ander. Alexander was delighted with his success, but on this occasion he refrained from sending a pigeon to Irenæus.

Alas for Alexander! his joy was terribly brief. No sooner had the people of the district eaten the fish which had made that wonderful journey than they were overcome by a rare and painful sickness, which also afflicted the sojourners in cities to which they sent a great part of their draughts. It seems Alexander was ignorant that there were two species of fish in the distant lake, one edible and wholesome, the other poisonous; and when he commanded the fish to leave the waters a great number of the poisonous kind dutifully obeyed him. No one died of the sickness which they caused, but many persons were extremely ill and suffered fierce torment in the region of the belly. Alexander became painfully unpopular and went in danger of his life, until a committee of the oldest fishermen decided that he should not be slain, but that he should be banished for ever from their country. And being desirous of carrying out this decree in a manner humiliating to the saint, they wrapped him tightly in a long and evil - smelling fishing - net and rolled him out of their village as if he were a cask.

When Alexander at last broke free from the net he found that he was covered with bruises and unable to stand. But the soreness of his body was as nothing in comparison with the melancholy of his

mind, and he was tempted to regret that the fishermen had permitted him to live. He crawled into a little coppice that was on the edge of the road, and then he fell on his knees and beat his breast and bewailed his evil fortune. It was plain at last, he thought, that his miracles were not acceptable to Heaven, and that he ought to have remained a mediocre and worldly tinker. He cursed the spiritual pride which had led him to seek renown and to despatch vainglorious messages by pigeonpost to Irenæus on every possible occasion, and he solemnly renounced the miraculous art for ever. After this, being utterly weary and sore, he slept.

And whilst he was deep in slumber he saw a vision of an angel, marvellously bright, with silver wings, and eyes full of pity. Alexander begged the angel to depart, assuring him that he had got into company unfit for any heavenly and respectable personage. But the angel only smiled, and said, "Alexander, I am sent to tell you that you are on no account to be depressed and to become a tinker. For though you have been a fool you are not to imagine that you are not a good man and even a saint. The combination of folly and saintliness is not so rare as many people imagine it to be."

Alexander felt slightly consoled by the words of the angel, though he thought privately that the tone adopted by his

heavenly visitor was a trifle. pompous.

"Then I am to continue to perform miracles?" he asked. The angel shook his head and smiled again.

"No," said the angel. "You are, as I said, a good man, Alexander, and have lived have lived down the evil reputation of your family with fair success. But for a worker of miracles goodness alone is not sufficient. There is another quality which is indispensable to him- a quality which you will never possess to any great extent. Therefore you must work no more miracles."

Alexander sighed, for in spite of his previous renunciation his art was dear to him. "What is this quality which I lack?" he asked. "If I had been told of it earlier I would have cultivated it. What is its name on earth?" "Its name," name," replied the angel, is a sacred name. I will not breathe it now, but I have written it down, and after I have gone yo 1 may read it. And when you have read it, remember through all your life that without it all good works are worthless." And he handed him a visiting-card with the blank side uppermost.

"I know what it is," said Alexander pettishly, for his bruises were hurting him, and he was somewhat irritated by the superior airs of the angel. "I know perfectly well what it is," he continued; "it's charity. But I am seething with charity."

The angel smiled. "Charity is not the word," he said.

"Then it's faith," said Alexander. "But I've got faith too. Didn't I move the mountain? I don't believe that you have really studied the history of my career."

"I know it all by heart," answered the heavenly messenger, "for I, oh Alexander, am your guardian angel. But even a guardian angel is of little avail unless you possess the quality written on my card. Good evening, Alexander."

"Oh! good-night," said Alexander, not very politely. The angel vanished, and Alexander turned the card. On it was written in golden letters one short word. And the word was TACT.

Alexander wrought no more miracles, but he became famous as a worker amongst the poor, the sick, and the sorrowful. He kept up his tinkering, but purely as a hobby, and from being the most hated person in the Thebaïd he became immensely beloved by everyone. All through his life, says Garrulus, it was noticed that he could not eat fish, and had a dislike (if dislike could exist in so charitable a breast) of talkative women. He founded, indeed, the first of the great Silent Orders, of which the members were for many centuries recruited mainly from the more loquacious of the two sexes; and when he was Archimandrite of Ethiopia he evinced a keen interest in institutions for the deaf and dumb, strictly forbidding any workers of miracles to approach within two miles of them. He is also

famous as the first of the early Fathers who showed any symptoms of toleration for the fine arts; and caused, indeed, a great scandal in the Council of Ecbatana by asserting that a love of the beautiful was not invariably fatal to salvation, and that it might even wean the mind of its possessor from the lusts and cruelties of a - bloodthirsty world,-a heresy which caused the venerable Patriarch of Cappadocia to dash his mitre on the floor and call (an unheard-of request in that environment) for soap and water. In short, Alexander became an excellent, practical person, and proved by his own example that more good may be accomplished by one life spent in active devotion to others than by all the miracles

of a hundred short-sighted mystics. For a further account of his deeds I must refer the reader to the effete but amusing Latin of Garrulus, which dances a sprightly minuet through the pages of Doctor Schwätzer's edition, with the long-drawn notes of that celebrated pedant acting as a kind of ponderous ground-bass. It is suspected that a certain tomb in the beautiful Aliscamps of Arles formerly contained the mortal remains of Alexander. A broken bucket which is carved on the side of the sarcophagus beneath an Archimandrite's cappa lends weight to this theory, which is strongly supported by such solemn authorities as Professor Steinharterzigkeit and Mr Theodore Andrea Cook.

2 K

VOL CXCII.-NO. MCLXIV.

OXFORD—that is, the city of Oxford-has recently been celebrating what it is pleased to term its "millenary," though why it should have chosen this particular year for the celebration, or what after all it has to celebrate, it would be difficult

to say.

Oxford certainly existed as a Mercian stronghold long before 912, and it owes its importance in history-first, to its being one of the strongest fortresses in England, with its massive walls and encircling streams; secondly, to its becoming the chosen home of the great religious orders; and thirdly, to its being the seat of a famous University. But the town itself has always played a subordinate part and been overshadowed by its predominant partner. Apart from the University, it has not produced a single man of eminence, except Chillingworth, the philosopher. If the colleges and university buildings were taken away, there would hardly be a single edifice left, with the exception of a few churches, on which a stranger would care to look a second time. Oxford would even lose the University Church of St Mary's and the Cathedral, which is part and parcel of Christ Church. The few buildings which might have delighted an antiquary, such as Cranmer's prison in Bocardo, Friar Bacon's study on Folly Bridge, and the old gates in the city walls, have been ruthlessly swept

away; and with the exception of the four main streets, now dignified by the long lines of colleges, Oxford is a city of mean and uninteresting bylanes intersected by stagnant watercourses.

The Augustinians and Benedictines had long been settled in Oxford when, in the thirteenth century, it was invaded by the three great Mendicant Orders -"friars black, white, and grey"-Dominicans, Carmelites, and Franciscans, who founded convents, opened halls and hostels, and attracted a vast number of scholars to their lectures and disputations. This, in fact, was the beginning of the University; and for a time Oxford rivalled Paris as the most popular centre of learning in Europe. We are told by a modern historian that "the University found it a busy, prosperous borough, and reduced it to a cluster of lodging-houses." But surely, if the prosperity of Oxford at that time depended on its trade, such trade must have been increased tenfold by the immense influx of scholars and the requirements of so many large monasteries. The slowly moving barges, which came up the river from Abingdon, must have been laden with corn to be ground at the city mills, with wool to be woven into the rough gowns worn by the monks and scholars, with hides for the tanneries, and with salt fish for the Lenten

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meals. We know that great fairs St Frideswyde's, St Austin's, and St Giles'-were held under the patronage of the Friars; that trade-guilds -the cordwainers, the mercers, and the weavers-were formed; and that the Jews-then, as ever, engaged in "the Sabbathless pursuit of riches" had their synagogue and stone houses in the heart of the city, and, as we know from documents, lent money to the scholars at a high rate of usury. These facts doubtedly indicate a high degree of commercial prosperity; but this prosperity depended entirely on external and adventitious causes. In itself Oxford had no resources to fall back upon. It had no mineral wealth and no manufactures to speak of. It certainly would not find favour as a health-resort. The demand creates the supply, and when the demand had ceased and the Thames was no longer the great highway of trade, Oxford would have sunk to the level of a second-rate provincial borough-nay, it might have become as dead, buried, and forgotten as Old Sarum itself. From this deplorable fate it was saved by the foundation of richly endowed colleges, which have proved a never-failing source of wealth and popularity to an ungrateful town. The first of these colleges was founded in Henry III.'s reign (1264) by Walter de Merton,

whose name it bears, and University and Balliol followed shortly afterwards. But throughout this century Oxford only too faithfully reflected the spirit of unrest and turmoil which pervaded England. It was a perfect hotbed of contending factions

"North against South; Scotch town against gown; academics against against Irish; both against Welsh ; monks; Nominalists against Realists; juniors against seniors; the whole university against the bishop of the diocese, against the archbishop of the province, against the Chancellor of its own election were constantly arrayed against each other.... Carfax, the point of junction between into a fortress, and thither at the the two hostile parties, was turned blowing of horns the townsmen collected, either as a rendezvous for attack or as a stronghold to annoy the enemy with volleys of arrows or sounded by the town, as from St stones. Thence, too, the tocsin was Mary's by the University, when the two parties met in hostile array,— pitched battles were fought with war adjacent fields." standards unfurled, sometimes in the

The long series of outrages and free fights culminated in the famous affray which took place on the Feast of St Scholastica in 1354, when, taking advantage of a tavern brawl, the townsmen made a furious and unprovoked attack upon the scholars,-breaking into their halls and lodgings, destroying their goods, plundering their chests, killing some forty outright and grievously maiming and wounding hun