Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 22

The lady requested a fee on showing the party back to the lodge, and dismissed Master Lewis with a stiff bow that indicated a want of confidence in American respect for the great and mighty Guy and his successors.

CHAPTER X.

A VISIT TO OXFORD AND WOODSTOCK.

A University a Thousand Years Old.--Woodstock.--Fair Rosamond.--Old Ballad.--The Head of Bra.s.s that Spoke.

"Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Wyllys Wynn, as the city of Oxford appeared in view. "It looks like a city of churches."

"It is indeed a city of inst.i.tutions," said Master Lewis.

"It is a very old city, is it not?" asked Wyllys.

"It is said to have been the residence of Alfred the Great, and of King Canute. The University of Oxford was, according to tradition, founded by Alfred the Great."

"If it be so, what a monument the good king left behind him! It was this king, was it not, whose mother offered a beautiful ma.n.u.script to the one of her four sons who would first learn to repeat it from memory? Alfred, although he was a mere child and could not read, induced an instructor to teach him the ma.n.u.script, and so secured the prize."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALFRED AND HIS MOTHER.]

"This was the king," said Tommy Toby, "who, when flying from the Danes in disguise, was left by a rustic's wife to watch some cakes that were baking by the fire."

"And let them burn," said Wyllys.

"The woman," said Tommy, "gave him a gentle hint, saying that if he was too lazy to watch them, he would be glad enough to eat them when they were cooked. I have heard my mother make very similar remarks."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CANUTE AND HIS COURTIERS.]

"Canute, of whom you spoke, was the king who ordered his throne to be placed on the margin of the sea," said Wyllys to Master Lewis, "and then commanded the sea to rise no farther."

"But the sea rose," said Master Lewis, "and the king refused to wear again his golden crown for ever, resolving to serve only that King who rules the sea.

"The history of Oxford covers a period of a thousand years," continued Master Lewis. "Here Queen Matilda, or the Empress Maud, as she was called, because she had been the wife of the German Emperor, was besieged by King Stephen, who had usurped the throne, and thence she fled from him one snowy day, herself and attendants dressed in white that they might not be discovered; here the people closed the gates against William the Conqueror; here Richard I. was born, and here Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were burned. The early history of nearly all great English scholars for many centuries is a.s.sociated with the colleges in this place."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLIGHT OF EMPRESS MAUD.]

"How green are the English meadows with their hedgerows and trees!"

said Wyllys.

"And how bright are the streams that run among them! An English landscape is more rich and varied than an American."

"I never would tell of it," said Tommy. "Gra.s.s is gra.s.s, and we have just as good gra.s.s at home as anywhere."

"We have no buildings at home that are quite equal to Warwick Castle," said Frank.

"It is better to admit excellences frankly wherever one is," said Master Lewis, "and never let any prejudice color an opinion. When one is travelling it is well never to make a comparison."

Few scenes are more charming, especially on a long sunny summer afternoon, than the college buildings of Oxford, separated by gardens, meadows, and rows of venerable trees, the latter as old as the roofs and spires that rise above them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEATH OF LATIMER AND RIDLEY.]

While at Oxford the boys were taken to Woodstock, a distance of some eight miles. The old ballad of "Fair Rosamond" so haunted the mind of Ernest Wynn, at Oxford, that he induced Master Lewis to make an excursion to Woodstock, the scene of the fancied tragedy.

"I have seen Kenilworth, the scene of one of Walter Scott's romances,"

said Ernest; "have been among the a.s.sociations of 'Ivanhoe,' and 'Peveril of the Peak,' and I shall always be glad to have seen the place of the novelist's other English fiction."

The town of Woodstock once const.i.tuted a part of the royal demesnes.

Here Ethelred held a council, and Alfred the Great translated the "Consolations of Boethius." The history of the old palace of Woodstock is a.s.sociated with dark romances, splendid cavalcades, and crumbled kings and queens.

Not a vestige of the palace now remains; its site is merely marked by two sycamore trees.

The famous Rosamond's Bower, Maze, or Labyrinth seems to have consisted of a succession of under-ground chambers, and is thought to have existed before the time of King Henry II., who is supposed to have used it to hide Fair Rosamond from his jealous queen. There was but one way into it, though there were many ways that would lead astray any one who should try to find the right pa.s.sage. It may have been like the following diagram, which may puzzle the reader who attempts to find an open way to the centre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {ROSAMOND'S BOWER.}]

Henry II. had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of bad reputation, full of craft and wickedness, whom the French king had put away. But he gave his affections to Rosamond Clifford, whose beauty had charmed him when he first met her in the valley of Wye. It is said that she supposed herself wedded to him; but however this may be, she and not Eleanor was the spouse of his heart. She pined away in the seclusion that the king provided for her, but he was true to her in her illness; he hovered around her sick bed, and at last, when she was laid away to rest in the chapel at Edstowe Nunnery, he kept her grave bright with lights and sweet with flowers. The story of her being poisoned by Queen Eleanor is a fiction, although it is said the Queen discovered her place of concealment, and administered to her a severe reproof.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STUDIOUS MONK.]

The atmosphere of learning dispels superst.i.tion, but history clings fondly to the fine old legends of the past that gather around them unreal lights and shadows. It is not strange that Oxford, the quiet valley town, hidden even to the bases of its pinnacles, spires, and towers in ancient groves, through which glide the waters of the Thames, should still preserve traditions of the wonder-working gifts of its early philosophers, whom ignorance a.s.sociated with the magical arts and regarded as more than men.

It is related that two old Oxford monks made a head of bra.s.s that spoke.

These wise monks discovered from their wonderful books (the like of which are not now to be found in any of the twenty colleges) that if they were able to make a head of bra.s.s that could speak, and if they could _hear_ it speak within a month, they would be given the power to surround England with a magic wall of bra.s.s.

So they studied their folios, and found out the chemistry of making the wonderful head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD TIME STUDENT.]

They listened to hear it three weeks, and then became irresistibly sleepy. So they intrusted a servant to listen, and to wake them if the statue should begin to speak.

When they were well asleep, the head said,--

"Time is."

Then it said,--

"Time was."

The servant, not knowing the secret of the monks, failed to awake them as he had been ordered to do, and down came the figure with a fearful crash; and England has remained without any other wall of bra.s.s than enters into an Englishman's composition to this day.

CHAPTER XI.