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. It is the
same everywhere, except where modern restorers have had their way.
Thus the life of England, for some eight centuries, may be traced in
the buildings of Oxford. Nay, if we are convinced by some
antiquaries, the eastern end of the High Street contains even earlier
scratches on this palimpsest of Oxford; the rude marks of savages who
scooped out their damp nests, and raised their low walls in the
gravel, on the spot where the new schools are to stand. Here half-
naked men may have trapped the beaver in the Cherwell, and hither
they may have brought home the boars which they slew in the trackless
woods of Headington and Bagley. It is with the life of historical
Oxford, however, and not with these fancies, that we are concerned,
though these papers have no pretension to be a history of Oxford. A
series of pictures of men's life here is all they try to sketch.

It is hard, though not impossible, to form a picture in the mind of
Oxford as she was when she is first spoken of by history. What she
may have been when legend only knows her; when St. Frideswyde built a
home for religious maidens; when she fled from King Algar and hid
among the swine, and after a whole fairy tale of adventures died in
great sanctity, we cannot even guess. This legend of St. Frideswyde,
and of her foundation, the germ of the Cathedral and of Christ
Church, is not, indeed, without its value and significance for those