honorary Fellow of the College,
but whose impulsive, eager vivacity would harmonize ill with the spirit
of the place.

[Illustration: BRASENOSE COLLEGE AND RADCLIFFE LIBRARY ROTUNDA]

To-day it seems almost strange to find that All Souls has recruited the
ranks of great ecclesiastics, but so it is. From there came Archbishop
Sheldon, Bishops Heber and Jeremy Taylor, and many other great divines.
Even Architecture can claim a Fellowship of All Souls for one of its
greatest masters, Sir Christopher Wren.

But time presses. Oxford, all beautiful in her surroundings, great in
her history, splendid in her buildings, unique in such foundations as
have just been described, means so much more to most who have claimed
her as their Alma Mater. They have had some inkling of all these
things: especially perhaps they have imbibed, and made their lifelong
possession, a sense of her natural charms: but no matter what their
college may have been, no matter how little illustrious, historically or
architecturally, it is round the college life, the rooms, the
friendships, the homely details, that their loving memory hangs. It is
there that first they knew what independence meant: there that the
chairs and table were their very own: there that they could come and go
almost as they liked: there that they first knew the delight of
_voluntary_ work.

How it all comes back! A freshman passes the Entrance Examination just
well enough to get rooms in College--the last set vacant. They look out
upon a wall at the back of the buildings; in themselves they are small
and dark, the bedroom a mere cupboard. But they are his own. He enters
and finds a pot of marmalade and a tin of Bath Olivers on the table, put
there by the forethought of his scout. He gets his boxes open: hangs up
the school groups and the picture of his home: puts his books into the
shelves--and has made his abode complete. He waits impatiently for the
cap and gown he has ordered. The door flies open, and in rushes his
special friend, who has preceded him from Marlborough. The old threads
are picked up and knit together in a moment--and so the life begins.
There is not much variety from day to day: chapel first thing, at which
five attendances are required weekly, Sunday morning service (owing to
its length) counting as two--then breakfast, seldom altogether alone. It
is the most sociable meal of the day, which says much for the youth and
health of the breakfasters! Should it be