illustrious University. But I like to imagine that there existed a
cultus of the venerable goddess in the green fields where the purple
fritillaries, so reminiscent of the lotus, blossom in the early spring.
In the curious formal pattern of their petals I see a symbol of the
Oxford manner--something archaic, rigid, severe. The Oxford Don may well
be a reversion to some earlier type, learned, mystic, and romantic as
those priests of whom Herodotus has given us so vivid a picture. The
worship of Apis, as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then
merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life. This, I
think, will explain the name Oxford on the Isis--the Ford of Apis, the ox-
god at this one place able to pass over the benign deity. You remember,
too, the horrid blasphemy of Cambyses (his very name suggests Cambridge),
and the vengeance of the gods. So be it to any sacrilegious reformer who
would transmute either the Oxford Don or the Oxford undergraduate--the
most august of human counsellors, the most delightful of friends.

(1902.)




HOW WE LOST THE BOOK OF JASHER.


Everyone who knows anything about art, archaeology, or science has heard
of the famous FitzTaylor Museum at Oxbridge. And even outsiders who care
for none of these things have heard of the quarrels and internal
dissensions that have disturbed that usual calm which ought to reign
within the walls of a museum. The illustrious founder, to whose
munificence we owe this justly famous institution, provided in his will