Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/29

11 Wood boasted, once, that he had gone from Oxford to London in thirteen hours, for two five-crown pieces. The time now, on fast trains, is one hour and twenty minutes. The single fare is ten and sixpence, first class; five and threepence, third class; and the postage is one penny—invariably paid in advance.

Oxford, in the meantime, has changed but little in a topographical way since Tom Brown and Verdant Green knew it. There can be no better, or truer, guides to the undergraduate life there than are the classical biographies of these two most interesting young gentlemen, fantastic as the Adventures of the Student of "Brazenface" may, sometimes, seem to be. And the ghosts of that familiar pair of heroes, and the spirits of their many friends, haunt, to this day, every quadrangle of the University, every street of the Town, every reach and lock of the River.

There came, as a comforting surprise, one day, in Oxford, to very old, and very intimate, friends of the Green Family, the discovery of the fact that the inventor of Mr.Verdant Green, and the Exploiter of his Adventures, was not, himself, an Oxford man.

"Mr. Cuthbert Bede, B.A.," known to his tailors, to the directories, and to The Clerical List, in real life, as the Rev. Edward Bradley, spent, all