It was a brilliant morning--one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun.

Every outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright air.

The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts.

The figures, even, passing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees and the buildings.

The white in the women's dresses; the short black gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the children's frocks; the overhanging masses of hawthorn and lilac that here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through and over college walls:--everything shimmered and shone in the May sunlight.