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Updated: June 1, 2025
As he approached he found that this tower rose from an embattled pile, low and irregular, yet singularly venerable, which, embowered in verdure, overhung the slugish waters of the Cherwell. He passed through a gateway overhung by a noble orie , and found himself in a spacious cloister adorned with emblems of virtues and vices, rudely carved in grey stone by the masons of the fifteenth century.
The towers guarded the fords and the bridge and were themselves almost impregnable, except when a hard winter made the Thames, the Cherwell, and the many deep and treacherous streams passable, as happened when Matilda was beleaguered in Oxford.
Their situation on the brink of the River Cherwell, and almost under the shadow of Magdalen Tower, is what probably appeals most strongly to the ordinary observer, while those who merely pass the gardens by will delight in the gateway, the work of Inigo Jones, with its statues of Charles I and II. Formal these gardens are of necessity, but there hangs about them a certain feeling of antiquity.
At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. He was, at first, one of those scholars who were called Demies, but was subsequently elected a Fellow. His college is still proud of his name: his portrait still hangs in the hall; and strangers are still told that his favourite walk was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell.
Though the two huge towers of its Norman castle marked the strategic importance of Oxford as commanding the river valley along which the commerce of Southern England mainly flowed, its walls formed the least element in the town's military strength, for on every side but the north it was guarded by the swampy meadows along Cherwell or by an intricate network of streams into which the Thames breaks among the meadows of Osney.
It is still in a great measure what it was called, the Country College; for though it has neighbours close to it in Mansfield and Manchester Colleges, yet these and the cricket-grounds, which lie between Wadham and the Cherwell, and further north, the Parks, make one spacious region of almost country, a region of grass and trees and silence, broken only by the sounds of birds, and the shouts of Matthew Arnold's "young barbarians all at play."
On finishing his course at Oxford, he went on foot to Edinburgh, more than three hundred miles. He was equally remarkable as a leaper, surpassing all competitors. He once jumped across the Cherwell twenty-three feet clear with a run of only a few yards. This is, we believe, the greatest feat of the kind on record.
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.
He was negligent in his dress; and so little studious of appearances, that having despatched his labours, while others were yet in bed, he might have been found, at the usual hours of study, loitering on the banks of his beloved Cherwell, or in the streets, following the drum and fife, a sound which was known to have irresistible attraction for his ears, a spectator at a military parade, or even one amongst a crowd at a public execution.
"Going down to the river this afternoon, sir?" he said, as I fumbled in my pockets for some money. "No," I replied. "Nearly a sad accident on the Cherwell this morning I heard some gentleman saying. A gentleman from St.
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