"W HEREVER one goes, and whatever landscape or seascape one sees,
there always remains in the mind (at least that is how it seems to the writer) some colour impression of any particular place or scene. Details may be clear and sharply cut or they may be dull, but always the background has a certain characteristic tone of its own— some combination of two or three simple colours lithographed on the brain—that is always of the mental picture which re- collection frames. Thus, London is drab; the Mediterranean is wholly blue ; the Red Sea littoral is a combination of grey, yellow, and red—the look of its barren shores ; South Africa is yellow plains and purple kopjes ; the Solomon Islands are green mountains, opal waters, and white beaches ; Australian plains in drought time are grey and blue—the colours of earth and sky. As one recalls each picture, the objects in the foreground and the middle distance and the background define themselves more or less realistically; but always the predominating tones make the scene familiar. Each one is, so to speak, catalogued and classified by its essential colours. Consider a familiar stretch of water,—the Thames between Greenwich and Westminster. If you close your eyes and think of it, is not dull yellow the first recollection of it that comes across your mind ?
Think of Oxford, if you have been there even for ever so short a time. Does not the old city shape itself out of a greyness and a greenness that are its background of charm,— the grey of its ancient walls, and the green of its beautiful trees, and gardens, and walks, and fields P Afterwards come the winding streets, the window-gardens in the quads, the towers and spires, the halls and the chapels, the young fresh faces, the placid waterways. But always and for ever they stand out from amidst a lovely setting of grey and of green. And always the grey seems to symbolise great age, and the wisdom of the centuries ; and the green the eternal freshness and beauty of the springtime of life, and the promise of years to come.
" The world, surely, has not another place like Oxford ; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime, and more than one, to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily," * wrote a man whom all who have ever known the place must write down a wise man, even if he had no other claim to be one. It is indeed "a despair" to see Oxford and to fail to realise its meaning, as almost in- evitably must those who run to it hastily for a day and come away again. Ten hours might do for a dockyard, an arsenal, or a manufacturing centre ; but ten years would hardly teach a newcomer that which is to be learned from the stones of Oxford. In a day he is only just able to realise how little he realises of it. It is borne in upon him with startling force that he possesses no "yesterday," that he has nothing behind him with which to compare what is to come before, that he has dropped suddenly into a world where he must wander in ignorance. The books that he may have read do not matter. the ideas that he may have formed do not count, it is not
• Nathaniel Hawthorne,
quite like anything he has seen, or read of, or imagined in all his life before. It may be to people from older lands. • They may have seen and known other old-world paradises,—if there be any other quite like this. But to us who find an old Georgian, verandahless house a quaint survival of bygone days; who ride past the grey posts of broken-down stock- yards, idly wondering what kind of prehistoric • people branded cattle in them ; who have marked Captain Cook's landing-place at Botany Bay as a monument to the dawn of our civilisation, Oxford is a little unreal. We know, how- ever, that it is ourselves who have eyes and see not. They are not in focus, somehow. They cannot serve us as we are accustomed to expect of them. It is our own fault,—and not altogether our fault.
For remember this. We are new. Everything to us lies in the future. We honour and respect the memory of our pioneers—the brave men and women who faced harder troubles than battle in the " blazing" of the tracks which opened up our lands for us ; who lived lives of hardship and solitude such as no Englishman who has not been out of England can understand—and at home their fine deeds make our history. In 1813—ages and ages ago : time moves so swiftly in new countries—Wentworth and Lawson won a way for us across the Blue Mountains, and led the way to our rich Western lands. That is one of our " dates," and to us at home it is as far back in the past as the signing of Magna Charts is here. The Victory' still floats at Portsmouth, and Nelson's clothing may be seen in Whitehall ; but 1805 to us is almost at the beginning of the world. Thirty years ago in Australia is a very long time back ; in England it is the day before yesterday. What we take to be ancient and historic would here be garishly new. And so, in Australian eyes, Oxford is unreadable. One may only look and admire, and come away a little pleased at having at most been touched by a sense of its age, and beauty, and grandear. For the rest, we must take it on trust. It would be an impertinence to pretend to any adequate realisation. But, having been there, it is at any rate possible properly to appreciate the pride of the Oxford man in the mere fact that he is an Oxford man. Nay, further, it is even possible to understand the bumptiousness of the Oxford prig,—almost, indeed, to sym- pathise with it. He has something to be a prig about.
It may even be confessed that one goes to see Oxford in just the suspicion of a hostile spirit. Many times, in many parts of the world, one has met with the Oxford man who seemed to be inordinately proud of the fact that he was such. A few times, to one's sorrow, one has come in contact with the wholly-to-be-regretted being alluded to above as the Oxford prig. And, as has been said, until one has oneself gained some inkling of the justification which both man and beast have for their pride and their priggishness, both are a little resented.
There is a story of a certain eminent and genial sheep- breeder in New South Wales who was so earnestly convinced of the superlative excellence of his stud flock, and the immense superiority of his hundred thousand acres to any other hundred thousand acres of land anywhere, that on all possible and impossible occasions he sounded their praises to such victims as would hearken. Travelling once on an inter- State steamer, he met a mild tourist, who for three weary days was perforce compelled to listen to the praises of the Boastful Downs Run and the Boastful Downs sheep, until in his extremity he quietly remarked: "But, tell me, Mr. Golden- Fleece, is Boastful Downs in New South Wales, or is New South Wales in Boastful Downs ?" One has almost been tempted at times to wonder whether Oxford was in England, or England in Oxford.
Perhaps we are always too ready to scoff at what we hear praised too freely,—it is the characteristic irreverence which we have been assured Australians possess to a degree. The Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, we might remind ourselves, have higher " pass " standards for a degree than Oxford. One can get to know just as • much at either of them as in the ancient, out-of-date knowledge-shop up the Thames Valley. We might comfort ourselves with the re- flection that Oxford is not " the only pebble on the beach." But go and see it, ye scoffers, and assuredly it will seem plain and clear that that is just about what Oxford is,—" the only pebble on the beach." At any rate, once having been there, there remains no resentment, no spirit of hostility, no
rebellious determination not to take for granted another of the institutions which the English seem to regard as being above criticism. There remains nothing but admiration, wonder, affection, and a little envy. All latent hostility has ebbed away. All desire to adopt the nil admirari standpoint has gone. Oxford will have brought about your surrender to the charm of the old and the beautiful if nothing else in England has ever done so. It is so old, so quiet, so beautiful. The grey walls of college and hall, chapel and cloister, take you back into a splendid past. The wonderful lawns, the clinging vines that carry the green over the grey, the long shady walks through verdant arcades, the gentle waterways, the patches of golden sunlight filtering through the trees on to grass and gravel and worn stone pavement, are of to-day, and of yesterday, and of many yesterdays. Quick voices, eager steps, laughter across the quadrangles, fresh, healthy faces, are the preparing for to-morrow which seems indefinably to blend with the present and the past. Somehow, in some way you can only vaguely realise, past and present and future are united here. The bygone years lurk about the grey stones. In the arch of a window, in the vaulting of a passage, behind a massive door black with age, venerable ghosts of days that have been seem to look out on a world that is their own world, and yet a new one. Time has walked slowly through the colleges,— has even, one would think, not hesitated to sit down and rest when it has pleased him so to do. He could not hurry here. All Eternity might be waiting ; but there is that in the air, in the aspect, in the spirit of the place which must delay him. And so, occasionally, the Past has caught up with the Present, and both hold the hands of the Future.
How it all contrasts with every other place that one has seen! Glaring little white-walled dorps in the Karoo ; weather-board and crackling galvanised iron in the back- blocks ; wind-lashed townships in Otago; rustling planta- tions in the Pacific,—every remembrance of places, and men in the places, that one has recur. All the colleges in the great University of the World—from fo'c's'le to shearer's hut, from Port Said to Port Melbourne—where the Faculty of Experience is paramount, are in competition with these old foundations, and so much as one has seen of them rises up for comparison. But there is nothing like it all, nothing to compare it with. Oxford stands alone.
Put aside all books, leave all learning to take care of itself, take no heed of honour lists,—look at Oxford from without. Never mind its influence on English life, its influence on English politics, its bearing on world destinies,—take it as it stands. Just see it. Carry no introductions, be led by no guide, hear nothing of story and tradition. Content yourself with what your eye alone may convey to your brain. Stand and look. And then, if you have breathed in ever so .little of the beautiful spirit of the place, have become aware of an inward sense of reverence which may in the slightest degree have influenced you towards feeling healthier, and .better, and cleaner of soul,—then you have seen Oxford. You may not understand the deeper meanings that Time has written on the grey walls—perhaps you are too new a product for that—and you may not altogether realise what life means within them. But this you cannot fail to comprebend,—that Oxford itself is almost the noblest place you shall have seen in England. Take this idea out to the Back of Beyond. You will never lose it. " The world, surely, has not another place like Oxford." J. H. M. ABBOTT.
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