ght, 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 Chr