text:  A civil farmer's wife a very common character in most parts of England is I am sorry to say somewhat too much of a rarity about Oxford; whether their tempers are too severely tried by the "fast men " who hunt drags and ride steeple-chases to the detriment of young wheat and new-made fences; or by the reading-men who in their innocence make pertinacious visits in search of strawberries and cream in the month of March or call for the twentieth time to enquire the nearest way to Oxford (being ignorant of all topography but that of ancient Rome and Athens;) or whether they regard all gownsmen as embryo parsons and tithe-owners and therefore hereditary enemies; whatever be the reason it generally requires some tact to establish any thing like a friendly relation with a farmer or his wife in the neighbourhood of the university