This dress, I must own, pleases me far beyond the boots, cockades, and other frippery, of many of our students.  Nor am I less delighted with the better behaviour and conduct which, in general, does so much credit to the students of Oxford.

The next morning Mr. Maud, according to his promise, showed me some of the things most worthy of notice in Oxford.  And first he took me to his own room in his own college, which was on the ground floor, very low and dark, and resembled a cell, at least as much as a place of study.  The name of this college is Corpus Christi.  He next conducted me to All Souls’ College, a very elegant building, in which the chapel is particularly beautiful.  Mr. Maud also showed me, over the altar here, a fine painting of Mengs, at the sight of which he showed far more sensibility than I thought him possessed of.  He said that notwithstanding he saw that painting almost daily, he never saw it without being much affected.

The painting represented Mary Magdalene when she first suddenly sees Jesus standing before her, and falls at His feet.  And in her countenance pain, joy, grief, in short almost all the strongest of our passions, are expressed in so masterly a manner, that no man of true taste was ever tired of contemplating it; the longer it is looked at the more it is admired.  He now also showed me the library of this college, which is provided with a gallery round the top, and the whole is most admirably regulated and arranged.  Among other things, I here saw a description of Oxford, with plates to illustrate it:  and I cannot help observing what, though trite, is true, that all these places look much better, and are far more beautiful on paper, than they appeared to me to be as I looked at them where they actually stand.

Afterwards Mr. Maud conducted me to the Bodleian Library, which is not unworthy of being compared to the Vatican at Rome; and next to the building which is called the Theatre, and where the public orations are delivered.  This is a circular building with a gallery all round it, which is furnished with benches one above the other, on which the doctors, masters of arts, and students sit, and directly opposite to each other are erected two chairs, or pulpits, from which the disputants harangue and contend.

Christ Church and Queen’s College are the most modern, and, I think, indisputably the best built of all the colleges.  Balliol College seems particularly to be distinguished on account of its antiquity, and its complete Gothic style of building.

Mr. Maud told me that a good deal of money might be sometimes earned by preaching at Oxford; for all the members of a certain standing are obliged in their turn to preach in the church of the university; but many of them, when it comes to their turn, prefer the procuring a substitute; and so not unfrequently pay as high as five or six guineas for a sermon.