It is a stone found in the neighborhood of
Oxford, and very soon begins to crumble and decay superficially, when
exposed to the weather; so that twenty years do the work of a hundred, so
far as appearances go. If you strike one of the old walls with a stick,
a portion of it comes powdering down. The effect of this decay is very
picturesque, and is especially striking, I think, on edifices of classic
architecture, such as some of the Oxford colleges are, greatly enriching
the Grecian columns, which look so cold when the outlines are hard and
distinct. The Oxford people, however, are tired of this crumbly stone,
and when repairs are necessary, they use a more durable material, which
does not well assort with the antiquity into which it is intruded.
Mr. E------ showed us the library of Merton College. It occupies two
sides of an old building, and has a very delightful fragrance of ancient
books. The halls containing it are vaulted, and roofed with oak, not
carved and ornamented, but laid flat, so that they look very like a grand
and spacious old garret. All along, there is a row of alcoves on each
side, with rude benches and reading-desks, in the simplest style, and
nobody knows how old. The books look as old as the building. The more
valuable were formerly chained to the bookcases; and a few of them have
not yet broken their chains. It was a good emblem of the dark and
monkish ages, when learning was imprisoned in their cloisters, and
chained in their libraries, in the days when the schoolmaster had not yet
gone abroad.
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