If there be any who think and speak ungently of their
Alma Mater, it is because they have outstayed their natural "welcome
while," or because they have resisted her genial influence in youth.
CHAPTER I--THE TOWN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY
Most old towns are like palimpsests, parchments which have been
scrawled over again and again by their successive owners. Oxford,
though not one of the most ancient of English cities, shows, more
legibly than the rest, the handwriting, as it were, of many
generations. The convenient site among the interlacing waters of the
Isis and the Cherwell has commended itself to men in one age after
another. Each generation has used it for its own purpose: for war,
for trade, for learning, for religion; and war, trade, religion, and
learning have left on Oxford their peculiar marks. No set of its
occupants, before the last two centuries began, was very eager to
deface or destroy the buildings of its predecessors. Old things were
turned to new uses, or altered to suit new tastes; they were not
overthrown and carted away. Thus, in walking through Oxford, you see
everywhere, in colleges, chapels, and churches, doors and windows
which have been builded up; or again, openings which have been cut
where none originally existed. The upper part of the round Norman
arches in the Cathedral has been preserved, and converted into the
circular bull's-eye lights which the last century liked.
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