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

"It is better to admit ex

cellences 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.

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 associations 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 constituted 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 associated 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 passage. It may have been like the following diagram, which may puzzle the reader who attempts to find an open way to the centre.

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.

The atmosphere of learning dispels superstition, but history clings fondly to the fine old legends of the past that gather around them unreal

A STUDIOUS MCNK.

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 associated with the magical arts and regarded as more than men.

It is related that two old Oxford monks made a head of brass 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 brass 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

brass.

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

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 brass than enters into an Englishman's composition to this day.

CHAPTER XI.

LETTERS AND EXCURSIONS.

AN ENGLISH SKYLARK. LETTER FROM GEORGE HOWE. - TOMMY'S ACCOUNT OF HIS NOTTINGHAM ADVENTURE. GLASTONBURY ABBEY. - THE BEGINNING OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. GLASTONBURY THORN.

ST. JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA AND THE

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN AND THE DEVIL.

ASTER LEWIS set apart a day at Oxford for leisure, writing, and rest.

M

In the morning, after breakfast, the Class took a walk to the suburbs, and rested on some wayside seats overlooking the Thames.

It was a beautiful morning, cool and still. The world of sunlight all seemed to be above the trees, an over-sea of gold, of which the long arcades of intermingling boughs afforded but glimpses.

Near the wayside resting-place was a field bordered with trees. A speck of a bird rose from it out of the grass uttering a few notes that attracted the boys' attention. Up, up it went like a rocket, and as it rose higher and higher its song became sweeter and sweeter, — a happy, trilling melody, which made every boy leap to his feet, and try to find a place where he could see it through the openings in the

trees.

The bird seems to have gone straight up to heaven," said Wyllys Wynn. "I can hardly see it; but I can hear its melody yet." "That is an English skylark," said Master Lewis, "so famous in pastoral poetry. You now understand Tennyson's meaning when he

says,

"The lark becomes a sightless song.'