diff options
Diffstat (limited to '13245.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 13245.txt | 3440 |
1 files changed, 3440 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/13245.txt b/13245.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f4f4645 --- /dev/null +++ b/13245.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3440 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Charm of Oxford, by J. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Charm of Oxford + +Author: J. Wells + +Release Date: August 22, 2004 [EBook #13245] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF OXFORD *** + + + + +This eBook was produced by Philip H Hitchcock + + + + + +About the online edition. + +Italics are represented as /italics/. + + THE CHARM OF OXFORD + + by + + J. WELLS, M.A. +Warden of Wadham College, Oxford + + Illustrated by + W. G. BLACKALL + + +Second Edition (Revised) + +SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON +KENT & CO., LTD., 4 STATIONERS' +HALL COURT : : LONDON, E.C.4 + +Copyright +First published 1920 +Second edition 1921 + + + "'Home of lost causes'--this is Oxford's blame; + 'Mother of movements'--this, too, boasteth she; + In the same walls, the same yet not the same, + She welcomes those who lead the age-to-be." + + + "Much have ye suffered from time's gnawing tooth, + Yet, O ye spires of Oxford domes and towers, + Gardens and groves, your presence overpowers + The soberness of reason." + WORDSWORTH. + + [Plate 1. Christ Church : The Cathedral from the Garden] + + +THE CHARM OF OXFORD + +PREFACE + + +There are many books on Oxford; the justification for this new one is +Mr. Blackall's drawings. They will serve by their grace and charm +pleasantly to recall to those who know Oxford the scenes they love; +they will incite those who do not know Oxford to remedy that defect +in their lives. + +My own letterpress is only written to accompany the drawings. It is +intended to remind Oxford men of the things they know or ought to +know; it is intended still more to help those who have not visited +Oxford to understand the drawings and to appreciate some of the +historical associations of the scenes represented. + +I have written quite freely, as this seemed the best way to create +the "impression" wished. I have to acknowledge some obligations to +Messrs. Seccombe & Scott's /Praise of Oxford/, a book the pages of +which an Oxford man can always turn over with pleasure, and to Mr. J. +B. Firth's /Minstrelsy of Isis/; it is not his fault that the poetic +merit of so much of his collection is poor. Oxford has not on the +whole been fortunate in her poets. My own quotations are more often +chosen for their local colour than for their poetic merit. + +I have unavoidably had to borrow a good deal from my own /Oxford and +its Colleges/, but the aim of the two books is very different. + + WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD, + April 1920. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + INTRODUCTION + RADCLIFFE SQUARE + THE BROAD STREET + BALLIOL COLLEGE + MERTON COLLEGE + MERTON LIBRARY + ORIEL COLLEGE + QUEEN'S COLLEGE + NEW COLLEGE: (1) FOUNDER AND BUILDINGS + NEW COLLEGE: (2) HISTORY + LINCOLN COLLEGE + MAGDALEN COLLEGE: (1) SITE AND BUILDINGS + MAGDALEN COLLEGE: (2) HISTORY + BRASENOSE COLLEGE + CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE + CHRIST CHURCH: (1) THE CATHEDRAL + CHRIST CHURCH: (2) THE HALL STAIRCASE + CHRIST CHURCH: (3) "TOM" TOWER + ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE + WADHAM COLLEGE: (1) THE BUILDINGS + WADHAM COLLEGE: (2) HISTORY + HERTFORD COLLEGE + ST. EDMUND HALL + IFFLEY MILL + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + I CHRIST CHURCH, THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE GARDEN + II ST. MARY'S SPIRE + III VIEW IN RADCLIFFE SQUARE + IV SHELDONIAN THEATRE, ETC., BROAD STREET + V BALLIOL COLLEGE, BROAD STREET FRONT + VI MERTON COLLEGE, THE TOWER + VII MERTON COLLEGE, THE LIBRARY INTERIOR + VIII ORIEL COLLEGE AND ST. MARY'S CHURCH + IX HIGH STREET + X NEW COLLEGE, THE ENTRANCE GATEWAY + XI NEW COLLEGE, THE TOWER + XII LINCOLN COLLEGE, THE CHAPEL INTERIOR + XIII MAGDALEN TOWER + XIV MAGDALEN COLLEGE, THE OPEN AIR PULPIT + XV BRASENOSE COLLEGE, QUADRANGLE AND THE RADCLIFFE LIBRARY + XVI CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, THE FIRST QUADRANGLE + XVII CHRIST CHURCH, THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE MEADOW + XVIII CHRIST CHURCH, THE HALL STAIRCASE + XIX CHRIST CHURCH, THE HALL INTERIOR + XX CHRIST CHURCH, "TOM" TOWER + XXI ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE GARDEN FRONT + XXII WADHAM COLLEGE, THE CHAPEL FROM THE GARDEN + XXIII WADHAM COLLEGE, THE HALL INTERIOR + XXIV HERTFORD COLLEGE, THE BRIDGE + XXV ST. PETER-IN-THE-EAST CHURCH AND ST. EDMUND HALL + XXVI IFFLEY, THE OLD MILL + OXFORD FROM THE EAST [End papers] + + + + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +In what does the charm of Oxford consist? Why does she stand out +among the cities of the world as one of those most deserving a visit? +It can hardly be said to be for the beauty of her natural +surroundings. In spite of the charm of her + + "Rivers twain of gentle foot that pass + Through the rich meadow-land of long green grass," + +in spite of her trees and gardens, which attract a visitor, +especially one from the more barren north, Oxford must yield the palm +of natural beauty to many English towns, not to mention those more +remote. + +But she has every other claim, and first, perhaps, may be mentioned +that of historic interest. + +An Englishman who knows anything of history is not likely to forget +of how many striking events in the development of his country Oxford +has been the scene. The element of romance is furnished early in her +story by the daring escape of the Empress-Queen, Matilda, from Oxford +Castle. The Provisions of Oxford (1258) were the work of one of the +most famous Parliaments of the thirteenth century, the century which +saw the building of the English constitution, and the students of the +University fought for the cause which those Provisions represented. +The burning of the martyr bishops in the sixteenth century is one of +the greatest tragedies in the story of our Church. The seventeenth +century saw Oxford the capital of Royalist England in the Civil War, +and though there was no actual fighting there, Charles' night march +in 1644 from Oxford to the West, between the two enclosing armies of +Essex and Waller, is one of the most famous military movements ever +carried out in our comparatively peaceful island. The Parliamentary +history, too, of Oxford in the seventeenth century is full of +interest, for it was there that in 1625 Charles' first Parliament met +in the Divinity School. And fifty years later, his son, Charles II, +triumphed over the Whig Parliament at Oxford, which was trying by +factious violence to force the Exclusion Bill on a reluctant king and +nation. Few towns beside London have been the scene of so many great +historical events; yet any one who looks below the surface will +attach less importance to these than to the great changes in thought +which have found in Oxford their inspiration, and which make it a +city of pilgrimage for those interested in the development of +England's real life. Matthew Arnold's famous description, hackneyed +though it is by quotation, gives one aspect of Oxford, an aspect +which will appeal to many beside the scholar poet: + +"Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce +intellectual life of our century, so serene! + + 'There are our young barbarians, all at play.' + +And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to +the moonlight, and whispering' from her towers the last enchantments +of the Middle Ages, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable +charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to +the ideal, to perfection--to beauty, in a word, which is only truth +seen from another side?" + +But this is not the real intellectual charm of Oxford, which has been +ever the centre of strenuous life, rather than of dilettante +dreamings. From the very beginning, she has been a city of +"Movements." Some visitors, then, will come to Oxford as the home and +the burial-place of Roger Bacon, representing as he does the +Franciscan Order, with its Christ-like sympathy for the poor and its +early attempts to develop the knowledge of Natural Science; Oxford +was in the thirteenth century the great centre of the Friars' +movement in England. Others will remember that in the next century it +produced, in John Wycliffe, the great opponent of the Friars, the man +who, as the first of the Reformers, is to many the most interesting +figure in mediaeval English religious history. In the sixteenth +century, Oxford plays no great part in the actual revolution in the +English Church; yet it will be a place attractive to many who cherish +the memory of the "Oxford Reformers," the members of Erasmus' circle +--John Colet, Thomas More, William Grocyn, and other scholars--who +hoped by sound learning to amend the Church without violent change. +Some, on the other hand, will see in the sixteenth-century Oxford, +the school which trained men for the Counter-Reformation, such as the +heroic Jesuit, Campion, or Cardinal Alien, the founder of the English +College at Douai. The Anglican "Via Media" found its special +representatives in Oxford in Jewel and Hooker, and in Laud, the +practical genius who carried out its principles in the Church +administration of his day. It was fitting that the movement for the +revival of Church teaching in England in the nineteenth century +should be an Oxford movement, and Newman's pulpit at St. Mary's and +the chapel of Oriel College are sacred in the eyes of Anglicans all +over the world. In the interval between Laud and Newman, Church +principles had found a different development in another Oxford man; +John Wesley's character and spiritual life were built up in Oxford, +till he went forth to do the work of an Evangelist during more than +half of the eighteenth century. Wycliffe, More, Hooker, Laud, Wesley, +Newman, these are not the names of men who have affected the +religious history of the world as did Luther, Calvin or Ignatius +Loyola; but they have affected profoundly the religious life of the +English-speaking race, and Oxford must ever be a sacred place for +their sakes. + +And Oxford has been the starting-point of other than religious +movements. No place in England has such a claim on the Englishmen of +the New World as has Oxford. It was there that Richard Hakluyt taught +geography, and collected in part his wonderful store of the tales of +enterprise beyond the sea. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother, +Sir Walter Raleigh, both Oxford men, were the founders of English +colonization. By their failures they showed the way to success later, +and Calvert in Maryland, Penn in Pennsylvania, John Locke in the +Carolinas, and Oglethorpe in Georgia are all Oxford men who rank as +founders of States in the great Union of the West. And in our own +day, Cecil Rhodes has once more proved that the academic dreamer can +go out and advance the development of a great continent. By his +magnificent foundation of scholarships at Oxford, he showed that he +considered his old university a formative influence of the greatest +importance in world history. Oxford with reason puts up one tablet to +mark his lodgings in the city, and another to commemorate him in her +stately Examination Schools. + + [Plate II, St. Mary's Spire] + +But there are many to whom the past, whether in the realm of action +or in the realm of ideas, does not appeal, whether it be from lack of +knowledge or from lack of sympathy. To some of these Oxford makes a +different appeal as perhaps the best place in England for studying +the development of English architecture. The early Norman work of the +Castle and St. Michael's, the Transition work of the cathedral, the +very early lancet windows of St. Giles' Church (consecrated by the +great St. Hugh of Lincoln himself), the Decorated Style as seen in +St. Mary's spire and in Merton chapel, the glories of the specially +English style, the Perpendicular, in Wykeham's work at New College +and in Magdalen Tower, the Tudor magnificence of Wolsey's work at +Christ Church, the last flower of Gothic at Wadham and at St. John's, +the triumph of Wren's genius, alike in the classical style at the +Sheldonian and in "Gothic" as in Tom Tower, the Classical work of +Hawkesmore at Queen's and of Gibbs in the Radcliffe, the wonderful +beauty of Mr. Bodley's modern Gothic in St. Swithun's Quad at +Magdalen, and the skilful adaptation of old English tradition to +modern needs by Sir Thomas Jackson at Trinity and at Hertford--what +other city can show such a series of architectural beauties? And it +must not be forgotten that Oxford disputes with York the honour of +having the most representative sequence of painted glass windows in +England. Oxford, indeed, is a paradise for the student of Art. +Nowhere, except at Cambridge, can the series of architectural works +be paralleled, and at both universities the charm of their ancient +buildings is enhanced by their beautiful setting in college gardens. + +It is not an accident that in the old universities more than anywhere +else, so much of beauty has survived, nor is it to be put down as a +happy piece of academic conservatism. It is rather the natural result +of their constitution and endowment. What has been so fatal to the +beauty of old England elsewhere has been material prosperity. The +buildings inherited from the past had to go, at least so it was +thought, because they were not suited to modern methods, or because +the site they occupied was worth so much more for other purposes. But +the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge could not carry on their work on +different sites; "residence" was an essential of academic +arrangements; and there was no temptation to the fellows of a college +to make money by parting with their old buildings, for their incomes +were determined by Statute, and any great increase of wealth would +not advantage individual fellows. Hence, while great nobles and great +merchants sold their splendid houses and grounds, and grew rich on +the unearned increment, and while non-residential universities moved +bodily from their old positions to new and more fashionable quarters, +Oxford and Cambridge colleges went on working and living in the same +places. Much the same reasons have preserved, in many old towns, +picturesque alms-houses, to show the modern world how beautiful +buildings once could be, while all around them reigns opulent +ugliness. Certain it is that only in one instance, in recent times, +has an Oxford college contemplated selling its old site and buildings +and migrating to North Oxford, and then the sacrilegious attempt was +outvoted. Hence, as has been said, the two old English Universities +possess in an unique degree the + + "Strange enchantments of the past + And memories of the days of old." + +The charms of Oxford for the historical student and for the lover of +Art have been spoken of. But a large part of the world comes under +neither head; to it the charm of Oxford consists in the young lives +that are continually passing through it. Oxford and Cambridge present +ever attractive contrasts between their young students and their old +buildings, between the first enthusiasm of ever new generations, and +customs and rules which date back to mediaeval times. + +But apart from the charm of contrast, Oxford has everything to make +life attractive for young men. It is true that the old buildings +combine with a dignity a millionaire could not surpass a standard of +material comfort which in some respects is below that of an up-to- +date workhouse. An amusing instance has occurred of this during the +war. The students of one of the women's colleges, expelled from their +own modern buildings, which had been turned into a hospital, became +tenants of half of one of the oldest colleges. It was very romantic +thus to gain admission to the real Oxford, but the students soon +found that it was very uncomfortable to have their baths in an out- +of-the-way corner of the college. And baths themselves are but a +modern institution at Oxford; at one or two colleges still the old +"tub in one's room" is the only system of washing. Perhaps this +instance may be thought frivolous, but it is typical of Oxford, which +has been described, with some exaggeration in both words, as a home +of "barbaric luxury." + +But after all, comfort in the material sense is the least important +element in completeness of life. Oxford has everything else, except, +it is true, a bracing climate. She has society of every kind, in +which a man ranks on his merits, not on his possessions; he is valued +for what he is, not for what he has; she gives freedom to her sons to +live their own life, with just sufficient restraint to add piquancy +to freedom, and to restrain those excesses which are fatal to it; she +has intellectual interests and traditions, which often really affect +men who seem indifferent to them; life in her, as a rule, is not +troubled by financial cares--for her young men, most of them, either +through old endowments or from family circumstances, have for the +moment enough of this world's goods. In view of all this, and much +more, is it not natural that Oxford has a charm for her sons? And +this is enhanced with many by all the force of hereditary tradition; +the young man is at his college because his father was there before +him; the pleasure of each generation is increased by the reflection +of the other's pleasure. What traditional feeling in Oxford means +may, perhaps, be illustrated by the story of an old English worthy, +though one only of the second rank. Jonathan Trelawney, one of the +Seven Bishops who defied James II, was a stout Whig, but when it was +proposed to punish Oxford for her devotion to the Pretender, the +Government found they could not reckon on his vote, though he was +usually a safe party man. "I must be excused from giving my vote for +altering the methods of election into Christ Church, where I had my +bread for twenty years. I would rather see my son a link boy than a +student of Christ Church in such a manner as tears up by the roots +that constitution." + +But the days of hereditary tradition are over, and Trelawney belongs +to an age long past; Oxford now is exposed to an influence compared +to which the arbitrary proceedings of a king are feeble. A democratic +Parliament with a growing Labour party has far more power to change +Oxford than the Stuarts ever had, and even at this moment (1919) a +third Royal Commission is beginning to sit. Will it modify, will it-- +transform Oxford? + +The first answer seems to be that the very stones of Oxford are +charged with her traditions. During the War the colleges have been +full of officer-cadets; they were men of all ranks of life and of +every kind of education; they came from all parts of the world; they +were of all ages, from eighteen to forty, at least. Their training +was a strenuous one by strict rule, a complete contrast to the free +and easy life of academic Oxford. Yet in their few months of +residence, most of them became imbued with the college spirit; they +considered themselves members of the place they lived in; they tried +to do most of the things undergraduates do. If Oxford thus, to some +extent, moulded to her pattern men who, welcome as they were, were +only accidental, surely the college spirit may be trusted to +assimilate whatever material the changed conditions of social or of +political life furnish to it. The hope of many at Oxford is that +there will be a great development and a great change. On one side it +will be good if Oxford becomes to a much greater extent not only an +all-British, but also a world university; on another side it is to be +hoped that far more than ever before men of all classes in England +will come to Oxford. It would surprise many of the University's +critics to find how much had already been done in these directions. +It is certainly not true now that, as one of Oxford's critics wrote, + + "Too long, too long men saw thee sit apart + From all the living pulses of the hour." + +On the contrary, the Oxford of the last generation has already become +markedly more cosmopolitan, and she has been drawing to her an ever- +increasing number of able men of every class. + +But these developments, thus begun, will certainly be carried much +further in the near future. Oxford will be altered. Some of her +customs will be changed. This may well issue in great and lasting +good, though there will be loss as well as gain. But an Oxford man +may be pardoned if he believes and hopes that his university will +remain the university he has loved. There is a saying current in +Oxford about Oxford men, which may not be out of place here--"If you +meet a stranger, and if after a time you say to him, 'I think you +were at Oxford,' he accepts it, as a matter of course, and is +pleased. If you do the same to a Cambridge man, he indignantly +replies, 'How do you know that?'" No doubt the saying is turned the +other way round at Cambridge, and no doubt it is equally true and +equally false of both universities, i.e. it is positively true and +negatively false, like so many other statements. But it is positively +true; the Oxford man is proud of having been at Oxford; the past and +the present alike, his political and his religious beliefs, his +traditions and his social surroundings, all endear Oxford to him. May +it ever be so. + + + + +RADCLIFFE SQUARE + + + "Like to a queen in pride of place, she wears + The splendour of a crown in Radcliffe's dome." + L. JOHNSON. + + [Plate III. View of Radcliffe Square] + +The visitor to Oxford often asks--"Where is the University?" The +proper answer is: "The University is everywhere," for the colleges +are all parts of it. But if a distinction must be made, and some +buildings must be shown which are especially "University Buildings," +then it is undoubtedly in the Square, of which this picture shows one +side, that they must be found. Immediately on the right is the +Bodleian Library, the domed building in the centre is the Radcliffe +Library, and in the background rises the spire of St. Mary's. Of this +last building the tower and spire go back nearly to the beginnings of +Oxford; they date from the time of Edward I; but for a century, at +least, before they were erected, the students of Oxford had met for +worship and for business in the earlier church, which stood on the +site of the present St. Mary's. + +The Bodleian Library occupies the old Examination Schools, which were +built, in the reign of James I, for the reformed University of +Archbishop Laud; within the memory of men who do not count themselves +old, the university examinations were still held in this building. +Finally, the shapely dome between the Bodleian and St. Mary's is the +work of James Gibbs, the greatest English architect of the eighteenth +century, to whom Cambridge owes its Senate House, and London the +noble church of St. Martin's in the Fields. The dome was built for a +separate library, the foundation of Dr. John Radcliffe, Queen Anne's +physician, the most munificent of Oxford benefactors; it is still +managed by his trustees, a body independent of the University, but +since 1861 they have lent it to the Bodleian Library for a reading- +room. It is fitting that the oldest public library in the modern +world, a title the Bodleian can proudly claim, should have the finest +reading-room, where 400 students can have each his separate desk, and +where, if so minded and so physically enduring, they can put in +twelve hours' work in a day. No other great library in Europe allows +such privileges. + +Round these three University buildings are grouped three colleges: +Hertford, the youngest of Oxford foundations, the re-creation of an +old hall by a Victorian financial magnate. Sir Thomas Baring; All +Souls', standing a little beyond, of which the part here shown is the +corner of the great Law Library, founded by Sir William Codrington in +the days of good Queen Anne; while on the other side of the Radcliffe +is Brasenose College (for pictures of which see Plates II and XV). No +non-academic building fronts on the Square; the one or two houses +facing on the south-west corner are occupied by college tutors. The +academic influence has spread even under the earth, for between the +Bodleian and the Radcliffe there is a great subterranean chamber of +two stories, excavated 1909-1910, which, when full, will contain +1,000,000 books. + +It is refreshing to turn from the thought of so much dead industry, +as these multitudes of unread books will represent, to the +inspiration of the buildings. They are the very epitome of Oxford. +The classic symmetry of Gibbs' dome looks across at the soaring spire +of the mediaeval University Church, while the Bodleian is one of the +best examples of the Jacobean Gothic, which still held its own in +Oxford when the classical style was triumphing elsewhere. Such +contrasts are typical of Oxford. The University had a European +reputation in the days when it was one of the two great centres of +mediaeval scholasticism. Roger Bacon, the most famous name in +mediaeval science, no doubt saw the tower of St. Mary's beginning to +rise. The University welcomed the Classical Revival, it survived the +storms of the Reformation, it was the great centre of the building up +of Anglican theology under the Laudian rule, it was one of the +inspirations of English science in the seventeenth century, though +Dr. Radcliffe's generous benefactions are a little later, and have +hardly begun to yield their full fruit till our own day. Such are the +learned traditions of the Radcliffe Square, while it has also been +the centre of the young lives which, for seven centuries at least, +have enjoyed their happiest years in Oxford. + +The view from the Radcliffe roof is undoubtedly the best in Oxford. +It has been thus described by the worst of the many poets who have +celebrated the University: + + "Spire, tower and steeple, roofs of radiant tile, + The costly temple and collegiate pile, + In sumptuous mass of mingled form and hue, + Await the wonder of thy sateless view." + +But Robert Montgomery is more likely to be remembered for Macaulay's +merciless but well-deserved chastisement than for his praises of +Oxford. Even their utter bathos cannot degrade a group of buildings +so wonderful. + + + + +THE BROAD STREET + + "Ye mossy piles of old munificence, + At once the pride of learning and defence." + J. WARTON, /Triumph of Isis/ + +The east side of the University buildings proper was shown in the +last picture (Plate III); in the following (Plate IV), the north side +of the same block is seen. The old University "schools" lay just +inside the city wall, and Broad Street, which is there represented, +occupies the site of the ditch, which ran on the north of the wall. +This picture is a fitting supplement to the last, for the Sheldonian +Theatre on the right of it and the Clarendon Building in the +background may claim rank even with the Bodleian and the Radcliffe as +the University's special buildings. + +The Sheldonian celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary +only last year (1919), when the music which had been performed at its +opening was performed once more. It is a building interesting from +many points of view. Architecturally it marks the first complete +flowering of the genius of Sir Christopher Wren. He was only thirty- +seven when it was completed, and had been previously known rather as +a man of science than as an architect; he was Oxford's Professor of +Astronomy; but Archbishop Sheldon chose him to build a worthy meeting +place for his University, even as at the same time he was being +called by the king to prepare plans for rebuilding London after the +Great Fire. + +The very existence of the Sheldonian marks the development of +University ideas. The simple piety--or was it the worldliness?--of +Pre-Reformation Oxford had seen nothing unsuitable in the ceremonies +of graduate Oxford and the ribaldries of undergraduate Oxford taking +place in the consecrated building of St. Mary's; but the more sober +genius of Anglicanism was shocked at these secular intrusions, and +Sheldon provided his University with a worthy home, where its great +functions have been performed ever since. + +The building is a triumph of construction; it is doubtful if so large +an unsupported roof can be found elsewhere; but Wren is not to be +held responsible for the outside ugly flat roof, which was put on 100 +years ago, because it was said, quite falsely, that Wren's roof was +unsafe. That architect had set himself the problem of getting the +greatest number of people into the space at his disposal, and he +managed to fit in a building that will hold 1,500. It was also +intended for the Printing Press of the University, but was only used +in that way for a short time, as in 1713 Sir John Vanbrugh put up the +Clarendon Building, to house this department of University activity. +The "heaviness" of Vanbrugh's buildings was a jest even in his own +time; someone wrote as an epitaph for him + + "Lie heavy on him. Earth, for he + Laid many a heavy load on thee." + +Blenheim Palace, his greatest work, is indeed a "heavy load." But the +same criticism can hardly be brought against the columned portico, +which forms a fine ending for the Broad Street. Vanbrugh's building +was superseded in its turn, when the increasing business of the +Oxford Printing Press was moved to the present building in 1830. + + [Plate IV. Sheldonian Theatre, etc., Broad Street] + +Since then, all kinds of University business have been carried on in +the old Printing Press. The University Registrar and the University +Treasurer (his style is "Secretary of the University Chest") have +their offices there; the Proctors exercise discipline from there; the +various University delegacies and committees meet there. And another +side of Oxford life, not yet (in January 1920) fully recognized as +belonging to the University, has found a home there; the top floor +has been for twenty years past the centre of women's education in +Oxford, a position elevated indeed, for it is up more than fifty +stairs, but commodious and dignified when reached at last. + +Perhaps the Clarendon Building has gained in lightness of effect by +being contrasted with the clumsy mass of the Indian Institute, which +forms the background of our picture. The nineteenth century proudly +criticized the taste of the eighteenth; but it may well be doubted if +any building in Oxford of the earlier and much-abused century is more +inartistic and inappropriate than "Jumbo's Joss House," which used to +rouse the scorn and anger of the late Professor of History, Edward A. +Freeman. + +No Oxford colleges are in this picture, though a small part of +Exeter, one of Sir Gilbert Scott's least happy erections in Oxford, +appears on the right, and a little piece of Trinity on the left; the +last-named is the college of Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, +better known as "Q," one of the most delightful of Oxford's minor +poets. The opening lines of his poem, "Alma Mater," + + "Know ye her secret none can utter, + Hers of the book, the tripled crown? + Still on the spire the pigeons flutter, + Still by the gateway flits the gown, + Still in the street from corbel and gutter + Faces of stone look down," + +may well have been inspired by this very scene in the Broad, for the +grim faces of stone that surround the Sheldonian are one of the +features and the puzzles of Oxford. Are they the Roman Emperors, or +the Greek Philosophers, or neither? It does not matter, for they are +unlike anything in heaven or in earth, and yet they are loved by all +true Oxford men for their uncompromising ugliness, which has been +familiar to so many generations. + + + +BALLIOL COLLEGE + + "For the house of Balliol is builded ever + By all the labours of all her sons, + And the great deed wrought and the grand endeavour + Will be hers as long as the Isis runs." + F. S. BOAS + +The story is told of the old Greek admirals, after their victory at +Salamis over the Persian king, that, when invited to name the two +most deserving commanders, they each put their own name first, and +then one and all put the Athenian Themistocles second. If a vote, on +these principles, were taken in Oxford as to which was the best +college, there is little doubt that Balliol would secure most of the +second votes. + +It is one of the three oldest colleges, and actually has been in +occupation of its present site longer than any other of our Oxford +foundations--for more than six centuries and a half. Yet its +greatness is but a thing of yesterday compared to the antiquity of +Oxford, and it is fitting that a college which has come to the front +in the nineteenth century should be mainly housed in nineteenth +century buildings. + +Balliol has indeed ceased to be the "most satisfactory pile and range +of old lowered and gabled edifices," which Nathaniel Hawthorne saw in +the "fifties" of the last century. The painful imitation of a French +chateau, the work of Sir Alfred Waterhouse, which forms the main part +of our picture, was put up about 1868 (mainly by the munificence of +Miss Hannah Brackenbury), and only the old hall and the library, +which lie behind, remain of Pre-Reformation Balliol. + +In the background of our picture (Plate V) can be seen the Fisher +Building, known to all Balliol men for the still existing +inscription, "Verbum non amplius Fisher," which tradition says was +put up at the dying request of the eighteenth-century benefactor. + +While it is true that the pre-eminence of Balliol is a growth of the +nineteenth century, yet the college can count among its worthies one +of the greatest names in English mediaeval history, that of John +Wycliffe. He was probably a scholar of Balliol, and certainly Master +for some years about 1360. But he left the college for a country +living, and his time at Balliol is not associated with either of his +most important works--his translation of the Bible or his order of +"Poor Preachers." While at Balliol, he was rather "the last of the +Schoolmen" than "the first of the Reformers." + +The modern greatness of Balliol is due to the fact that the college +awoke more rapidly from the sleep of the eighteenth century than most +of Oxford, and as early as 1828 threw open its scholarships to free +competition. Hence even as early as the time of Dr. Arnold at Rugby, +a "Balliol scholarship" had become "the blue riband of public-school +education." It has now passed into popular phraseology to such an +extent that lady novelists, unversed in academic niceties, confer a +"Balliol scholarship" on their heroes, even when entering Cambridge. + +Balliol has known how to take full advantage of its opportunity. +Governed by a series of eminent masters, especially Dr. Scott of +Greek dictionary fame, and Professor Jowett, the translator of Plato +and the hero of more Oxford stories than any other man, it has been +ready to adapt itself to every new movement. While the governing +bodies of other colleges in the middle of the last century were too +often looking only to raising their own fellowships to the highest +possible point, the Balliol dons were denying their own pockets to +enrich and strengthen their college. + +Hence, undoubtedly, Balliol for a long time past has had a lion's +share of Oxford's great men; two Archbishops of Canterbury, Tait and +Temple, the present Archbishop of York, Cardinal Manning, a Prime +Minister in Mr. Asquith, a Speaker in Lord. Peel, two Viceroys of +India in Lord Lansdowne and Lord Curzon, poets like Clough, Matthew +Arnold and Swinburne, these are only some of the more outstanding +names. It is this which makes Balliol Hall so particularly +interesting to the ordinary man; knowledge of present-day affairs, +not of history, is all that is needed to appreciate its array of +portraits. + +Nor has Balliol been unmindful of the social movements of our time. +It is the chosen home of the Workers' Educational Association in +Oxford, and in Arnold Toynbee it produced one of the pioneers and +martyrs of modern social progress. Truly Balliol has much more to +show to the visitor than its ultra-modern front on the Broad would +promise. + +The street, on which Balliol looks out, is associated with the most +famous scene of Oxford history; the stone with a cross in the middle +of the road marks the traditional site of the burning of the bishops, +Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, although their memorial has been +erected 200 yards further north in St. Giles', and though +antiquarians argue (probably correctly) that the actual pyre was a +little further south, in fact, behind the present row of Broad Street +houses. + +But it is the living activity of the college, not the sad memories of +the street in front, that gives the interest to the picture. The +intellectual life of the Balliol men has been well described by +Professor J. C. Shairp, whose verses on "Balliol Scholars" are likely +to be remembered by Oxford in long days to come for their +associations, if not for their poetic merits. He describes what a +privilege it is "to have passed," with men who became famous +afterwards, + + "The threshold of young life, + Where the man meets, not yet absorbs, the boy, + And ere descending to the dusky strife, + Gazed from clear heights of intellectual joy + That an undying image left enshrined." + + This will come home to many, as they think on their happy Oxford +days when they had life all before them, even though their +contemporaries have not become archbishops like Temple or poets like +Matthew Arnold. + + [Plate V. Balliol College, Broad Street Front] + + + + +MERTON COLLEGE + + + "I passed beside the reverend walls + In which of old I wore the gown." + TENNYSON. + + + [Plate VI. Merton College : The Tower] + +Merton is not only the oldest college in Oxford, it is also, as is +claimed on the monument of the founder, Walter de Merton, in his +Cathedral of Rochester, the model of "omnium quotquot extant +collegiorum." Peterhouse, the first college at Cambridge, which was +founded (1281) seven years later than Merton, had its statutes +avowedly copied from those of its Oxford predecessor. + +So important a new departure in education calls for special notice. +It is interesting to see how the English college system grew out of +the long rivalry between the Regular and the Secular clergy which was +so prominent in the mediaeval church. The Secular clergy, who had in +their ranks all the "professional men" of the day, civil servants, +architects, physicians, as well as, those devoted to religious +matters in the strict sense, were always jealous of the monks and the +friars, who, living by a "rule" in their communities, were much less +in sympathy with English national feelings than the Seculars, who +lived among the laity. Hence the growing influence of the Regular +Orders, especially of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, in +thirteenth-century Oxford, excited the alarm of a far-seeing prelate +like Walter de Merton. There was a real danger that the most +prominent and best of the students might be drawn into the great new +communities, which were rapidly adding to their learning and their +piety the further attractions of great buildings and splendid +ceremonial. + +The founder of Merton had the same purpose as the founder of the +College of the Sorbonne at Paris, a slightly earlier institution +(1257). He intended that his college should rival the houses of the +Dominicans and the Franciscans. These friaries were in the southern +part of Oxford, and have completely perished, leaving behind only the +names of two or three mean streets; but the college system which +Walter de Merton founded has grown with the growth of Oxford and of +England, and is to-day as vigorous and as useful as ever. + +Walter de Merton provided his fellows with noble buildings, at once +for their common life and for their own private accommodation, and +also with endowments sufficient to enable them to live in comfort, +free from anxiety; most important of all, he gave them powers of +self-government, so that they might recruit their own numbers and +carry out for themselves the objects prescribed by him in his +Statutes. + +In this great foundation then the three characteristic features of a +college are found--a common life, powers of self-government, with the +right of choosing future members, and endowments that enable religion +and learning to flourish, free from more pressing cares. It is these +features which distinguish the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and +which have determined their history. + +Walter de Merton definitely prescribed that none of the fellows who +benefited by his foundation should be monks or friars; to take the +vows involved forfeiture of a fellowship. He also especially urged on +the members of his society that, when any of them rose to "ampler +fortune" /(uberior fortuna)/, they should not forget their /alma +mater/. + +The founder died in 1277, so that none of the college buildings were +complete in his time, except perhaps the treasury, which, with its +high-pitched roof of stone, lies in the opposite corner of the Mob +Quad to that shown in our picture. Why the Quad is called "The Mob +Quad," nobody knows. As was fitting, the chapel was the first part of +the college to be finished--about 1300--and it is a splendid specimen +of early Geometrical Gothic; it retains a little of the old glass, +given by one of the early fellows. + +The north side of the Mob Quad, which is shown in our picture, is +very little later than the Chapel, and the whole of the Quad was +finished before 1400; the rooms in it have been the homes of Oxford +men for more than five centuries. It is sad to think that so unique a +building was almost destroyed in the middle of the nineteenth +century, by the zeal of "reformers"; it was actually condemned to be +pulled down, to make way for modern buildings, but, fortunately, +there was an irregularity in the voting. Mr. G. C. Brodrick, then a +young fellow, later the Warden of the college, insisted on the matter +being discussed again at a later meeting, and at this the Mob Quad +was saved by a narrow majority. "He will go to Heaven for it," as +Corporal Trim said of the English Guards, who saved his broken +regiment at Steinkirk. + +The "reformers" of Merton had to be content with cutting down their +beautiful "Grove" and spoiling the finest view in Oxford by erecting +the ugliest building which Mid-Victorian taste inflicted on the +University. + +In the old buildings which so narrowly escaped destruction may have +lived John Wycliffe, who is claimed as a fellow of Merton in an +almost contemporary list; his activity in Oxford belongs rather to +the later time, when he was Master of Balliol. His is one of the +outstanding names in English history; the success of Merton in +producing great men of a more ordinary kind can be judged from the +fact that between 1294 and 1366 six out of the seven Archbishops of +Canterbury were Merton men. + +In the great period of the seventeenth century, Merton had the +distinction of being one of the few colleges which were +Parliamentarian in sympathy. Hence the Warden was deposed by King +Charles, who installed in his place a really great man, William +Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. But the king +did more harm than good to the college; it was turned into lodgings +for Queen Henrietta Maria and her court, and ladies were intruded and +children born within college walls. These proceedings were +respectable, though unusual; but the college was even more humiliated +by the visit of Charles II, who installed there, among other court +ladies, the notorious Duchess of Cleveland. The college, however, +with the Revolution, returned to less courtly views, and its Whig +connection found an honourable representative in Richard Steele, the +founder of the /Tatler/. It is not surprising that so cheerful a +gentleman left Oxford without a degree, but "with the love of the +whole society." The college register specially notes his gift of his +/Tatler/; he was acting on the sound rule, by no means so universally +followed as it ought to be, that Oxford authors should present their +books to their college library. + +Merton, as has been said, is the "type" college, if one may thus +apply a scientific term; hence it is fitting that to it belong the +two men to whom perhaps Oxford owes most. Thomas Bodley was a fellow +and lecturer in Greek there, before he left Oxford for diplomacy, and +accumulated that wealth which he used to endow the oldest and the +most fascinating, if not the largest, of British libraries. And among +the men who have gained from "the rare books in the public library" a +way to a "perfect elysium," none better deserves remembrance than the +Mertonian, Antony Wood, whose monument stands in Merton Chapel, but +who has raised /monumentum aere perennius/ to himself, in his +/History of the University of Oxford/ and his /Athenae Oxonienses/. + + [Plate VII. Merton College : The Library Interior] + + + + +MERTON LIBRARY + + + "Hail, tree of knowledge! thy leaves fruit; which well + Dost in the midst of Paradise arise, + Oxford, the Muses' paradise, + From which may never sword the blest expel. + Hail, bank of all past ages! where they lie + To enrich, with interest, posterity." + COWLEY. + +"The appearance of the library" (at Merton), says the great Cambridge +scholar, J. Willis Clark, in his /Care of Books/, "is so venerable, +so unlike any similar room with which I am acquainted, that it must +always command admiration." + +He classes it with the libraries at Oxford of Corpus, St. John's, +Jesus, and Magdalen, and he regretfully adds that no college library +in his own University has retained the same old features as these +have done. But none of the four can compare with Merton, either in +antiquarian interest or in picturesqueness; it stands in a class by +itself. + +The Library was built by the munificence of Bishop Reed of Chichester +between 1377 and 1379; the dormer windows, however (seen in Plate +VII), are later in date. The bookcases in the larger room were made +in 1623; one of the original half cases, however, was spared, that +nearest to the entrance on the north side, and this is the most +interesting single feature in the whole library. It need hardly be +said that the reading-desk in early times was actually attached to +the bookcase; the library then was a place to read in, not one from +which books were taken to be read. The books were to be kept "in some +common and secure place," and they were "chained in the library +chamber for the common use of the fellows" (J. W. Clark). + +The old case that has been retained still has its chained books, and +traces of the arrangement for chains can be seen in the other cases. +Merton was one of the last libraries in Oxford to keep its books in +chains; these were only removed in 1792; in the Bodleian the work had +been begun a generation earlier (in 1757). + +Not all books, however, were chained; by special arrangements in old +college statutes, some of them were allowed out to the fellows. The +register of Merton contains interesting entries as to how the books +were distributed, e.g. on August 26, 1500, "choice was made of the +books on philosophy; it was found there were in all 349 books, which +were then distributed." This was a large number: at King's, +Cambridge, less than half a century before, there were only 174 books +on all subjects, and in the Cambridge University Library in 1473, +only 330. + +If a book was borrowed, great precautions were taken; the Warden of +Merton in 1498 had to obtain the leave of the college to take out a +book which he wanted; then, "in the presence of the four seniors," he +received his book, depositing two volumes of St. Jerome's +Commentaries as pledges for its safe return. A similar ceremony, with +a similar entry in the register, marked the replacement of the book +in the library. Though printing was already beginning to multiply +books, yet then, and for long after, a book was a most valuable +possession. The features of these venerable tomes are well described +by Crabbe: + + "That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid, + Those ample clasps, of solid metal made, + The close pressed leaves, unclosed for many an age, + The dull red edging of the well-filled page, + On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled, + Where yet the title shines in tarnished gold, + These all a sage and laboured work proclaim, + A painful candidate for lasting fame." + +Such books are numbered by hundreds in every college library, and it +is only too true of them that: + + "Hence in these times, untouched the pages lie + And slumber out their immortality." + +The reception of such a book in a library was an event, and the +record of one gift occupies six whole lines in the Merton Register; +its donors are named as "two venerable men," and the entry sweetly +concludes, "Let us, therefore, pray for them." + +The library, problem, acute everywhere, is perhaps especially so in a +college library. How can it keep pace with the multiplicity of +studies? How should it deal with books indispensable for a short +time, perhaps for one generation, and then superseded? Even apart +from the question of the cost of purchase, the amount of space +available is small, considering modern needs. These problems and such +as these have not yet been solved by college librarians; but the +college library, quite apart from the books in it, is an education in +itself. The old days of neglect are past, the days reflected in the +scandalous story--told of more than one college--about the old fellow +who was missing for two months, and, after being searched for high +and low, was found hanging dead in the college library. Now the +libraries everywhere are being used continually, and men can realize +in them, perhaps better than anywhere else, how great the past of +Oxford has been, and can form some idea of the labours of forgotten +generations, which have made the University what it was and what it +is. + +Every library has its treasures, to show the present generation how +beautiful an old book can be which was produced in days when its +production was not a mere publisher's speculation, but the work of a +scholar seeking to promote knowledge and advance the cause of Truth. +And it does not require much imagination for a student, in a building +like Merton Library, to conjure up the picture of his mediaeval +predecessor, sitting on his hard wooden bench, with his chained MSS. +volume on the shelf above, and poring over the crabbed pages in the +unwarmed, half-lighted chamber. If the picture brings with it the +thought of the transitoriness of human endeavour, and if the words of +the Teacher seem doubly true, "Of making of books there is no end, +and much study is a weariness of the flesh," yet in the fresh life of +young Oxford, such reflections are only salutary; pessimism, despair +of humanity, are not vices likely to flourish among undergraduates in +the healthy society of modern colleges. + +Those only, it might be said, can properly reform the present who +understand the past, and it is perhaps the spirit of the Merton +Library, at once old and new, which has inspired the statesmen whom +Merton has sent to take part in the government of Britain during the +last half-century. Lord Randolph Churchill, the founder of Tory +democracy, his present-day successor in the same role, Lord +Birkenhead, and the ever young Lord Halsbury are men of the type +which Walter de Merton wished to train, "for the service of God in +Church and State," men who champion the existing order, but who are +willing to develop and improve it on the old lines. + + + + + ORIEL COLLEGE + + + "Here at each coign of every antique street + A memory hath taken root in stone, + Here Raleigh shone." + L. JOHNSON. + + [Plate VIII. Oriel College and St. Mary's Church] + +It is a curious coincidence that three of the most troubled reigns of +English history have been marked by double college foundations in +Oxford. That of Henry VI, in spite of constant civil war, threatening +or actual, saw the beginnings of All Souls' and of Magdalen; the +short and sad reign of Mary Tudor restored to Oxford Trinity and St. +John's; and in an earlier century the ministers of Edward II, the +most unroyal of our Plantagenet kings, gave to Oxford Exeter and +Oriel. The king himself was graciously pleased to accept the honour +of the latter foundation, and his statue adorns the College Quad, +along with that of Charles I, in whose day the whole College was +rebuilt. The front may be compared architecturally with those of +Wadham and of University, which date from about the same period (the +first part of the seventeenth century), when, under the fostering +care of Archbishop Laud, Oxford increased greatly in numbers, in +learning, and in buildings. Though Oriel has neither the bold sweep +of University nor the perfect proportions of Wadham, it yet is a +pleasing building, at least in its front. + +Like New College, Oriel is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and, also +like New College, the name of "St. Mary's" early gave way to a +popular nickname. The College at once on its foundation received the +gift of a tenement called "L'Oriole," which occupied its present +site, and its name has displaced the real style of the College in +general use. + +It is only fitting that, as in our picture, St. Mary's Church should +be combined with Oriel, for the founder was Vicar of St. Mary's, and +the presentation to that living has ever since been in the hands of +the College. It was as a Fellow of Oriel that Newman became, in 1828, +Vicar of St. Mary's, from the pulpit of which, during thirteen years, +he moulded all that was best in the religious life of Oxford. The +glorious spire of the church was still new when the College was +founded. + +Oriel and its chapel are among the places for religious pilgrimage in +Oxford. As Lincoln draws from all parts of the world those who +reverence the name of John Wesley, so the Oxford Movement and the +Anglican Revival had their starting-point, and for some time their +centre, in Oriel. The connection of the College with the Movement was +not in either case a mere accident; the Oxford Revival, at any rate, +was profoundly influenced by the personality of Newman, and Newman, +both by attraction and by repulsion, was largely what Oriel made him. +Among those who were with him at the College were Archbishop Whately, +whose Liberalism repelled him, Hawkins, the Provost, whose views on +"Tradition" began to modify the Evangelicalism in which he had been +brought up, Keble, whose /Christian Year/ did more for Church +teaching in England than countless sermons, Pusey, already famous for +his learning and his piety, who was to give his name to the Movement, +and, slightly later, Church, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, the +historian of the Movement, and Samuel Wilberforce, who, as Bishop of +Oxford, was to show how profoundly it would increase the influence of +the English Church. + +Such a combination of famous names at one time is hardly found in the +history of any other college, and it would be easy to add others +hardly less known, who were also members of the same body at that +famous time. Hero-worshippers can still see the rooms where these +great men lived, and the Common Room in which they met and argued, in +the days when Oxford did less teaching and had more time for talking +and for thinking than the busy, hurrying ways of the twentieth +century allow. But Oriel has many other associations besides those of +the Oxford Movement. Walter Raleigh, the most fascinating of +Elizabethans, was a student there, and probably in Oxford met the +great historian of travel and discovery, Richard Hakluyt (a Christ +Church man), whose influence did so much to bring home to Oxford the +wonders of the strange worlds beyond the seas. It was probably also +through his connection with Oriel that Raleigh made the acquaintance +of Harriot, who shared in his colonial ventures in Virginia, and who +became the historian of that foundation, so full of importance as the +beginning of the new England across the Atlantic. It was only fitting +that the Raleigh of the nineteenth century, Cecil John Rhodes, should +also be an Oriel man, who was never weary of acknowledging what he +owed to Oxford, and who showed his faith in her by his works. The +Rhodes' Foundation expends his millions in bringing scholars to +Oxford from the whole world; already its influence has been great +during its twenty years of existence; what it will be in the future, +only the future can show. If Mr. Rhodes gave his millions to the +University, he gave his tens of thousands to his old College. The +result on the High Street is--to put it gently--not altogether happy; +but perhaps time may soften the lines of Mr. Champney's somewhat +uninspired front, though it is not likely to quicken interest in the +statues of the obscure provosts which adorn it. + + + + +QUEEN'S COLLEGE + + + "The building, parent of my young essays, + Asks in return a tributary praise; + Pillars sublime bear up the learned weight, + And antique sages tread the pompous height." + TICKELL. + +Queens's is one of the six oldest colleges in Oxford, and is far on +to celebrating its sexcentenary, but it has purged itself of the +Gothic leaven in its buildings more completely than any other Oxford +foundation. It does not even occupy its own old site, for the +building originally lay well back from the High Street. It was only +the "civilities and kindnesses" of Provost Lancaster which induced +the Mayor and Corporation of Oxford, in 1709, to grant to Queen's +College "for 1,000 years," "so much ground on the High Street as +shall be requisite for making their intended new building straight +and uniform." And so the most important of "the streamlike windings +of the glorious street" was in part determined by a corrupt bargain +between "a vile Whig" (as Hearne calls this hated Provost) and a +complaisant mayor. But much of the credit for the beauty of this part +of the High must also be given to the architect of University College +(seen in Plate IX on the left), who, whether by skill or by accident, +combined at a most graceful angle the two quads, erected with an +interval of some eighty years between them (1634 and 1719). + +A man must, indeed, be a Gothic purist who would wish away the +stately front quadrangle of Queen's, designed by Wren's favourite +pupil, Hawkmoor, while the master himself is said to be responsible +for the chapel of the College, the most perfect basilican church in +Oxford. + +If Queen's has been revolutionary in its buildings, it has been +singularly tenacious of old customs. Its members still assemble at +dinner to the sound of the trumpet (blown by a curious arrangement +/after/ grace has been said); it still keeps up the ancient and +honoured custom of bringing in the boar's head--"the chief service of +this land"--for dinner on Christmas Day; while on New Year's Day, the +Bursar still, as has been done for nearly 600 years, bids his guests +"take this and be thrifty," as he hands each a "needle and thread," +wherewith to mend their academic hoods; the /aiguille et fil/ is +probably a pun on the name of the founder, Robert Eglesfield. The +College at these festivities uses the loving, cup, given it by its +founder, perhaps the oldest piece of plate in constant use anywhere +in Great Britain; five and a half centuries of good liquor have +stained the gold-mounted aurochs' horn to a colour of unrivalled +softness and beauty. + +Robert Eglesfield was almoner of the good Queen Philippa, wife of +Edward III, and, like Adam de Brome, the founder of Oriel, he, too, +commended his college to a royal patron. Ever since his time, the +"Queen's College" has been under the patronage of the Queen's consort +of England, and the connection has been duly acknowledged by many of +them, especially by Henrietta Maria, the evil genius of Charles I, +and by Queen Caroline, the good genius of George II. Her present +Gracious Majesty, too, has recognized the college claim. The Queens +Regnant have no obligations to the college, but Queen Elizabeth gave +it the seal it still uses, and good Queen Anne was a liberal +contributor to the rebuilding of the college in her day; her statue +still adorns the cupola on the front to the High. + + [Plate IX. High Street] + +No doubt it was the royal connection which brought to Queen's, if +tradition may be trusted, two famous warrior princes, the Black +Prince and Henry V; though it is at least doubtful whether the +Queen's poet, Thomas Tickell, Addison's flattering friend, had any +authority for the picture he gives of their college life. He +describes them as: + + "Sent from the Monarch's to the Muses' Court, + Their meals were frugal and their sleeps were short; + To couch at curfew time they thought no scorn, + And froze at matins every winters morn." + +The College has an interesting portrait of the great Henry, which may +be authentic; but that of the Black Prince, which adorns the college +hall, is known to have been painted from a handsome Oxford butcher's +boy, in the eighteenth century. While we condemn the lack of historic +sense in the Provost and Fellows of that day, we may at least acquit +them of any intention of pacificist irony in their choice of a model. + +Queen's has had better poets than Tickell on its rolls, but, by a +curious chance, the two most eminent--Joseph Addison and William +Collins--were both tempted away from their first college by the +superior wealth and attractions of Magdalen. + +The old local connections which were such a marked feature in the +statutes of founders, and which so profoundly influenced Oxford down +to the Commission of 1854, have been almost swept away at other +colleges; but at Queen's they have always been strongly maintained. +It has been, and is, emphatically, a north-country college. Not the +least important factor in maintaining this tradition has been the +great benefaction of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, fondly and familiarly +known to all Queen's men as "Lady Betty." Steele wrote of her when +young, that to "love her was a liberal education"; this may have been +flattery, but her bounty, at any rate, has given a "liberal +education" to hundreds of north-country men, who come up from the +twelve schools of her foundation to her college at Oxford. + +It is interesting to note in Modern Oxford, attempts to re-establish +those local connections, which the wisdom of our ancestors +established, and which the self-complacency of Victorian reformers +"vilely cast away." + + + + +NEW COLLEGE (1) FOUNDER AND BUILDINGS + + "There the kindly fates allowed + Me too room, and made me proud, + Prouder name I have not wist, + With the name of Wykehamist." + L. JOHNSON. + + + [Plate X. New College : The Entrance Gateway] + +Among the "Founders" of Oxford colleges, three stand out pre-eminent +--all three bishops of Winchester and great public servants. If +Wolsey has undisputed claims for first place, there can be little +doubt that, in spite of the great public services of Bishop Foxe, the +Founder of Corpus, the second place must be assigned to William of +Wykeham, "sometime Lord High Chancellor of England, the sole and +munificent founder of the two St. Mary Winton colleges." Others, +beside Wykehamists, hear with pleasure the magnificent roll of the +titles of the Founder of New College, when one of his intellectual +sons occupies the University pulpit, and gives thanks for "founders +and benefactors, such as were William of Wykeham." + +In Oxford, without doubt, his great claim to be remembered will be +held to be his college with the school at Winchester, which he linked +to it. But he was also a reformer and a champion of Parliamentary +privilege in the days when the "Good Parliament" set to work to check +the misgovernment of Edward III in his dotage, and, as an architect, +he is equally famous as having given to Windsor Castle its present +shape, and as having secured the final triumph of the Perpendicular +style by his glorious nave at Winchester. + +William of Wykeham is a very striking instance of what is too often +Forgotten--viz., that in the Mediaeval Church all professional men, +and not simply spiritual pastors, found their work and their reward +in the ranks of the clergy. As "supervisor of the king's works," he +earned the royal favour, which, after sixteen years of service, +rewarded him with the rich bishopric of Winchester. Such a career and +such a reward seem to modern ideas incongruous, even as they did to +John Wycliffe, his great contemporary, who complained of men being +made bishops because they were "wise in building castles." But many +forms of service were needed to create England; Wykeham and Wycliffe +both have a place in the roll of its "Makers." At all events, if +Wykeham obtained his wealth by secular service, he spent it for the +promoting of the welfare of the Church, as he conceived it. The +purpose of his two colleges was to remedy the shortness of clergy in +his day, and to assist the /militia clericalis/, which had been +grievously reduced /pestilentiis, guerris et aliis mundi miseriis/ +(an obvious reference to the Black Death). + +New College was planned on a scale of magnificence which far exceeded +any of the earlier colleges. It was emphatically the "New College," +[1] and its foundation (it was opened in 1386) marks the final +triumph of the college system. + +[1] The popular name has entirety displaced its official style. +Rather more than a generation ago, an historically minded Wykehamist +tried to revive the proper style of his college, and headed all his +letters "The College, of St. Mary of Winchester, Oxford." The result +was disastrous for him; the replies came to the Vicar of St. Mary's, +to St. Mary's Hall, to Winchester, anywhere but to him; and very soon +practical necessity overcame antiquarian, propriety. + +Its Warden was to have a state corresponding to that of the great +mitred abbots; the stables, where he kept his six horses, on the +south side of New College Lane (to be seen in Plate X on the right), +show, by their perfect masonry, how well the architect-bishop chose +his materials and how skilfully they were worked. + +The entrance tower, in the centre of the picture, with its statues of +the Blessed Virgin and of the Founder in adoration below on her left, +was the abode of the Warden; but his lodgings, still the most +magnificent home in Oxford, extended in both directions from the +tower. + +Behind this front lay Wykeham's Quad, nestling under the shadow of +the towering chapel and hall on the north side. Here also, as in the +stables, the technical knowledge of the Founder is seen; his +"chambers," after more than 500 years, have still their old stone +unrenewed; while the third story, added 300 years later on (1674-5), +has had to be entirely refaced. + +But it is in the public buildings, and especially in the chapel, that +the greatness of Wykeham, as an architect, is best seen. In spite of +the destructive fanaticism of the Reformation, and the almost equally +destructive "restorations" of the notorious Wyatt, and of Sir Gilbert +Scott (who inexcusably raised the height of the roof), the chapel +still is indisputably the finest in Oxford. And its glass may +challenge a still wider field. The eight great windows in the ante- +chapel, dating from the Founder's time, rival the glories of the +French cathedrals; the windows of the chapel proper, whatever be +thought of their artistic success, are a unique instance of what +English glass-makers could do in the eighteenth century; and Sir +Joshua Reynolds' west window (the outside of which is seen in the +centre of the next picture) has at all events the suffrages of the +majority, who agree with Horace Walpole that it is "glorious," and +that "the sun shining through the transparencies has a magic effect." +It must be added, however, that Walpole soon changed his mind, and +was very severe on Sir Joshua's "washy virtues," which have been +compared to "seven chambermaids." + +Not the least interesting feature of the Founder's chapel is its +detached bell-tower, seen in the next picture, on the north side of +the cloisters. He obtained leave to place this on the city wall, a +large section of which the College undertook to maintain-thus adding +a permanent charm to their own garden. + +The magnificence of the Founder Bishop is well seen in his splendid +crozier, bequeathed to him by his college, and still preserved on the +north side of the chapel. The results of his work, for Oxford and for +learning, will be briefly told of in the next chapter. + + [Plate XI. New College : The Tower] + + + + +NEW COLLEGE (2) HISTORY + + + "Round thy cloisters, in moonlight, + Branching dark, or touched with white: + Round old chill aisles, where, moon-smitten, + Blanches the Orate, written + Under each worn old-world face." + L. JOHHSON. + +William of Wykeham's College had other marked features besides its +magnificent scale. Previous colleges had grown; at New College +everything was organized from the first. As the great architectural +History of Cambridge says: "For the first time, chapel, hall, +library, treasury, the Warden's lodgings, a sufficient range of +chambers, the cloister, the various domestic offices, are provided +for and erected without change of plan." The chapel especially gave +the model for the T shape, a choir and transepts without a nave, +which has become the normal form in Oxford. The influence of +Wykeham's building plan may be traced elsewhere also--at Cambridge +and even in Scotland. + +In these well-planned buildings, definite arrangements were made for +college instruction, as opposed to the general teaching open to the +whole University; special /informafores/ were provided, who were to +supervise the work of all scholars up to the age of sixteen. This +marks the beginning of the Tutorial System, which has ever since +played so great a part in the intellectual life of England's two old +Universities. + +Wykeham's scholars all came from Winchester, and were supposed to be +/pauperes/, but as one of the first, Henry Chichele, afterwards Henry +V's Archbishop of Canterbury and the Founder of All Souls', was a son +of the Lord Mayor of London, it is obvious that the qualification of +"poverty" was interpreted with some laxity. It was not until the +middle of the nineteenth century that others than Wykehamists were +admitted as scholars. + +The fact that a mere boy was elected to a position which provided for +him for life was not calculated to stimulate subsequent intellectual +activity, and Wykehamists themselves have been among the first to say +that the intellectual distinction of the great bishop's beneficiaries +has by no means corresponded to the magnificence of the foundation or +the noble intentions of the Founder. Antony Wood records in the +seventeenth century that there was already an "ugly proverb" as to +New College men--"Golden scholars, silver Bachelors, leaden Masters, +wooden Doctors," "which is attributed," he goes on, "to their rich +fellowships, especially to their ease and good diet, in which I think +they exceed any college else." + +The nineteenth century has changed all this; the small and close +college of pre-Commission days has become one of the largest and most +intellectual in the University; but Winchester men in their Oxford +college fully hold their own in every way against the scholars from +the world outside, who are now admitted to share with them the +advantages of Wykeham's foundation. + +The bishop's careful provision, however, of good teaching at his +school and in his college bore good fruit at first, whatever may have +been the result later. If Corpus is especially the college of the +revival of learning, New College had prepared the way, and the first +Englishman to teach Greek in Oxford was the New College fellow, +William Grocyn, whom Erasmus called the "most upright and best of all +Britons." From the same college, about the same time, came the patron +of Erasmus, Archbishop Warham, of whose saintly simplicity and love +of learning he gives so attractive a picture. Warham was not +forgetful of his old college, and presented the beautiful "linen +fold" panelling which still adorns the hall. + +At the time of the Reformation, New College was especially attached +to the old form of the faith, and it has been maintained that the +dangerous lowness of the wicket entrance in the Gate Tower was due to +the deliberate purpose of the governing body, who resolved that +everyone who entered the college, however Protestant his views, +should bow his head under the statue of the Blessed Virgin above. At +any rate, one New College man in the seventeenth century attributed +his perversion to "the lively memorials of Popery in statues and +pictures in the gates and in the chapel of New College." + +Certain it is that under Elizabeth, after the purging of the college +from its recusant fellows, who contributed a large share of the Roman +controversialists to the colleges of Louvain and Douai, Wykeham's +foundation sank, as has been said, into inglorious ease for two +centuries. Yet, during this period, it had the honour of producing +two of the Seven Bishops who resisted King James II's attack on the +English Constitution--one of them the saintly hymn writer, Thomas +Ken. And to the darkest days of the eighteenth century belongs the +most famous picture of the ideal Oxford life: "I spent many years, in +that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful +discipline and studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce +of gentlemen and of scholars; in a society where emulation without +envy, ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, +incited industry and awakened genius; where a liberal pursuit of +knowledge and a genuine freedom of thought was raised, encouraged, +and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by authority." +These were the words of Bishop Lowth, whose great work on /The Poetry +of the Hebrews/ was delivered as lectures for the Chair of Poetry at +Oxford. + +The spirit of Oxford has never been better described, and even that +bitter critic, the great historian Gibbon, admits that Lowth +practised what he preached, and that he was an ornament to the +University in its darkest period. Of the days of Reform a forerunner +was found in Sydney Smith, the witty Canon of St. Paul's. + +The names of New College men famous for learning or for political +success, during the last half-century, are too recent to mention, but +it is fitting to put on record that to New College belongs the sad +distinction of having the longest Roll of Honour in the late War. It +has lost about 250 of its sons, including four of the most +distinguished young tutors in Oxford; History and Philosophy, +Scholarship and Natural Science are all of them the poorer for the +premature loss of Cheesman and Heath, Hunter and Geoffrey Smith; +their names are familiar to everyone in Oxford, and they would have +been familiar some day to the world of scholars everywhere. /Dis +aliter visum est/. + + + + +LINCOLN COLLEGE + + + "This is the chapel; here, my son, + Thy father dreamed the dreams of youth, + And heard the words, which, one by one, + The touch of life has turned to truth." + NEWBOLT. + + + [Plate XII. Lincoln College : The Chapel Interior] + +The name of Lincoln College recalls a fact familiar to all students +of ecclesiastical history, though surprising to the ordinary man-- +viz., that Oxford, till the Reformation, was in the great diocese of +Lincoln, which stretched right across the Midlands from the Humber to +the Thames. This fact had an important bearing on the history of the +University; its bishop was near enough to help and protect, but not +near enough to interfere constantly. Hence arose the curious position +of the Oxford Chancellor, the real head of the mediaeval University +and still its nominal head; though an ecclesiastical dignitary, and +representing the Bishop, the Oxford Chancellor was not a cathedral +official, but the elect of the resident Masters of Arts. How +important this arrangement was for the independence of the University +will be obvious. + +The ecclesiastical position of Oxford is responsible also for the +foundation of four of its colleges; both Lincoln and Brasenose, +colleges that touch each other, were founded by Bishops of Lincoln; +Foxe and Wolsey, too, though holding other sees later, ruled over the +great midland diocese. + +Richard Fleming, the Bishop of Lincoln, who founded the college that +bears the name of his see, was in some ways a remarkable man. When +resident in Oxford, he had been prominent among the followers of John +Wycliffe and had shared his reforming views; but he was alarmed at +the development of his master's teaching in the hands of disciples, +and set himself to oppose the movement which he had once favoured. He +founded his "little college" with the express object of training +"theologians" "to defend the mysteries of the sacred page against +those ignorant laics, who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy +pearls." It is curious that Lincoln's great title to fame--and it is +a very great one--is that its most distinguished fellow was John +Wesley, the Wycliffe of the eighteenth century. + +The connection of Oxford and Lincoln College with Wesley and his +movement is no accidental one, based merely on the fact that he +resided there for a certain time. Humanly speaking, Wesley's +connection with Lincoln was a determining factor in his spiritual and +mental development, and it was while he was there that his followers +received the name of "Methodists," a name given in scorn, but one +which has become a thing of pride to millions. Wesley was a fellow of +Lincoln for nine years, from 1726 to 1735. During the most +impressionable years of a man's life--he was only twenty-three when +he was elected fellow--he was developing his mental powers by an +elaborate course of studies, and his spiritual life by the careful +use of every form of religious discipline which the Church +prescribed. A college, with its daily services and its life apart +from the world, rendered the practice of such discipline possible. It +was because Wesley and his followers, his brother Charles, George +Whitefield and others, observed this discipline so carefully that +they obtained their nickname. It is with good reason that Lincoln +Chapel is visited by his disciples from all parts of the world; it +has been little altered since his time, his pulpit is still here, and +the glass and the carving which make it very interesting, if not +beautiful, are those which he saw daily. + +The chapel is the memorial of the devotion to Lincoln of another +churchman, more successful than Wesley from a worldly point of view, +but now forgotten by all except professed students of history. John +Williams, Bishop of Lincoln from 1621 to 1641, was the last +ecclesiastic who "kept" the Great Seal of England. He had the +misfortune to differ from Laud on the Church Question of the day, and +was prosecuted before the Star Chamber for subornation of perjury, +and heavily fined. There seems no doubt that he was guilty; but it +was to advocacy of moderation and to his dislike of the king's +arbitrary rule that he owed the severity of his punishment. Whatever +his moral character, at all events he gave his college a beautiful +little chapel, which is often compared to the slightly older one at +Wadham; that of Lincoln is much the less spacious of the two, but in +its wood carvings, at any rate, it is superior. + +Lincoln had the ill-fortune, in the nineteenth century, to produce +the writer of one of those academic "Memoirs," which reveal, with a +scholar's literary style, and also with a scholar's bitterness, the +intrigues and quarrels that from time to time arise within college +walls. Mark Pattison is likely to be remembered by the world in +general because he is said to have been the original of George +Eliot's "Mr. Casaubon"; in Oxford he will be remembered not only for +the "Memoirs," but also as one who upheld the highest ideal of +"Scholarship" when it was likely to be forgotten, and who criticized +the neglect of "research." The personal attacks were those of a +disappointed man; the criticisms, one-sided as they were, were +certainly not unjustified. + +A university should certainly exist to promote learning, and Mark +Pattison, with all his unfairness, certainly helped its cause in +Oxford. But a university exists also for the promotion of friendships +among young men, and for the development of their social life. Of +this duty, Oxford has never been unmindful, and perhaps it is in +small colleges like Lincoln that the flowers of friendship best +flourish. It is needless to make comparisons, for they flourish +everywhere; but it is appropriate to quote, when writing of one of +the smaller Oxford colleges, the verses on this subject of a recent +Lincoln poet (now dead); they will come home to every Oxford man: + + "City of my loves and dreams, + Lady throned by limpid streams; + 'Neath the shadow of thy towers, + Numbered I my happiest hours. + Here the youth became a man; + Thought and reason here began. + Ah! my friends, I thought you then + Perfect types of perfect men: + Glamour fades, I know not how, + Ye have all your failings now," + +But Oxford friendships outlast the discovery that friends have +"failings"; as Lord Morley, who went to Lincoln in 1856, writes: +"Companionship (at Oxford) was more than lectures"; a friend's +failure later (he refers to his contemporary, Cotter Morison's +/Service of Man/) "could not impair the captivating comradeship of +his prime." + + + + +MAGDALEN COLLEGE (1) SITE AND BUILDINGS + + + "Where yearly in that vernal hour + The sacred city is in shades reclining, + With gilded turrets in the sunrise shining: + From sainted Magdalene's aerial tower + Sounds far aloof that ancient chant are singing, + And round the heart again those solemn memories bringing." + ISAAC WILLIAMS. + +Macaulay was too good a Cambridge man to appreciate an Oxford college +at its full worth; but he devotes one of his finest purple patches to +the praise of Magdalen, ending, as is fitting, "with the spacious +gardens along the river side," which, by the way, are not "gardens." +Antony Wood praises Magdalen as "the most noble and rich structure in +the learned world," with its water walks as "delectable as the banks +of Eurotas, where Apollo himself was wont to walk." To go a century +further back, the Elizabethan, Sir John Davies, wrote: + + "O honeyed Magdalen, sweete, past compare + Of all the blissful heavens on earth that are." + +Such praises could be multiplied indefinitely, and they are all +deserved. + +The good genius of Magdalen has been faithful to it throughout. The +old picturesque buildings on the High Street, taken over (1457) by +the Founder, William of Waynflete, from the already existing hospital +of St. John, were completed by his munificence in the most attractive +style of English fifteenth century domestic architecture; Chapel and +Hall, Cloisters and Founder's Tower, all alike are among the most +beautiful in Oxford. When classical taste prevailed, the +architectural purists of the eighteenth century were for sweeping +almost all this away, and had a plan prepared for making a great +classic quad; but wiser counsels, or lack of funds, thwarted this +vandalistic design, and only the north side of the new quad was +built, to give Magdalen a splendid specimen of eighteenth century +work, without prejudice to the old. And in our own day, the genius of +Bodley has raised in St. Swithun's Quad a building worthy of the best +days of Oxford, while the hideous plaster roof, with which the +mischievous Wyatt had marred the beauty of the hall, was removed, and +a seemly oak roof put in its place. It is a great thing to be +thankful for, that one set of college buildings in Oxford, though +belonging to so many periods, has nothing that is not of the best. + +But the great glory of Magdalen has not yet been mentioned. This is, +without doubt, its bell tower, which, standing just above the River +Cherwell, is worthily seen, whether from near or far. A most curious +and interesting custom is preserved in connection with it. Every May +morning, at five o'clock (in Antony Wood's time the ceremony was an +hour earlier), the choir mounts the tower and sings a hymn, which is +part of the college grace; in the eighteenth century, however, the +music was of a secular nature and lasted two hours. The ceremony has +been made the subject of a great picture by Holman Hunt, and has been +celebrated in many poems; the sonnet of Sir Herbert Warren, the +present President, may be quoted as worthily expressing something of +what has been felt by many generations of Magdalen men: + + "Morn of the year, of day and May the prime, + How fitly do we scale the steep dark stair, + Into the brightness of the matin air, + To praise with chanted hymn and echoing chime, + Dear Lord of Light, thy sublime, + That stooped erewhile our life's frail weeds to wear! + Sun, cloud and hill, all things thou fam'st so fair, + With us are glad and gay, greeting the time. + The College of the Lily leaves her sleep, + The grey tower rocks and trembles into sound, + Dawn-smitten Memnon of a happier hour; + Through faint-hued fields the silver waters creep: + Day grows, birds pipe, and robed anew and crowned, + Green Spring trips forth to set the world aflower." + +The tower was put to a far different use when, in the Civil War, it +was the fortress against an attack from the east, and stones were +piled on its top to overwhelm any invader who might force the bridge. + +Tradition connects this tower with the name of Magdalen's greatest +son, Thomas Wolsey, who took his B.A. about 1486, at the age of +fifteen, as he himself in his old age proudly told his servant and +biographer, Cavendish. Certainty he was first Junior and then Senior +Bursar for a time, while the tower was building, 1492-1504. But the +scandal that he had to resign his bursarship for misappropriation of +funds in connection with the tower may certainly be rejected. + +On the right of Magdalen Bridge, looking at the tower, as we see it +in the picture, stretches Magdalen Meadow, round which run the famous +water walks. The part of these on the north-west side is especially +connected with Joseph Addison, who was a fellow at Magdalen from 1697 +to 1711. He was elected "demy" (at Magdalen, scholars bear this name) +the first year (1689) after the Revolution, when the fellows of +Magdalen had been restored to their rights, so outrageously invaded +by King James. This "golden" election was famous in Magdalen annals, +at once for the number elected--seventeen--and for the fame of some +of those elected. Besides the greatest of English essayists, there +were among the new "demies," a future archbishop, a future bishop, +and the high Tory, Henry Sacheverell, whose fiery but unbalanced +eloquence overthrew the great Whig Ministry, which had been the +patron of his college contemporary. + +Magdalen Meadow preserves still the well-beloved Oxford fritillaries, +which are in danger of being extirpated in the fields below Iffley by +the crowds who gather them to sell in the Oxford market. + +Of the part of the College on the High Street, the most interesting +portion is the old stone pulpit (shown in Plate XIV). The connection +of this with the old Hospital of St. John is still marked by the +custom of having the University sermon here on St. John the Baptist's +Day; this was the invariable rule till the eighteenth century, and +the pulpit (Hearne says) was "all beset with boughs, by way of +allusion to St. John Baptist's preaching in the wilderness." Even as +early as Heame's time, however, a wet morning drove preacher and +audience into the chapel, and open-air sermons were soon given up +altogether, only to be revived (weather permitting) in our own day. + The chapel lies to the left of the pulpit, and is known all the +world over for its music; there are three famous choirs in Oxford-- +those of the Cathedral, of New College, and of Magdalen, and to the +last, as a rule, the palm is assigned. It is to Oxford what the choir +of King's is to Cambridge; but the chapel of Magdalen has not + + "The high embowed roof + With antique pillars massy proof, + And storied windows richly dight, + Casting a dim religious light" + +of the "Royal Saint's" great chapel at Cambridge. + + + + +MAGDALEN COLLEGE (2) HISTORY + + "Sing sweetly, blessed babes that suck the breast + Of this sweet nectar-dropping Magdalen, + Their praise in holy hymns, by whom ye feast, + The God of gods and Waynflete, best of men, + Sing in an union with the Angel's quires, + Sith Heaven's your house." + SIR J. DAVIES. + +Magdalen College was founded by William of Waynflete, Bishop of +Winchester, who had been a faithful minister of Henry VI. He had +served as both Master and Provost of the King's own college at Eton +(and also as Master of Winchester College before), and from Eton he +brought the lilies which still figure in the Magdalen shield. As a +member of the Lancastrian party, he fell into disgrace when the +Yorkists triumphed, but he made his peace with Edward IV, whose +statue stands over the west door of the chapel, with those of St. +Mary Magdalene, St. John the Baptist, St. Swithun (Bishop of +Winchester), and the Founder. And the Tudors were equally friendly to +the new foundation; Prince Arthur, Henry VIII's unfortunate elder +brother, was a resident in Magdalen on two occasions, and the College +has still a splendid memorial of him in the great contemporary +tapestry, representing his marriage with Catharine of Aragon. + +To the very early days of Magdalen belongs its connection with the +Oxford Reform Movement and the Revival of Learning. Both Fox and +Wolsey, successively Bishops of Winchester, and the munificent +founders of Corpus and of Cardinal (i.e. Christ Church) Colleges, +were members of Waynflete's foundation, and so probably was John +Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, whose learning and piety so impressed +Erasmus. "When I listen to my beloved Colet," he writes in 1499, "I +seem to be listening to Plato himself"; and he asks--why go to Italy +when Oxford can supply a climate "as charming as it is healthful" and +"such culture and learning, deep, exact and worthy of the good old +times ?" Erasmus' praise of Oxford climate is unusual from a +foreigner; the more usual view is that of his friend Vives, who came +to Oxford soon after as a lecturer at the new college of Corpus +Christi; he writes from Oxford: "The weather here is windy, foggy and +damp, and gave me a rough reception." + +Colet's lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, perhaps delivered in +Magdalen College, marked an epoch in the way of the interpretation of +Holy Scripture, by their freedom from traditional methods and by +their endeavour to employ the best of the New Learning in determining +the real meaning of the Apostle. To the same school as Colet in the +Church belonged Reginald Pole, Archbishop in the gloomy days of Queen +Mary, the only Magdalen man who has held the See of Canterbury. + +Elizabeth visited the College, and gently rebuked the Puritan +tendencies of the then President, Dr. Humphrey, who carried his +scruples so far as to object to the academical scarlet he had to wear +as a Doctor of Divinity, because it savoured of the "Scarlet Woman." +"Dr. Humphrey," said the queen, with the tact alike of a Tudor +sovereign and of a true woman, "methinks this gown and habit become +you very well, and I marvel that you are so strait-laced on this +point--but I come not now to chide." This President complained that +his headship was "more payneful than gayneful," a charge not usually +brought against headships at Oxford. + +In the seventeenth century, Magdalen was, for a short time, the very +centre of England's interest. James II, in his desire to force Roman +Catholicism on Oxford, tried to fill the vacant Presidency with one +of his co-religionists. His first nominee was not only disqualified +under the statutes, but was also a man of so notoriously bad a +character that even the king had to drop him. Meanwhile, the fellows, +having waited, in order to oblige James, till the last possible +moment allowed by the statutes, filled up the vacancy by electing one +of their own number, John Hough. When the king pronounced this +election irregular and demanded the removal of the President and the +acceptance of his second nominee, the fellows declared themselves +unable thus to violate their statutes, even at royal command, and +were accordingly driven out. The "demies," who were offered +nominations to the fellowships thus rendered vacant, supported their +seniors, and, in their turn, too, were driven out; they had showed +their contempt for James' intruded fellows by "cocking their hats" at +them, and by drinking confusion to the Pope. When the landing of +William of Orange was threatening, James revoked all these arbitrary +proceedings, but it was too late; he had brought home, by a striking +example, to Oxford and to England, that no amount of past services, +no worthiness of character, no statutes, however clear and binding, +were to weigh for a moment with a royal bigot, who claimed the power +to "dispense" with any statutes. The "Restoration" of the Fellows on +October 25, 1688, is still celebrated by a College Gaudy, when the +toast for the evening is /jus suum cuique/. + +Hough remained President for thirteen years, during most of which +time he was bishop--first of Oxford and then of Lichfield. He finally +was translated to Worcester, where he died at the age of ninety- +three, after declining the Archbishopric of Canterbury. His monument, +in his cathedral, records his famous resistance to arbitrary +authority. + +Magdalen in the eighteenth century has an unenviable reputation, +owing to the memoirs of its most famous historian, Edward Gibbon, who +matriculated, in 1752, and who describes the fourteen months which +elapsed before he was expelled for becoming a Roman Catholic, "as the +most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." The "Monks of +Magdalen," as he calls the fellows, "decent, easy men," "supinely +enjoyed the gifts of the founder." It should be added that Gibbon was +not quite fifteen when he entered the College, and that his picture +of it is no doubt coloured by personal bitterness. But its +substantial justice is admitted. Certainly, nothing could be feebler +than the /Vindication of Magdalen College/, published by a fellow +James Hurdis, the Professor of Poetry; his intellectual calibre may +perhaps be gauged from the exquisite silliness of his poem, "The +Village Curate," of which the following lines, addressed to the +Oxford heads of houses, are a fair specimen: + + "Ye profound + And serious heads, who guard the twin retreats + Of British learning, give the studious boy + His due indulgence. Let him range the field, + Frequent the public walk, and freely pull + The yielding oar. But mark the truant well, + And if he turn aside to vice or folly, + Show him the rod, and let him feel you prize + The parent's happiness, the public good." + +Magdalen might fairly claim that a place so beautiful as it is, +justifies itself by simply existing, and the perfection of its +buildings and the beauty of its music must appeal, even to our own +utilitarian age. But it has many other justifications besides its +beauty; its great wealth is being continually applied to assist the +University by the endowment of new professorships, especially for the +Natural Sciences, and to aid real students, whether those who have +made, or those who are likely to make, a reputation as researchers. +It is needless to mention names: every Oxford man and every lover of +British learning knows them. + + [Plate XIV. Magdalen College : The Open-Air Pulpit] + +For the world in general, which cares not for research, the success +of the College under its present President, Sir Herbert Warren, +himself at once a poet and an Oxford Professor of Poetry, will be +evidenced by its increase in numbers and by its athletic successes. +They will judge as our King judged when he chose Magdalen for the +academic home of the Prince of Wales. The Prince, unlike other royal +persons at Magdalen and elsewhere, lived (1912-14) not in the +lodgings of the President, or among dons and professors, but in his +own set of rooms, like any ordinary undergraduate. He showed, in +Oxford, that power of self-adaptation which has since won him golden +opinions in the great Dominion and the greater Republic of the West. + + + + +BRASENOSE COLLEGE + + + "Of the colleges of Oxford, Exeter is the most + proper for western, Queen's for northern, and + Brasenose for north-western men." + FULLER, /Worthies/. + + [Plate XV. Bresenose College, Quadrangle and Radcliffe Library] + +Brasenose college is in the very centre of the University, fronting +as it does on Radcliffe Square, where Gibbs' beautiful dome supplies +the Bodleian with a splendid reading-room. And this site has always +been consecrated to students; where the front of Brasenose now stands +ran School Street, leading from the old /Scholae Publicae/, in which +the disputations of the Mediaeval University were held, to St. Mary's +Church. + +It was from this neighbourhood that some Oxford scholars migrated to +Stamford in 1334, in order to escape one of the many Town and Gown +rows, which rendered Mediaeval Oxford anything but a place of quiet +academic study. They seem to have carried with them the emblem of +their hall, a fine sanctuary knocker of brass, representing a lion's +head, with a ring through its nose; this knocker was installed at a +house in Stamford, which still retains the name it gave, "Brasenose +Hall." The knocker itself was there till 1890, when the College +recovered the relic (it now hangs in the hall). The students were +compelled by threats of excommunication to return to their old +university, and down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, +Oxford men, when admitted to the degree of M.A., were compelled to +swear "not to lecture at Stamford." + +The old "King's Hall," which bore the name of "Brasenose," was +transformed into a college in 1511 by the munificence of our first +lay founder, Sir Richard Sutton; he shared his benevolence, however, +with Bishop Smith, of Lincoln. The College celebrated, in 1911, its +quatercentenary in an appropriate way, by publishing its register in +full, with a group of most interesting monographs on various aspects +of the College history. + +The buildings are a good example of the typical Oxford college; the +Front Quad, shown in our picture, belongs to the time of the +Founders, but the picturesque third story of dormer windows, which +give it a special charm, dates from the reign of James I, when all +colleges were rapidly increasing their numbers and their +accommodation. Of the rest of the buildings of Brasenose, the chapel +deserves special notice, for it was the last effort of the Gothic +style in Oxford, and it was actually finished in the days of +Cromwell, not a period likely to be favourable to the erection of new +college chapels. + +Brasenose (or B.N.C., as it is universally called) has produced a +prime minister of England in Henry Addington, whom the college record +kindly describes as "not the most distinguished" statesman who has +held that position: but a much better known worthy is John Foxe, the +Martyrologist, whose chained works used to add a grim charm of horror +to so many parish churches in England; the experiences of the young +Macaulay, at Cheddar, are an example which could be paralleled by +those of countless young readers of Foxe, who, however, did not +become great historians and are forgotten. Somewhat junior to Foxe, +at B.N.C., was Robert Burton, the author of the /Anatomy of +Melancholy/, who found both his lifework as a parish vicar, and his +burial-place in Oxford. + +But these names, and the names of many other B.N.C. worthies, hardly +attain to the first rank in the annals of England's life. The +distinguishing features of the College have long been its special +connection with the Palatine counties, Lancashire and Cheshire, and +its prominence in the athletic life which is so large a part of +Oxford's attraction. To the connection with Lancashire, B.N.C. owes +the name of its college boat, "The Child of Hale"; for John +Middleton, the famous, giant, who is said to have been 9 ft. 3 in. +high (perhaps measurements were loose when James I was king), was +invited by the members of his county to visit the College, where he +is said to have left a picture of his hand; this the ever curious +Pepys paid 2s. to see. A more profitable connection between +Lancashire and B.N.C. is the famous Hulmeian endowment, which is +almost a record instance of the value of the unearned increment of +land to a learned foundation. + +The rowing men of Brasenose are as famous as the scholars of Balliol. +The poet parodist, half a century ago, described her as: + + "Queen of the Isis wave, + Who trains her crews on beef and beer, + Competitors to brave," + +and the lines written in jest were a true compliment. The young +manhood of England had maintained its vigour by its love of +athletics, and has learned, in the discipline of the athletic club, +how to obey and also how to command. Hence it was fitting that to +B.N.C. should fall the honour of giving to Britain her greatest +soldier in the Great War; Lord Haig of Bemerside was an undergraduate +member of the College in the 'eighties of the last century, and the +College has honoured him and itself by making him an Honorary Fellow. + +Most Oxford colleges have their quaint and distinctive customs; that +of Brasenose was certainly not inappropriate to the character that +has just been sketched. Every Shrove Tuesday some junior member of +the College presented verses to the butler in honour of Brasenose +ale, and received a draught in return. The custom is recorded by +Hearne more than two hundred years ago, and may well be older, +though, as the poet of the Quatercentenary sadly confessed, its +attribution to King Alfred-- + + "Our woven fantasy of Alfred's ale, + By conclusive cut of critic dry, + Is shredded clean away." + +The most distinguished poet who thus commemorated the special drink +of England and of B.N.C. was Reginald Heber, bishop and hymn-writer, +who composed the verses in 1806; the compositions have been collected +and published at least three times. When the old brew-house was +pulled down to make room for the New Quad, the College gave up +brewing its own beer, and its poets ceased to celebrate it; but the +custom was revived, as has been said, in 1909. It may be permitted to +a non-Brasenose man to quote and echo the patriotic expressions of +the versifier of 1886: + + "Shall Brasenose, therefore, fail to hold her own? + She nerves herself, anew, for coming strife, + Her vigorous pulses beat with strength and life. + Courage, my brothers! Troubles past forget! + On to fresh deeds! the gods love Brasenose yet." + + + + +CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE + + + "But still the old quadrangle keeps the same, + The pelican is here; + Ancestral genius of the place, whose name + All Corpus men revere." + J. J. C., in "/The Pelican Record/," 1700. + + [Plate XVI. Corpus Christi College : The First Quadrangle] + +Corpus is emphatically, before all other colleges in Oxford, the +college of the Revival of Learning; its very foundation marked the +change from the old order of things to the new. Its Founder, Bishop +Foxe, of Winchester, was one of the great statesman-prelates to whom +mediaeval England owed so much, and he had a leading share in +arranging the two royal marriages which so profoundly affected the +history of our country, that of Henry VII's daughter, Margaret, with +the King of Scotland, and that of his son, afterwards Henry VIII, +with Catharine of Aragon. + +After a life spent "in the service of God" "in the State," rather +than "in the Church," Foxe resolved to devote some of his great +wealth to a foundation for the strengthening of the Church. His first +intention was to found a college for monks, but, fortunately for his +memory and for Oxford, he followed the advice of his friend, Bishop +Oldham, of Exeter, who told him, in words truly prophetic, that the +days of monasteries were past: "What, my lord, shall we build housed +for a company of buzzing monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may +live to see? No, no, it is more meet a great deal that we should have +care to provide for the increase of learning." In the next generation +the monasteries were all swept away, while Foxe's College remains a +monument of the Founder's pious liberality and of his friend's wise +prescience. + +Corpus was the first institution in England where definite provision +was made for a teacher of the Greek Language, and Erasmus hailed it +with enthusiasm; in a letter to the first President of the new +college, he definitely contrasts the conciliatory methods of +Reformers in England with the more violent methods of those in +Germany, and counts Foxe's foundation, which he compares to the +Pyramids of Egypt or the Colossus of Rhodes, among "the chief glories +of Britain." + +Foxe, however, did not confine his benefactions to classical studies, +important as these were. He imported a German to teach his scholars +mathematics, and the scientific tastes of his students are well +illustrated by the picturesque and curious dial, still in the centre +of his College Quad, which was constructed by one of them in the +reign of Elizabeth. It is well shown in our picture, as are also +Foxe's charming low buildings, almost unaltered since the time of +their Founder. + +But it has been on the humanistic, rather than on the scientific, +side that Corpus men have specially distinguished themselves. The +first century of the College existence produced the two great +Elizabethan champions of Anglicanism. Bishop Jewel, whose "Apology" +was for a long period the great bulwark of the English Church against +Jesuit attacks, had laid the foundations of his great learning in the +Corpus Library, still--after that of Merton--the most picturesque in +Oxford; he often spent whole days there, beginning an hour before +Early Mass, i.e. at 4 a.m., and continuing his reading till 10 p.m. +"There were giants on the earth in those days." Even more famous is +the "judicious Hooker," who resided in the college for sixteen years, +and only left it when, by the wiles of a woman, he, "like a true +Nathanael who feared no guile" (as his biographer, Isaac Walton, +writes), was entrapped into a marriage which "brought him neither +beauty nor fortune." The first editor of his great work, /The +Ecclesiastical Polity/, was a Corpus man, and it was only fitting +that the Anglican Revival of the nineteenth century should receive +its first impulse from the famous Assize Sermon (in 1833) of another +Corpus scholar, John Keble. + +Corpus has been singularly fortunate in its history, no doubt because +its Presidents have been so frequently men of mark for learning and +for character. Even in the dark period of the eighteenth century it +recovered sooner than the rest of the University, and one of its sons +records complacently that "scarcely a day passed without my having +added to my stock of knowledge some new fact or idea." A charming +picture of the life of the scholars of Corpus at the beginning of the +last century is given in Stanley's /Life of Arnold/; for the famous +reformer of the English public-school system was at the College +immediately after John Keble, whom he followed as fellow to Oriel, on +the other side of the road. It need hardly be added that in those +days an Oriel Fellowship was the crown of intellectual distinction in +Oxford. + +Bishop Foxe had set up his college as a "ladder" by which, "with one +side of it virtue and the other knowledge," men might, while they +"are strangers and pilgrims in this unhappy and dying world," "mount +more easily to heaven." Changing his metaphor he goes on, "We have +founded and raised up in the University of Oxford a hive wherein +scholars, like intelligent bees, may, night and day, build up wax to +the glory of God, and gather honeyed sweets for their own profit and +that of all Christian men." So far as it is given to human +institutions to succeed, his college has fulfilled his aims. + + + + +CHRIST CHURCH (1) THE CATHEDRAL + + + [Plate XVII. Christ Church : The Cathedral from the Meadows] + + + "Those voiceless towers so tranquil seem, + And yet so solemn in their might, + A loving heart could almost deem + That they themselves might conscious be + That they were filled with immortality." + F. W. FABER. + +The east end of Oxford Cathedral, shown both in the frontispiece +(Plate I) and Plate XVII, probably contains the oldest buildings, +above ground, in Oxford. Inside the cathedral can clearly be seen +traces of three round arches, which may well be part of the church +founded by St. Frideswyde in the eighth century. That princess, +according to the tradition, the details of which are all pictured by +Burne-Jones in the east window of the Latin Chapel, having escaped by +a miracle the advances of too ardent a suitor, founded a nunnery at +Oxford. The nunnery, which was later transferred to Canons, was +undoubtedly the earliest institution in Oxford, and in its cloisters, +in the second decade of the twelfth century, we hear of students +gathering for instruction. It was this old monastery, which Wolsey, +with his reforming zeal, chose as the site of his great Cardinal +College, and the chapel of the old foundation was to serve for his +new one, until such time as a great new chapel, rivalling in +splendour that of King's College at Cambridge, had been built on the +north side of Tom Quad. This new chapel never got beyond the stage of +foundations; and hence the old building has continued to serve the +college till this day, having been made also the cathedral of the new +diocese of Oxford, which was founded by King Henry VIII. Wolsey may, +perhaps, be credited with the fine fan tracery of the choir roof, but +he certainly swept away three bays of the nave in order to carry out +his ambitious building plans, and only one of these three bays has +been restored in the nineteenth century. + +Wolsey's action at Christ Church was significant. Men felt that the +days of monasteries were past, and the Church was ready to welcome +and to extend the New Learning. But his changes were a dangerous +precedent; as Fuller says with his usual quaintness: "All the forest +of religious foundations in England did shake, justly fearing the +King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut +the underwood." Henry, however, when he swept away the monasteries, +spared his great minister's work; modifying it, however, as has just +been said, by associating the newly-founded college with the diocese +of Oxford, now formed out of the unwieldy See of Lincoln. + +The cathedral is the smallest in England, but contains many features +of special interest; its most marked peculiarity is the great breadth +of the choir, due to the addition of two aisles on the north side; +these were built to gain more room for the worshippers at the shrine +of St. Frideswyde. Another feature of architectural interest is the +spire, which is one of the earliest in England. But perhaps even more +interesting is the wonderful series of glass windows, which give good +examples of almost every English style from the fourteenth to the +nineteenth century. And for once the moderns can hold their own; the +Burne-Jones windows of the choir (not, however, the Frideswyde +window, already mentioned) are particularly beautiful. + +The hand of the "restorer" has been active at Christ Church, as +elsewhere in Oxford; Gilbert Scott took on himself to remove a fine +fourteenth-century window from the east end of the choir, and to +substitute the Norman work shown in Plate I. The effect is admittedly +good, but it may be questioned whether it be right to falsify +architectural history in this way. + +Oxford Cathedral has great associations apart from the college to +which it belongs. It was to it that Cranmer was brought to receive +the Pope's sentence of condemnation, and in the cloisters the +ceremony of his degradation from the archbishopric was carried out. +Almost a century later the Cathedral was the centre of the religious +life of the Royalist party; when Charles I made his capital in Oxford +and his home in Christ Church, and when the Cavaliers fought to the +war-cry of "Church and King." It is not surprising that, when the +Parliamentarians entered Oxford, the windows of the Cathedral were +much "abused"; that so much old glass was spared was probably due to +the local patriotism of old Oxford men. + +In the next century it was to Christ Church that Bishop Berkeley, the +greatest of British philosophers, retired to end his days, and to +find a burial-place; and, during the long life of Dr. Pusey, the +Cathedral of Oxford was a place of pilgrimage, as the living centre +of the Oxford movement. + +In the back of the picture (Plate XVII), behind the Cathedral, rises +the square tower, put up by Mr. Bodley to contain the famous Christ +Church peal of bells (now twelve in number), familiar through Dean +Aldrich's famous round, "Hark, the bonny Christ Church bells." When +the tower was erected, it was the subject of much criticism, +especially from the witty pen of C. L. Dodgson, the world-famous +creator of /Alice in Wonderland/. The opening paragraph is a fair +specimen: + "Of the etymological significance of the new belfry, Christ +Church. + "The word 'belfry' is derived from the French '/bel/-- beautiful, +meet,' and from the German '/frei/--free, unfettered, safe.' Thus the +word is strictly equivalent to 'meat-safe,' to which the new belfry +bears a resemblance so perfect as almost to amount to coincidence." + +Others saw in the uncompromising squareness of the new tower a subtle +compliment to the Greek lexicon of Liddell, who then was Dean. But in +spite of the wits, who resented any innovation in so famous a group +of buildings, Bodley's tower is a fine one, and really enhances the +effect of Tom Quad. + + + + +CHRIST CHURCH (2) THE HALL STAIRCASE + + + "And love the high-embowed roof + With antique pillars massy proof." + MILTON + + [Plate XVIII. Christ Church : The Hall Staircase] + +When Wolsey began to build what he intended to be the most splendid +college in the world, the first part to be finished was the dining- +hall, with the kitchen. The wits of the time made very merry at this: +their epigram /Egregium opus! Cardinalis iste instituit collegium et +absolvit popinam/ may be rendered: + + "Here's a fine piece of work! Your Cardinal + A college plans, completes a guzzling-hall." + +Certainly the hall of Christ Church is the finest "popina" which has +ever been abused by envious critics; its size and magnificence place +it easily first among the halls of Oxford, and its great outline +stands conspicuous in all views of Oxford from the south, whether by +day, or when by night, to quote M. Arnold's "Thyrsis": + + "The line of festal light in Christ Church Hall" + +shines afar. And the kitchen, a perfect cube in shape, is worthy of +the hall which it feeds, and is, perhaps, more appreciated by many of +Oxford's visitors; for the taste for meringues is more common than +that for masterpieces of portraiture. The report to Wolsey, in 1526, +by his agent, the Warden of New College, is still true; the kitchen +is "substantially and goodly done, in such manner as no two of the +best colleges in Oxford have rooms so goodly and convenient." + +The approach to the hall, seen in Plate XVIII, is later than Wolsey's +work, but is fully worthy of him. The beautiful fan tracery, which +hardly suffers by being compared with Henry VII's Chapel at +Westminster, was put up, extraordinary as it may seem, in the middle +of the seventeenth century, by the elder Dean Fell; all we know of +its origin is that it was the work of "Smith, an artificer of +London," surely the most modest architect who ever designed a +masterpiece. The staircase itself is later, the work of the notorious +Wyatt, who for once meddled with a great building without spoiling +it. + +The history of Christ Church is very largely the history of the +University of Oxford. It is still our wealthiest and largest +foundation, although the disproportion between it and other colleges +is by no means so great as it once was; and, thanks to its having +been ruled by a series of famous and energetic deans, its periods of +inglorious inactivity have been fewer than those of most other +colleges. The roll of deans contains such names as those of John +Owen, the most famous of Puritan preachers, John Fell, theologian and +founder of the greatness of the Oxford Press, Henry Aldrich, +universally accomplished as scholar, logician, musician, architect, +Francis Atterbury, Jacobite and plotter, Cyril Jackson, who ruled +Christ Church with a rod of iron, and who ranks first among the +creators of nineteenth-century Oxford, Thomas Gaisford and Henry +George Liddell, great Greek scholars. It seems that a college gains +something by having its head appointed from outside; the Dean at +Christ Church is appointed by the Crown. + +The importance of Christ Church is especially seen in its hall, +through its collection of portraits. It is not only that this is +superior to that of any one other college; it may well be doubted if +the combined efforts of all the colleges could produce a collection +equal to that of Christ Church in artistic merit, or superior to it +in historical importance. The prime ministers of England, of whom +Christ Church claims twelve (nine of them in the last century), are +represented among others by George Grenville, the unfortunate author +of the Stamp Act, George Canning, who called "the New World into +existence to redress the balance of the Old," and W. E. Gladstone; +among the eight Christ Church men who have been Governor-Generals of +India, the Marquess Wellesley stands out pre-eminent; Christ Church +has sent five archbishops to Canterbury and nine to York; there is a +portrait in the hall of Wake, the most famous of the holders of the +See of Canterbury. Lord Mansfield's picture worthily represents the +learning and impartiality of the English Bench. But even more +interesting than any of those already mentioned are the portraits of +John Locke, who was philosopher enough to forgive Christ Church for +obeying James II and expelling him, of William Penn, presented, as +was fitting, by the American state that bears his name, of John +Wesley and of Dr. Pusey, whose names will be for ever associated with +the two greatest of Oxford's religious movements. And it may well be +hoped that C. L. Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll") will delight children for +many generations to come, as he has delighted those of the last half- +century, by his Alice and her "Adventures." + +An interest, rather historical than personal, attaches to the group +portrait that occupies a position of honour over the fireplace; it +represents the three Oxford divines--John Fell (already mentioned), +Dolben, who later was Archbishop of York, and Allestree, afterwards +Provost of Eton, who braved the penal law against churchmen by +reading the forbidden Church Service daily all through the time of +the Commonwealth. + +Nowhere, so much as in Christ Church, is the poet's description of +Oxford appropriate; her students may: + + "Stand, in many an ancient hall, + Where England's greatest deck the wall, + Prelate and Statesman, prince and poet; + Who hath an ear, let him hear them call." + + + [Plate XIX. Christ Church : The Hall Interior] + + + + +CHRIST CHURCH (3) "TOM" TOWER + + + "Those twins of learning, which he raised in you, + Ipswich and Oxford, one of which fell with him; + The other, though unfinished, yet so famous, + So excellent in art, and still so rising, + That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue." + SHAKESPEARE, /Henry VIII/. + +Oxford is described by Matthew Amold as, + + "Beautiful city, with her dreaming spires," + +yet it is for her towers, especially, that she is famous. Glorious as +St. Mary's is, it certainly does not surpass Magdalen Tower; and it +may well be doubted whether the genius of Wren has not excelled both +Magdalen and St. Mary's in "Tom" Tower. Gothic purists, of course, do +not like it. There is a well-authenticated story of a really great +architect who, in the early days of the twentieth century, was asked +to submit a scheme for its repair; after long delay he sent in a plan +for an entirely new tower on correct Gothic lines, because (as he +wrote) no one would wish to preserve "so anomalous a structure" as +Tom Tower. The world, however, does not agree with the minute +critics; it is easy to find fault with the details of "Tom," but in +proportion, in dignity, in suitability to his position, the greatest +qualities that can be required in any building, "Tom" is pre-eminent. +This is the more to be wondered at, as the tower was erected a +century and a half after the great gateway which it crowns. + +The genius of Wolsey had planned a magnificent front, but only a +little more than half of it was completed when Henry VIII ended the +career of his greatest servant, and altered the plans of the most +glorious college in Europe. It was not till the period just before +the Civil War that the northern part of the front of Christ Church +was built by the elder Dean Fell, and the work was only completed +when his son, the famous Dr. Fell, doomed to eternal notoriety by the +well-known rhymes about his mysterious unpopularity, employed Wren to +build the gate tower. Yet the whole presents one harmonious design, +worthy of the most famous of Oxford founders and of the greatest of +British architects. It is fitting that it should be Wolsey's statue +which adorns the gate--a statue given by stout old Jonathan Trelawny, +one of the Seven Bishops, whose name is perpetuated by the refrain of +Hawker's spirited ballad, which deceived even Macaulay as to its +authenticity: + + + "And must Trelawny die? + Then thirty thousand Cornish men + Will know the reason why." + + Tom Tower appeals to Oxford men through more than one of their +senses; it is a most conspicuous object in every view; and in it is +hung the famous bell, "Great Tom," the fourth largest bell in +England, weighing over seven tons. This once belonged to Osney Abbey, +when it was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and bore the +legend: + + "In Thomae laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude." + +It was transplanted to Christ Church in the reign of Queen Mary, and +at the time it was proposed to rechristen it "Pulcra Maria," in +honour at once of the Queen and of the Blessed Virgin; but the old +name prevailed. Every night but one, from May 29, 1684, until the +Great War silenced him, Tom has sounded out, after 9 p.m., his 101 +strokes, as a signal that all should be within their college walls; +the number is the number of the members of the foundation of Christ +Church in 1684, when the tower was finished. During the war Tom was +forbidden to sound, along with all other Oxford bells and clocks, for +might not his mighty voice have guided some zeppelin or German +aeroplane to pour down destruction on Oxford? Few things brought home +more to Oxford the meaning of the Armistice than hearing Tom once +more on the night of November 11, 1918. + + [Plate XX. Christ Church: "Tom" Tower] + +A patriotic tradition claims for Tom the honour of having inspired +Milton's lines in "Il Penseroso": + + "Hear the far-off curfew sound + Over some wide-watered, shore, + Swinging slow with sullen roar." + +But it is difficult to believe this; Milton's connection with Oxford +does not get nearer than Forest Hill, and blow the west wind as hard +as it would, it could scarcely make Tom's voice reach so far. And the +"wide-watered shore" is only appropriate to Oxford in flood time, the +very last season when a poet would wish to remember it. + +The view in Plate XX of the tower is taken from the front of +Pembroke, and must have been often admired by Oxford's devoted son, +Samuel Johnson, when, as a poor scholar of Pembroke, "he was +generally to be seen (says his friend. Bishop Percy) lounging at the +college gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was +entertaining with his wit and keeping from their studies." + + + + +ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE + + + [Plate XXI. St. John's College : Garden Front] + + "An English home--gray twilight poured + On dewy pastures, dewy trees, + Softer than sleep, all things in order stored, + The haunt of ancient Peace." + TENNYSON, Palace of Art. + +St. John's shares with Trinity and Hertford the distinction of having +been twice founded. As the Cistercian College of St. Bernard, it owed +its origin to Archbishop Chichele, the founder of All Souls', and it +continued to exist for a century as a monastic institution. At the +Reformation it was swept away with other monastic foundations by the +greed of Henry VIII, but it was almost immediately refounded, in the +reign of Mary, by Sir Thomas White, one of the greatest of London's +Lord Mayors. In all these respects it has an exact parallel in +Trinity, which had existed as a Benedictine foundation, being then +called "Durham College," and which was refounded, in the same dark +period of English History, by another eminent Londoner, Sir Thomas +Pope. It is characteristic of England and of the English Reformation +that men, who were undoubtedly in sympathy with the old form of the +Faith, yet gave their wealth and their labours to found institutions +which were to serve English religion and English learning under the +new order of things. + +For the first generation after the Founder, St. John's was torn by +the quarrels between those who wished to undo the work of the +Reformation altogether, and those who wished to carry it further and +to destroy the continuity of English Church tradition. The final +triumph of the Anglican "Via Media" was the work, above all others, +of William Laud, who came up as scholar to St. John's in 1590, and +who, for most of the half century that followed, was the predominant +influence in the life of the University. First in his own college and +then in Oxford generally, he secured the triumph of his views on +religious doctrine and order. Of these, it is not the place to speak +here, nor yet of Laud's services to Oxford as the restorer of +discipline, the endower and encourager of learning, the organizer of +academic life, whose statutes were to govern Oxford for more than two +centuries; but it is indisputable that Laud takes one of the highest +places on the roll of benefactors, both to the University as a whole +and to his own college. + +It was fitting that one who did so much for St. John's should leave +his mark on its buildings; the inner quadrangle was largely built by +him, and it owes to him its most characteristic features, the two +classic colonnades on its east and west sides, and the lovely garden +front, one of the three most beautiful things in Oxford: the north- +east corner of this is shown in Plate XXI. + +Laud's building work was done between 1631 and 1635, and in 1636 +Charles I and his Queen visited Oxford and were entertained in the +newly-finished college. Much bad verse was written on this event, two +lines of which as a specimen may be quoted from the quaintly-named +poem, "Parnassus Biceps": + + "Was I not blessed with Charles and Mary's name, + Names wherein dwells all music? 'Tis the same." + +The part of the entertainment to royalty on which the Archbishop +specially prided himself was the play of The Hospital of Lovers, +which was performed entirely by St. John's men, without "borrowing +any one actor." Laud goes on to observe that, when the Queen borrowed +the dresses and the scenery, and had it played over again by her +players at Hampton Court, it was universally acknowledged that the +professionals did not come up to the amateurs--a truly surprising and +somewhat incredible verdict. St. John's, however, was always strong +in dramatic ability; Shirley, the last great representative of the +Elizabethan tradition, was a student there, and the library has the +rare distinction of having possessed longest the same copy of the +works of Shakespeare; it still has the second folio, presented in +1638, by one of the fellows. St. John's connection with the lighter +side of literature has lasted to our own day; the most famous of +Oxford parodies is still the Oxford Spectator, which has not been +surpassed by any of its many imitators in the last half century. + +Other colleges, however, might challenge the supremacy of St. John's +in the humours of literature.. In the richness and beauty of its +garden it stands unrivalled, whether quantity or quality be the basis +of comparison. It is not only that before the east front, seen in +Plate XXI, stretches the largest garden in Oxford; thanks to the +skill and the care of the present garden-master, the Rev. H. J. +Bidder, this shows from month to month, as the pageant of summer goes +on, what wealth of colour and variety of bloom the English climate +can produce. It may be said to be laid out on Bacon's rule: "There +ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which severally +things of beauty may be then in season"; only for "year" we naturally +must read "academic year." If Bacon is right, that a garden is the +"purest of human pleasures," then, indeed, St. John's should be the +Oxford paradise. + + + + +WADHAM COLLEGE (1) THE BUILDINGS + + "Here did Wren make himself a student home, + Or e'er he made a name that England loves; + I wonder if this straying shadow moves, + Adown the wall, as then he saw it roam." + A. UPSON. + + + [Plate XXII. Wadham College : The Chapel from the Garden] + +The buildings of Wadham College have been pronounced by some good +judges to be the most beautiful in Oxford. This is not, however, the +usual opinion, nor is it my own, though, perhaps, it might be +accepted if modified into the statement that Wadham is the most +complete and perfect example of the ordinary type of college. However +that may be, there are three points as to these buildings which are +indisputable, and which are also most interesting to any lover of +English architecture. They are: + (1) Wadham is less altered than any other college in Oxford. + (2) It is the finest illustration of the fact that the Gothic + style survived in Oxford when it was being rapidly superseded + elsewhere. + (3) No building in Oxford (very few buildings anywhere) owe their + effect so completely to their simplicity and their absence of + adornment. + +These three points must be illustrated in detail. + +Wadham is the youngest college in Oxford, for all those that have +been founded since are refoundations of older institutions (but, as +its first stone was laid in 1610, it has a respectable antiquity); +yet the Front Quad is completely unaltered in design, and of the +actual stonework, hardly any has had to be renewed. Could the +Foundress return to life, she would find the college, which was to +her as a son, completely familiar. + +The second point is a more important one. In the reign of Elizabeth, +classical architecture was being rapidly introduced; Gothic was +giving way before the style of Palladio, even as the New Learning was +banishing the schoolmen from the schools. This change is markedly +seen in the Elizabethan buildings at Cambridge, especially in Dr. +Caius' work, so far as it has been allowed to survive in the college +that bears his name. But in Oxford the old style went on for half the +following century; in the great building period of the first two +Stuarts the old models were still faithfully copied. It was the +genius of Wren, which, by its magnificent success in the Sheldonian, +ultimately caused the new style to prevail over the late Gothic, of +which his own college, Wadham, is so striking an example. + +In Wadham the conservative Oxford workmen were inspired by the +presence of Somerset masons, whom the Foundress brought up from her +own county, so rich in the splendid Gothic of the fifteenth century. +Hence the chapel of Wadham (shown in Plate XXII) is to all intents +and purposes the choir of a great Somerset church. So marked is the +old style in its windows that some of the best authorities on +architecture have maintained that the stonework of these could not +have been made in the seventeenth century, but must have survived +from some older building; Ferguson, the historian of architecture, +when confronted with the fact that the college has still the detailed +accounts showing how, week by week, the Jacobean masons worked, swept +this evidence aside with the dictum--"No amount of documents could +prove what was impossible." But here the "impossible" really +happened. + +The permanence of Gothic in Oxford is a point for professional +students; the studied simplicity, which is the great secret of +Wadham's beauty, concerns everyone. The effect of the garden front is +produced simply by the long lines of the string-courses and by the +procession of the beautifully proportioned gables. Neither here nor +in any part of the college is there a piece of carved work, except in +the classical screen, which marks the entry to the hall. It may be +noted that at Wadham and at Clare, Cambridge, the same effect is +produced by the same means; different as the two colleges are, the +one Gothic, the other classical, they have a restful and complete +beauty which makes them specially attractive. And this is due more +than anything else to the unbroken lines of the stonework, to which +everything is kept in due subordination. Clare was building during +half a century; Wadham was finished in three years; but both have +been fortunate in being left alone; they have not been "improved" by +later additions. + +The chapel at Wadham has another feature of great interest for those +who visit it; the glass in it (not that in the ante-chapel) is all +contemporary with the college, and is a first-rate example of the +taste of early Stuart times. The apostles and the prophets of the +side windows have few merits, except their age, and the fact that +they illustrate what local craftsmen could do in the reign of James +I; but the big east window is of a very different rank. The college +authorities quarrelled with the local workmen, and introduced a +foreign craftsman, Bernard van Ling from London. In our day he would +have been called a "blackleg," and mobbed: perhaps, even in the +seventeenth century, he needed protection, for the college built him +a furnace in their garden, and he there produced the finest specimen +of seventeenth century glass that Oxford can show. Even for those who +are not students of glass, the Wadham windows are attractive with +their two Jonahs and two whales, "The big one that swallowed Jonah, +and the little one that Jonah swallowed" (to quote an old college +jest). + +The gardens at Wadham are famous; they have not the magnificence of +St. John's or the antiquarian charm of the old walls at New College +or Merton; but, for the variety and fine growth of their trees, they +are unsurpassed, though the glory of these is passing. Warden Wills +planted them in the days of the French Revolution, and trees have +their time to fall at last, even though they long survive their +planters. + + + + +WADHAM COLLEGE (2) HISTORY + + + "But these were merciful men, whose righteousness + hath not been forgotten. . . . Their bodies are buried + in peace; but their name liveth for evermore." + /Ecclesiasticus/, xliv. 10, 14. + +The collection of pictures In Wadham Hall is probably the best of any +college in Oxford--always, of course, excepting Christ Church. It has +no single picture to be compared with the "Thomas Warton" at +Trinity, or the "Dr. Johnson" at Pembroke (both excellent works of +Reynolds), nor does it give so many fine examples of the work of +recent artists as do Trinity or Balliol; but it makes up for these +deficiencies by the number and the variety of its pictures. + +Two only of the men they represent can be said to attain to the first +rank among England's worthies--Robert Blake, second as an admiral +only to Nelson and Oxford's greatest fighting man until the present +war, and Christopher Wren, "that prodigious young scholar" (as John +Evelyn calls him), who, as has been well said, would have been second +only to Newton among English mathematicians had he not chosen rather +to be indisputably the first of British architects. It is interesting +to note that Wadham shares with All Souls' two of the greatest names +in the Scientific Revival of the seventeenth century: both Wren and +Thomas Sydenham, the physician, migrated from Wadham to fellowships +at All Souls'. + +Their connection with Wadham is part of what is probably the most +interesting single episode in the college history. When the +Parliament triumphed, and the King's partisans were turned out of +Oxford, the Lodgings at Wadham were given to the most distinguished +of her Wardens, John Wilkins, who, no doubt, owed his promotion to +the fact that he was the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. In his +own day everyone knew him; he was a moderate man, who interceded for +Royalist scholars under the Commonwealth, and tempered the penal laws +to Non-Conformists, when later he was Bishop of Chester. He was even +better known to the "philosophers" as the inventor of a universal +language and as curious for every advance in Natural Science. But, in +our day, he is only remembered for his connection with the Royal +Society; that most illustrious body grew out of the meetings held +weekly at his Lodgings and the similar meetings held in London; when +later these two movements were united, Wilkins was secretary of the +committee which drew up the rules for their future organization, and +thus prepared the way for the Royal Charter, given to the Society in +1662. When the Royal Society celebrated its 250th anniversary in +1912, many of its members made a pilgrimage to "its cradle" (or what +was, at any rate, "/one/ of its cradles"). + +Wadham also produced, among other early members of the Royal Society, +its historian, Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who somehow, as +"Pindaric Sprat" (he was the friend and also the editor of /Abraham +Cowley/), found his way into Johnson's /Lives of the Poets/; he is, +however, more likely to be remembered because his subserviency, when +he was Dean of Westminster to James II, has earned him an unenviable +place in Macaulay's gallery of Revolution worthies and unworthies. +Sprat, it should be added, was an exception to the prevailing Whig +tradition of Wadham, which found a worthy exponent in Arthur Onslow, +the greatest Speaker of the House of Commons, who ruled over that +august body for a record period, thirty-four years (1727-1761), and +formed its rules and traditions in the period when it was first +asserting its claim to govern. + + [Plate XXIII. Wadham College : The Hall Interior] + +Two centuries later than the Royal Society days at Wadham, another +group of philosophers was trained there, who thought that the views +of their master, Auguste Comte, were going to make as great a +revolution in human thought as the views of a Bacon or a Newton. All +the leading English Positivists were at Wadham--Congreve, Beesley, +Bridges, Frederic Harrison, of whom the last alone survives, to fight +with undiminished vigour for the causes which he championed in Mid- +Victorian days. Positivism had less influence than its adherents +expected, but it powerfully affected for a time the political and the +religious thought of England. + +Forty years later another famous group of young men were at Wadham +together. As they are all alive, it is impossible, and would be +unbecoming, to estimate what their influence on English life and +thought will be; but it was a curious coincidence that sent to Wadham +together, in the 'nineties, Lord Birkenhead, who reached the Woolsack +at the earliest age on record; Sir John Simon, who, if he had wished, +could have lowered that record still further, and C. B. Fry, once a +household name as the greatest of British athletes. + +Three groups of Wadham men have been spoken of; one other name must +be mentioned of one who stood alone at college, and for a long time +in the world outside, in his attitude to the social problems of our +day. Whatever may be the future of the Settlement movement, its +leader, Samuel Barnett, "Barnett of Whitechapel," is not to be +forgotten, for his name is associated as a pioneer and an inspiring +force with every movement of educational and social advance in the +latter half of the nineteenth century. M. Clemenceau, no friendly +judge of the ministers of any religious body, pronounced him one of +the three greatest men he had met in England. Certainly he was great, +if greatness means to anticipate the problems of the future before +the rest of the world sees their urgency, and to make real +contributions to their solution. + +It has been a feature of the history of Oxford that every college +has, from time to time, come to the front as the special home and +source of some movement. There has never been the overshadowing +concentration of men and of wealth, which has given a more one-sided +direction to the history of Cambridge. Hence the strength of the +college system; every college has its traditions to live up to, its +great names to cherish, and Wadham is, certainly, by no means last or +least in these respects. + + + + +HERTFORD COLLEGE + + + "Outspake the (Warden) roundly: + 'The bridge must straight go down; + For if they once should get the bridge ...'" + MACAULAY, /Horatius/, adapted. + +Academic bridges, over the Cam or elsewhere, are a great feature at +Cambridge. At Oxford they were unknown till this century, when +University first of all threw its modest little arch over Logic Lane; +later, in 1913. the "Bridge of Sighs," which forms the subject of +Plate XXIV, was completed. There was a hard struggle before leave +could be obtained from the City Council for thus bridging a public +thoroughfare; University only maintained their claim to a bridge by a +long lawsuit, in which the college rights were firmly established by +the production of charters, which went back to the reign of King +John. The great opposition to the Hertford Bridge was said to be due +to regard for the feelings of the old Warden of New College, who +considered that it would injure the view of his college bell-tower. +Whether this story be true or not, Hertford obtained its permission +at last, and Sir Thomas Jackson added a new attraction to Oxford's +buildings. His genius has been especially shown in triumphing over +the difficulties of the Hertford site, for it was no easy thing to +unite into a harmonious whole, buildings so various; his new chapel-- +opened in 1908--is worthy to rank with the best classic architecture +in Oxford. + +The variety of the Hertford buildings only reflects the chequered +history of the foundations that have occupied them. As early as the +thirteenth century Hart Hall stood on this site. In the eighteenth +century this old hall was turned into a college by an Oxford +reformer, Dr. Newton. But unfortunately Newton's endowments were not +equal to his ambition, and the first Hertford /College/ fell into +such decay that finally its buildings were transferred to an entirely +different foundation, Magdalen Hall. Almost immediately afterwards, +old Magdalen Hall, which stood close to Magdalen College, was burned +down, and the society sold their site, thus made empty, to their +wealthy namesake, and migrated, in 1822, to what had formerly been +Hertford College. Finally, in 1874, Magdalen Hall was re-endowed by +the head of the great financial house of Baring as "Hertford College" +once more. + +This college then unites the traditions of two old halls, and of its +own predecessor, and from all of them it derives some famous names. +Hart Hall was the home of John Selden, one of the greatest of English +scholars; Hertford College had an undistinguished English prime +minister in Henry Pelham, and a most distinguished leader of +opposition in Charles James Foxe; while Magdalen Hall was even more +rich in traditions, as being the home of the translator of the Bible, +William Tyndale, as the centre of Puritan strength in the Laudian +days, when from its ranks were filled the vacancies all over Oxford +caused by the expulsions of Royalists, and finally as having trained +Lord Clarendon, famous as Charles II's minister, still more famous as +the historian, whose monumental work was one of the first endowments +of the Oxford Press. + +All these traditions are now concentrated in the one college, and, as +has been said, the buildings have been greatly extended to meet the +needs of the new foundation. When Hertford College is completed +according to the plans already drawn by Sir Thomas Jackson, it will +reach from All Souls' to Holywell. This last northern part of its +front has been delayed by the European War. + +The new--or, rather, the revived--college has, as yet, hardly had +time to make Oxford history, but the influence of its second +Principal. Dr. Boyd, whose long reign, happily not yet over, began in +1877, has had the result of finding for Oxford new benefactors in one +of the wealthiest of the London City Companies; the Drapers' +magnificent gifts of the new Science Library and of the Electrical +Laboratory are good instances to show that the days of the "pious +founder" are not yet over. + + [Plate XXIV. Hertford College : The Bridge] + + + + +ST. EDMUND HALL + + + "Or wander down an ancient street + Where mingling ages quaintly meet, + Tower and battlement, dome and gable + Mellowed by time to a picture sweet." + A. G. BUTLER. + +The group of buildings, shown in Plate XXV, is not only picturesque-- +it also illustrates Oxford history from more than one point of view. + +The apse of the Chapel of Queen's on the left belongs to a building +already spoken of, which is the most perfect example of a small +basilican church in Oxford. The church tower in the centre, though +itself dating from the fourteenth century, is the most modern part of +one of the oldest churches in Oxford, St. Peter in the East. The +crypt and the chancel of this church go back to the time of the +Conquest, and are probably the work of Robert d'Oili, to whom William +the Conqueror gave the city of Oxford; he was first an oppressor and +then a benefactor; in the former character, he built the castle keep, +still standing near the station; in the latter, he was the builder, +besides St. Peter, of the churches of St. Michael and of the Holy +Cross; parts of his work survive in all three. + +The churchyard, at all events, of St. Peter in the East, deserves a +visit, lying as it does between the beautiful garden of New College +and the picturesque buildings of St. Edmund Hall. + +Before this last foundation is spoken of, a word must be said as to +the road round which these three buildings are grouped--Queen's Lane. +It survives, almost unaltered, from Pre-Reformation Oxford, and, +winding as it does its narrow way between high walls, it is an +interesting specimen of the "lanes" which threaded mediaeval Oxford, +a city in which the High Street and, to a smaller extent, Cornmarket +Street were the only real thoroughfares; the rest of the city was a +network of narrow ways. + +But from the historic point of view, the most interesting part of the +picture is its right side, where stand the buildings of St. Edmund +Hall. This is the only survival of the system of residence in the +earliest University, of the Oxford which knew not the college system. + +Before the days of "pious founders," the students had to provide +their own places of residence, and very early the custom grew up of +their living together in "halls," sometimes managed by a non-academic +owner, but often under the superintendence of some resident Master of +Arts, who was responsible, not for the teaching, but, at any rate in +part, for the discipline of the inmates of his hall. These halls had +at first no endowments and no permanent existence; they depended for +their continuity on the person of their head. Gradually they became +more organized; but when once the college system had been introduced, +it tended, by its superior wealth and efficiency, to render the +"halls" less and less important. They lost even the one element of +self-government which they had once had, the right of their members +to elect their own Principal; this right was usurped by the +Chancellor. Hence, though five of the halls were surviving at the +time of the University Commission (of 1850), all of them but St. +Edmund Hall have now disappeared. + +In theory, "hall" and "college" have much in common; one Cambridge +college indeed has retained the name of "hall," and two of the +women's colleges in Oxford have preferred to keep the old style. In +practice, their difference lies in the two facts that colleges are +wealthier, with more endowments, and that they are self-governing, +with Fellows who co-opt to vacancies in their own body and elect +their head. St. Edmund Hall has its head appointed by the fellows of +Queen's, with which institution it has long been connected. + + [Plate XXV. St. Peter-in-the-East Church and St. Edmund Hall] + +The origin of this hall is an unsolved problem: it derives its name +according to one theory from Edmund Rich, the last Archbishop of +Canterbury to be canonized, and probably the first recorded Doctor of +Divinity at Oxford. But this theory is very doubtful, and Hearne, +most famous of Oxford antiquarians, and probably the best known +member of St. Edmund Hall, did not believe it. In any case, most of +the buildings of the hall date long after St. Edmund, and belong to +the middle of the seventeenth century. Hearne himself is sufficient +to give interest to any foundation. He was a great scholar and a +careful editor of the early English Chroniclers in days when learning +was decaying in Oxford; even now his work as an editor is not +altogether superseded. But it is not to this that he owes his fame; +it is rather to the fact that he has high rank among the diarists of +England, and the first place among those of Oxford. For thirty years +(1705-1735) in which latter year he died, he poured into his diary +everything that interested him--scholarly notes, political rumours, +personal scandal, remarks on manners and customs. The 150 volumes +came into the possession of his fellow Jacobite, Richard Rawlinson, +the greatest of the benefactors of the Bodleian, and only now are +they being fully edited; ten volumes have been issued by the Oxford +Historical Society, and still there are a few more years of his life +to cover. As a specimen of Hearne's style may be quoted his remarks, +when the sermon on Christmas Day, 1732, was postponed till 11 a.m. + +"The true reason is that people might lie in bed the longer. . . . +The same reason hath made them, in almost all places in the +University, alter the times of prayer, and the hour of dinner (which +used to be 11 o'clock) in almost every place (Christ Church must be +excepted); which ancient discipline and learning and piety strangely +decay." Hearne was critical rather of past history than of present- +day rumour; he records complacently (in 1706) that at Whitchurch, +when the dissenters had prepared a great quantity of bricks "to erect +a capacious conventicle, a destroying angel came by night and spoyled +them all, and confounded their Babel." Hearne would by no means have +approved of the Methodist principles of six members of his hall in +the next generation, who were expelled for their religious views +(1768). A furious controversy, with many pamphlets, raged over them, +and the Public Orator of the University wrote a bulky indictment of +them, which was answered by another pamphlet with the picturesque +title of "Goliath Slain." Pamphleteers were more free in their +language in those days than they are now. + +The hall has always been a strong religious centre, and plays a very +useful part in the University--by giving to poor men, seeking Holy +Orders, a real Oxford education, based on the true Oxford principle +of community of life. + + + +IFFLEY MILL + + + "Thames, the best loved of all old Ocean's sons, + Of his old sire, to his embraces runs . . . + Though deep, yet clear, through gentle yet not dull, + Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full." + SIR J. DENHAM. + + [Plate XXVI. Iffley : The Old Mill] + +The subject of Plate XXVI is no longer in existence; it was burned +to the ground some years ago, and has never been rebuilt--for steam +has rendered unprofitable the old-fashioned water mills such as it +was. Yet the very fact that Iffley Mill is no more perhaps renders it +the more appropriate subject for a series of Oxford pictures. It +claims a place among them, not for its beauty, picturesque though it +was, but as a symbol of the open-air pursuits of Oxford, which play +so large a part in the lives of her sons. And as those pursuits are +so diverse, and cannot all be directly pictured, it is fitting that +they should be represented by a picture which is a symbol of them +all, by a picture of something no longer existing, not introduced for +itself, but suggesting whole fields of varied activity, different and +yet all akin. + +This may be fanciful, but the part played by open-air sports in the +life of Oxford is a great reality. Yet, in their present organized +form, they are a feature of quite, modern times. Fifty years ago, +football as a college sport in Oxford was only beginning; the men are +still living, and not octogenarians, who introduced their "school +games"--"Rugby," "Eton Wall game," etc.--at Oxford. Golf was left to +Scotchmen, hockey to small boys, La Crosse had not yet come from +beyond the Atlantic. Cricket and rowing were the only organized +games, and even in these the inter-University contests are +comparative novelties; the first boat race against Cambridge was +rowed in 1829, and it has only been an annual fixture since 1856. + +Several results followed from this. In the first place, the very +sense of the word "sportsman" was different. Now it means a man who +can play well some, one at least, of the games that all men play; +then, it had its old meaning of a man who could shoot, or ride, or +fish, or do all these. + +Again, as cricket is always a game for the few, and as the rowing +authorities, by the time the summer term begins, had selected their +chosen followers and left the rest of the world free, there was far +more walking, and consequently more knowledge of the country round +the city, than is the rule now. The long rambles which play so +prominent a part in Oxford biographies, such as Stanley's /Life of +Arnold/, were still the fashion, while of those who could afford to +ride, certainly many more availed themselves of the privilege than do +now. + +So far as games themselves were concerned, their cost was far less. +College matches away from Oxford were almost unknown; college +grounds, which were still quite a new thing in the middle of last +century, were nearly all concentrated on Cowley Marsh, and the +somewhat heavy contribution from all undergraduates, now generally +collected by the college authorities in "battels" and become semi- +official, was not dreamed of. Those who played paid, and the rest of +the college got off easily. And games were much more games than they +are now, and less of institutions; the "professional amateur," who +comes up with a public school reputation to get his "blue," was +almost unknown, and certainly, so far as rowing was concerned, any +powerful man with broad shoulders and a sound heart was a likely +candidate for the University Boat. The days were not dreamed of when +the fortunes of Oxford and Cambridge on the river depended largely on +the choice of a University by members of the Eton Eight. + +But there is of course another side to the development of Oxford +athletics. Perhaps the most important point is that play is the +greatest social leveller. It is easy to attend the same lectures as a +man, and even to sit at the same table with him in hall, and not to +know him well, because his clothes and his accent are not quite +correct. But in these days when so many games are played, and when +competition is so keen, any man who can do anything gets his chance; +and many are the instances every year of men who would never have +made friends in their colleges outside a small circle, had not their +quickness as half-backs, or their ability as slow bowlers, brought +their contemporaries to recognize their merits. You cannot play with +a man without knowing him, and young Oxford is democratic at heart, +and when once it knows a man, it does not trouble about the non- +essentials of wealth and fashion. + +And again, though it may seem a paradox to say it, the amount of play +in Oxford has increased the amount of work. Organized games mean +physical fitness, and physical fitness means ability to get +intellectual work done. Perhaps it may be argued that the absorption +in athletics deadens all intellectual life, and that many Oxford men +read only and discuss only the sporting news in the papers; this no +doubt has a strange fascination, even for men who do not play; one of +the most distinguished of Oxford statesmen of the last generation, +himself so blind that he could not hit a ball, confessed to me that +he always, in the summer, read the cricket news in /The Times/ before +he read anything else. But he and many other Oxford men read +something else, too. And it may be maintained without question that +the hard exercise, which is the fashion in Oxford, tends to keep +men's bodies healthy and to raise the moral tone of the place. Oxford +and Cambridge may not be what they should be in morals, but they +compare very favourably in this respect with other towns. + +All this seems a far cry from Iffley Mill; but Iffley means to an +Oxford man, not so much the picturesque village, nor even its gem of +a Norman Church that towers above the lock, but the place where +Eights and Torpids start for the races. And the boating, which is so +associated with the name of Iffley, is still--and long may it be so-- +the queen of Oxford sports. To succeed as an oar, a man has to learn +to sacrifice the present to the future, to scorn delights and live +laborious days, to work together with others, and to sink his +individuality in the common cause. These are great qualities, and +therefore in any book on Oxford, the picture, which recalls them and +is their symbol, has a right to a place. + + + Printed in Great Britain. + Letterpress by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh. + Plates engraved and printed by Henry Stone & Son, Ltd., Banbury. + + + [OXFORD FROM THE EAST (End papers)] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Charm of Oxford, by J. Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHARM OF OXFORD *** + +***** This file should be named 13245.txt or 13245.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/2/4/13245/ + +This eBook was produced by Philip H Hitchcock + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + |