"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 thenPerfect 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'sService of Man) "could not impair the captivating comradeship of his prime."
"Where yearly in that vernal hourThe sacred city is in shades reclining,With gilded turrets in the sunrise shining:From sainted Magdalene's aerial towerSounds 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 compareOf 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."
Plate XIII. Magdalen Tower
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 inPlate 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 roofWith antique pillars massy proof,And storied windows richly dight,Casting a dim religious light"
of the "Royal Saint's" great chapel at Cambridge.
"Sing sweetly, blessed babes that suck the breastOf 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 isjus 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 theVindication 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 profoundAnd serious heads, who guard the twin retreatsOf British learning, give the studious boyHis due indulgence. Let him range the field,Frequent the public walk, and freely pullThe 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 prizeThe 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.
"Of the colleges of Oxford, Exeter is the mostproper for western, Queen's for northern, andBrasenose 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 oldScholae 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 theAnatomy 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."
"But still the old quadrangle keeps the same,The pelican is here;Ancestral genius of the place, whose nameAll 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'sLife 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.
"Those voiceless towers so tranquil seem,And yet so solemn in their might,A loving heart could almost deemThat they themselves might conscious beThat they were filled with immortality."F. W. FABER.
Plate XVII. Christ Church : The Cathedral from the Meadows
The east end of Oxford Cathedral, shown both in the frontispiece (Plate I) andPlate 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 inPlate 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 ofAlice 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.
"And love the high-embowed roofWith 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 epigramEgregium opus! Cardinalis iste instituit collegium et absolvit popinammay be rendered:
"Here's a fine piece of work! Your CardinalA 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 inPlate 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."