The New Warden

The Founders and the Benefactors of Oxford, Princes, wealthy priests, patriotic gentlemen, noble ladies with a taste for learning; any of these as they travelled along the high road, leaving behind them pastures, woods and river, and halted at the gates of the grey sacred city, had they been in melancholy mood, might have pictured to themselves all possible disasters by fire and by siege that could mar this garnered glory of spiritual effort and pious memory. Fire and siege were the disasters of the old days. But a new age has it own disasters— disasters undreamed of in the old days, and none of these lovers of Oxford as they entered that fair city, ever could have foretold that in time to come Oxford would become enclosed and well-nigh stifled by the peaceful encroachment of an endless ocean of friendly red brick, lapping to its very walls.