ESPRIELLA'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. LETTER XXXII. High-street, Oxford.-Dress of the Oxonians.-Christ Church Walk.- Friar Bacon's Study.-Lincoln College.- Baliol.-Trinity.- New College.-Saint John's.-Mode of Living at the Colleges. -Servitors.Summer Lightning. D. has a relation at one of the colleges, to whom he upon our arri patched a note immediately ready he was with By the time tea was s. It must be admitted, that though the English are in general inhospitable towards foreigners, no people can be more courteous to those who are VOL. II. B properly introduced. The young student told us that he should show us the University with as much pleasure as we could see it; for he had abstained from visiting many things himself, till he should have a lion to take with him. Upon inquiring the meaning of this strange term, I found that I was a lion myself; it is the name for a stranger in Oxford. The High-street, in which our inn is situated, is said to be the finest street in Europe. The Calle de Alcala is longer, proader, straighter, and, were the trees in the Prado of tolerable size, would have a finer termination. In point of fine buildings, I should suppose no street can be compared with this; but the whole cannot be seen at once, because it is not sufficiently straight. The dress of the collegians is picturesque; that which the great body of students wear is not unlike that of a secular priest. The cap is square, worn diagonally, covered with black cloth, and has a silk tas sel in the middle: noblemen have the tassel of gold. It is graceful, but inconvenient, being of no use against sun, wind, or rain. Every degree has its distinguishing habit; they are not numerous, and all are of the same colour. I was the more sensible of the beauty of this collegiate costume, as cloaks are not worn in this country there are no monastics, and the clergy are not to be distinguished from the laity; so that there is a total want of drapery in the dress of Englishmen, every where, except in the universities. We went after tea to a walk belonging to the college of Christ Church, a foundation of the famous Wolsey, who thus made some compensation to literature, and, as he thought, to the church, for the injury which he had done them. The foundation has been greatly increased ;it has a modern square, finely built, with a modern gateway leading to it; but modern buildings are not in keeping with the monastic character of the place. Our mo B 2 ལ་། nasteries, indeed, are rarely or never so beautiful as these colleges: these are lighter, without being the less venerable in appearance, and have that propriety about them which characterizes every thing English. The greater part of Christ Church college is antient; nothing can be finer than the great gateway, the great square, and the open ascent to the refectory, though the great square is debased by a little miserable fountain of green and stinking water in the centre, so pitiful, that the famous Manneké of Brussels might well be placed in the midst of it, as the appropriate god of the puddle. t HORO The walk belonging to this college is. truly beautiful: a long avenue of fine old and G B 1831 elms, whose boughs form a perfect arch in the vista, well exemplifying the hypothesis, that Gothic church architecture was designed to imitate the places where the Pagan Goths worshipped in the forest. At the termination of the walk a narrower way trends off, and winds round a large 2 |