Recollections of Oxford (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ' In our efforts to track the records of memory . . . bright hues come forward, like the colours of the tesselated pavement of antiquity when the renovating water is flung upon them.'?Lady Morgan's Memoirs. Recollections from A.d. 1797 to A.d. 18e0. In the spring of 1797 there was, from a succession of bad crops, the pressure of the war, and other political causes, a run upon the Bank of England for payment in gold. Every one, in a sort of panic, was in a hurry to get cash from the Bank for notes1, thus raising a distrust of Government securities and shaking the public credit . By way of meeting and relieving this state of things, the authorities of the University and City set a good example, or, more accurately, followed the good example set elsewhere, by pledging themselves to receive Bank of England notes in all payments.' It was no uncommon thing at this period for a ' gentleman ' (the Oxford tradesman's designation of a member of the University) to ride a match against time, from Oxford to London and back again to Oxford (108 miles) in twelve hours or less, with, of course, relays of horses at regular intervals. In one instance this was done in eight hours and1797 MATCH AGAINST TIME. 31 1 Or, as they were contemptuously called, paper-money, or even rags. forty-five minutes1. What a distinction for a man, not to say a gentleman, to have obtained, at the expense of the poor animals who gained it for him without sharing his triumph ! What a pity that, like John Gilpin, his ride and his name have not been handed down in verse, ' caret quia vate sacro.' Betting was, no doubt, the first and chief motive; a foolish vanity the second; the third cause was the absence at that time in the University of a better mode of proving pluck and taming down the an...