her fishermen. And perhaps it was by reason of this precedence that
Christopher Whitrid, Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave the name of
Judas to the College which he had founded. Or perhaps it was because he
felt that in a Christian community not even the meanest and basest of
men should be accounted beneath contempt, beyond redemption.

At any rate, thus he named his foundation. And, though for Oxford men
the savour of the name itself has long evaporated through its local
connexion, many things show that for the Founder himself it was no empty
vocable. In a niche above the gate stands a rudely carved statue
of Judas, holding a money-bag in his right hand. Among the original
statutes of the College is one by which the Bursar is enjoined to
distribute in Passion Week thirty pieces of silver among the needier
scholars "for saike of atonynge." The meadow adjoining the back of the
College has been called from time immemorial "the Potter's Field." And
the name of Salt Cellar is not less ancient and significant.

Salt Cellar, that grey and green quadrangle visible from the room
assigned to Zuleika, is very beautiful, as I have said. So tranquil is
it as to seem remote not merely from the world, but even from Oxford, so
deeply is it hidden away in the core of Oxford's heart. So tranquil
is it, one would guess that nothing had ever happened in it. For five
centuries these walls have stood, and during that time have beheld, one
would say, no sight less seemly than the good work of weeding, mowing,
rolling, that has made, at length, so exemplary the lawn. These
cloisters that grace the south and east sides--five centuries have
passed through them, leaving in them no echo, leaving on them no
sign, of all that the outer world, for good or evil, has been doing so
fiercely, so raucously.

And yet, if you are versed in the antiquities of Oxford, you know that
this small, still quadrangle has played its part in the rough-and-tumble
of history, and has been the background of high passions and strange
fates. The sun-dial in its midst has told the hours to more than one
bygone King. Charles I. lay for twelve nights in Judas; and it was here,
in this very quadrangle, that he heard from the lips of a breathless and
blood-stained messenger the news of Chalgrove Field. Sixty years later,
James, his son, came hither, black with threats, and from one of the
hind-windows of the Warden's house--maybe, from the very room where now
Zuleika w