar himself: 

  “Now tell us all about the war,
  And what they killed each other for.”

  “It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
    “Who put the French to rout;
  But what they killed each other for
    I could not well make out. 
  But everybody said,” quoth he,
  “That ’twas a famous victory.”

  “And everybody praised the Duke
    Who this great fight did win.” 
  “But what good came of it at last?”
    Quoth little Peterkin:—­
  “Why, that I cannot tell,” said he,
  “But ’twas a famous victory.”

We found a very comfortable hotel at Woodstock where we got a splendid tea, and stayed some time, with an inward desire to stay longer; but we wanted to reach Oxford that night, and so walked on in the dark and arrived at the Temperance Hotel there at ten o’clock p.m.

We had seen a few bonfires on our way, but when November 5th happened to fall on a Sunday, causing the ceremonies of the “glorious fifth” to be celebrated either a day sooner or a day later, the proceedings invariably fell flat and lost their eclat; but Oxford was notorious on Gunpowder Day for a faction fight known as the Gown and the Town fight, which generally began in front of the church dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, and on that day more heads were damaged in the city than on any other day in the year, the fight always ending in a number of both parties being taken care of for the night.  But the custom was now dying out, and as our entry into the city was on November 4th, probably these festivities had not taken place or we had arrived too late to witness them.