There is the beautiful scenery of the "stripling Thames" to
explore; the haunts of the immortal "Scholar Gipsy," and of Shelley,
and of Clough's Piper, who -
"Went in his youth and the sunshine rejoicing, to Nuneham and
Godstowe."
Further afield men seldom go in summer, there is so much to delight
and amuse in Oxford. {2} What day can be happier than that of which
the morning is given (after a lively college breakfast, or a
"commonising" with a friend) to study, while cricket occupies the
afternoon, till music and sunset fill the grassy stretches above
Iffley, and the college eights flash past among cheering and
splashing? Then there is supper in the cool halls, darkling, and
half-lit up; and after supper talk, till the birds twitter in the
elms, and the roofs and the chapel spire look unfamiliar in the blue
of dawn. How long the days were then! almost like the days of
childhood; how distinct is the impression all experience used to
make! In later seasons Care is apt to mount the college staircase,
and the "oak" which Shelley blessed cannot keep out this visitor.
She comes in many a shape--as debt, and doubt, and melancholy; and
often she comes as bereavement. Life and her claims wax importunate;
to many men the Schools mean a cruel and wearing anxiety, out of all
proportion to the real importance of academic success. We cannot see
things as they are, and estimate their value, in youth; and if
pleasures are more keen then, grief is more hopeless, doubt more
desolate, uncertainty more gnawing, than in later years, when we have
known and survived a good deal of the worst of mortal experience.
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