strar 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
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