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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 pas
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