There is no making any way in Cloudland. We ask for firm
ground on which to plant our footsteps, if we would move onwards.
* * * * * * *
It would have been very galling to the Oxford antiquaries of Queen
Elizabeth's days to have to acknowledge that there was a Cambridge
before there was an Oxford. Nevertheless the fact is so. Hide your
diminished heads, ye rash ones who would fain have us believe that a
thousand years before our era, King Mempric, the wicked king whom the
wolves ate--as was right and fitting they should--built a noble city,
which as time went on "was called _Oxonia_, or by the Saxons
_Oxenfordia_." Alack! it turns out that we must make an enormous
step along the course of time before we can find trace of any such
city or anything like it. It turns out that "the year 912 saw Oxford
made a fortified town, with a definite duty to perform and a definite
district assigned to it." What! Seven years after the great Alfred
had closed his eyes in death, and left to others the work which he
had showed them how to do? Yes! Even so. It may be very hard to have
to confess the odious crime of youth; but it seems almost capable of
demonstration that Cambridge, as a fortress and a a town existed a
thousand years before Oxford was anything but a desolate swamp, or at
most a trumpery village, where a handful of Britons speared eels,
hunted for deer, and laboriously manufactured earthenware pots.
Pages:
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256