OXFORD AT COMMEMORATION.

Just at this season Oxford is in its glory-in its natural academic and social glory. The great elm trees that abound in all the gardens and that line the banks of the Isis are in their first and freshest foliage. The ivy and the roses are climbing walls of edifices and gardens and are now in full leaf and flower. The lawns and green-swards are as trim as art and labor can keep them, and as soft to the foot-step as velvet, and as the habit of a thousand years could make them. Today the examinations are all over, and the festivities of commemoration have begun. The men have for the most part doffed "the cap and gown," and are abroad in the streets and grounds of the colleges in the usually well-fitting garments of the English gentleman.

Here and there one meets today a few men who are a little belated in their work, who are still grinding through some stiff or special examination, and who are in cap and gown, and these lend a most pleasing variety to the general quaintness-almost weirdness-of the place and day. For really one has the feeling of living in the middle ages, looking upon these old, gray, time-worn, moss-covered edifices and meeting here and there in cloisters and in other unlooked-for places these sombre-seeming youths under these mortar-board caps and in these long, black, flowing gowns. Then there is to be the great ceremony of the commemoration-the public conferring of honorary degrees. [Ex.