was. Yet the very fact that Iffley Mill is no more perhaps renders it
the more appropriate subject for a series of Oxford pictures. It
claims a place among them, not for its beauty, picturesque though it
was, but as a symbol of the open-air pursuits of Oxford, which play
so large a part in the lives of her sons. And as those pursuits are
so diverse, and cannot all be directly pictured, it is fitting that
they should be represented by a picture which is a symbol of them
all, by a picture of something no longer existing, not introduced for
itself, but suggesting whole fields of varied activity, different and
yet all akin.

This may be fanciful, but the part played by open-air sports in the
life of Oxford is a great reality. Yet, in their present organized
form, they are a feature of quite, modern times. Fifty years ago,
football as a college sport in Oxford was only beginning; the men are
still living, and not octogenarians, who introduced their "school
games"--"Rugby," "Eton Wall game," etc.--at Oxford. Golf was left to
Scotchmen, hockey to small boys, La Crosse had not yet come from
beyond the Atlantic. Cricket and rowing were the only organized
games, and even in these the inter-University contests are
comparative novelties; the first boat race against Cambridge was
rowed in 1829, and it has only been an annual fixture since 1856.

Several results followed from this. In the first place, the very
sense of the word "sportsman" was different. Now it means a man who
can play well some, one at least, of the games that all men play;
then, it had its old meaning of a man who could shoot, or ride, or
fish, or do all these.

Again, as cricket is always a game for the few, and as the rowing