tioned this fact. A bumptious young man who could teach the world replied: "I beg your pardon, but I happen to know that that was written by Sir Walter Besant!"

I think one should stop a few hours at least. in Rochester, either on the way to Canterbury, or as an excursion from London. Dickens' home, Gadshill, was near Rochester; on market days he often walked to town. He so frequently crossed the old bridge that, when it was taken down, the contractors gave one of its balusters to Dickens as a souvenir; it was long used in the garden at Gadshill as a sundial pedestal.

Rochester, according to Mr. Pickwick, produced chiefly "soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dock-yard men." Rochester Cathedral interested us, it is not an important building, but it has atmosphere. The verger who conducted us about, twenty years ago, had been a choir boy, and told us that he had often seen Dickens come into the crypt, and sit by the hour, apparently meditating, when he was writing "Edwin Drood." In that book he has given us a picture of the choir boys robing at Rochester; it is very graphic, if not as romantic as one sometimes likes to think. "The bells are going for daily service, and he

needs attend it, one would say, from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing into service. Then the sacristan locks the ironbarred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of this procession having scuttled into their places, hide their faces: and then the intoned words when the wicked man rise among the groins of the arches, and beams of the roof, awakening muttered thunder."

Rochester Castle is a very pleasingly proportioned specimen of a square Norman keep. When I was there one could go high up among the ruins and prowl about—perhaps one can still. The castle well very nearly became the cause of a tragedy when the celebrated architect, Welby Pugin, once stepped into it inadvertently and was with difficulty rescued!

From Rochester to Canterbury I once rode in the carriage with a sad-faced, shabby clerical person, whose wife sat opposite him. She was a terrible type. She removed her hat at once, displaying a smooth grey "slick" of hair done in a single unyielding knot. She wore boots. with elastic sides, and a man's coat. Her belt rose in front and sagged behind, and she was

thin and angular. The picture was completed by a glance at the book which her tired husband was perusing. It was entitled "The Last Hope."

CHAPTER IX

THE GREAT UNIVERSITIES

N comparing Oxford and Cambridge in that unnecessary neurotic spirit to which travellers seem to be impelled,

Henry James says: "If Oxford were not the finest thing in England, Cambridge would certainly be." Suppose we vary the customary method by not comparing them at all? They are two university towns, with certain features in common and certain differences. Both are interesting in different and in similar ways.

A follower of William the Conqueror, Robert d'Oily, built Oxford Castle. He seems to have been a great robber, and he built first great fortresses in which to guard his treasure, and then churches, where he might do penance and atone for his depredations. The Chronicle of Abingdon gives an estimate of this gentleman: "Rich he was, and spared not rich or poor, to take their livelihood away, and to lay up treasures

for himself." The story of his conversion is amusing. "He filched a certain field . . . and gave it over to the soldiers of the castle, . . . the brethren were greatly grieved, . . . and prayed that his robbery of the monastery might be avenged, or that he might be led to make atonement." Robert dreamed, soon after that, that he was carried away by two monks into the very meadow which he had feloniously acquired, into the presence, strange to relate, of the Virgin Mary; and that "most nasty little boys there were set to torment him. Whether it was owing to these discomforts, or to a real change of heart, Robert awoke with a start, and told his dream to his wife, who naturally advised him to give up this piece of land, and this he did. After that he could not do enough for the monks; he built them a bridge across the Isis, and restored all their churches.

From the earliest days of the university it was destined to pass through numerous trials and vicissitudes. The period of Wyclif was unsettling to the atmosphere of the university. Wood writes: "Wyclivism did domineer among us; " and a heated controversy arose over what were termed his "two-hundred-and-sixty-seven damned conclusions."

Another enemy to the progress of the uni