And Oxford has been the starting-point of other than religious
movements. No place in England has such a claim on the Englishmen of
the New World as has Oxford. It was there that Richard Hakluyt taught
geography, and collected in part his wonderful store of the tales of
enterprise beyond the sea. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother,
Sir Walter Raleigh, both Oxford men, were the founders of English
colonization. By their failures they showed the way to success later,
and Calvert in Maryland, Penn in Pennsylvania, John Locke in the
Carolinas, and Oglethorpe in Georgia are all Oxford men who rank as
founders of States in the great Union of the West. And in our own
day, Cecil Rhodes has once more proved that the academic dreamer can
go out and advance the development of a great continent. By his
magnificent foundation of scholarships at Oxford, he showed that he
considered his old university a formative influence of the greatest
importance in world history. Oxford with reason puts up one tablet to
mark his lodgings in the city, and another to commemorate him in her
stately Examination Schools.

[Plate II, St. Mary's Spire]

But there are many to whom the past, whether in the realm of action
or in the realm of ideas, does not appeal, whether it be from lack of
knowledge or from lack of sympathy. To some of these Oxford makes a
different appeal as perhaps the best place in England for studying
the development of English architecture. The early Norman work of the
Castle and St. Michael's, the Transition work of the cathedral, the
very early lancet windows of St. Giles' Church (consecrated by the
great St. Hugh of Lincoln himself), the Decorated Style as seen in
St. Mary's spire and in Merton chapel, the glories of the specially