Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/184

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
150

break forth, and there is a great blowing of horns by street-boys, which last adds, naturally, but little to the solemnity of the occasion.

One familiar with the ways of college-boys in American university towns might accuse the freshmen of blowing these horns, if freshmen were ever known to get up with the sun, or before it—even for the sake of blowing horns!

Magdalen Choir and Magdalen School have been almost as important, in their day, and in their way, as Magdalen College itself; and from them many a good student has been sent into Magdalen, and into other colleges as well. When it was threatened, during the Reformation, to destroy both of these ancient institutions, the Citizens of Oxford prayed for the preservation of the School; and happily their prayer was granted. "The better part of them," they petitioned, "were able nowhere else to bring up their children in good learning; or to have them given, as well, meat, drink, clothes, and lodging, so freely and so economically; and so they attained to Logic and other faculties at the charge of the said college as before, and little or nothing at the charge of their parents."

Professor Max Muller, whose chapters of "Literary Recollections" in his "Auld Lang Syne" have been so frequently, and will be so frequently,