Ampthill, a town; here we saw immense numbers of rabbits, which are
reckoned as good as hares, and are very well tasted.

We passed through the towns of Woburn, Leighton, Aylesbury, and
Wheatley.

Oxonium, Oxford, the famed Athens of England; that glorious seminary
of learning and wisdom, whence religion, politeness, and letters,
are abundantly dispersed into all parts of the kingdom. The town is
remarkably fine, whether you consider the elegance of its private
buildings, the magnificence of its public ones, or the beauty and
wholesomeness of its situation, which is on a plain, encompassed in
such a manner with hills, shaded with wood, as to be sheltered on
the one hand from the sickly south, and on the other from the
blustering west, but open to the east, that blows serene weather,
and to the north, the preventer of corruption, from which, in the
opinion of some, it formerly obtained the appellation of Bellositum.
This town is watered by two rivers, the Cherwell and the Isis,
vulgarly called the Ouse; and though these streams join in the same
channel, yet the Isis runs more entire and with more rapidity
towards the south, retaining its name till it meets the Thame, which
it seems long to have sought, at Wallingford; thence, called by the
compound name of Thames, it flows the prince of all British rivers,
of whom we may justly say, as the ancients did of the Euphrates,
that it both sows and waters England.

The colleges in this famous University are as follows:-

In the reign of Henry III., Walter Merton, Bishop of Rochester,
removed the college he had founded in Surrey, 1274, to Oxford,