that, in looking back upon
Oxford, it is these matters that have been briefly described--the
details of the college and the college life--that are remembered with
the greatest affection.

A Trinity man will tell you of the Grinling Gibbons carvings in the
Chapel, but he thinks with greater tenderness of an old armchair in his
rooms in the garden quad. A Corpus man will take a pride in belonging to
a college that has always set before itself a high standard of learning,
and is suitably possessed of a magnificent old library, but it is of his
quaint old rooms in the little quiet quad that he dreams, when his
thoughts go back again to Oxford.

The mention of Corpus brings to mind the fact, that this is almost the
only college of those in the front rank to retain the charm of being
small both in size and in numbers. All who have in their day belonged to
a college of this kind will remember with pleasure the absence of
"sets", and the possibility of knowing every other member of the
college. Were Corpus to be revisited to-day by any of its distinguished
members of the past, such as Lord Tenterden, John Taylor Coleridge, Dr.
Arnold of Rugby, or John Keble, he would find far less change than in
almost any other college in Oxford. Till lately much the same might
have been said of Oriel, where one is brought to a pause the moment the
gate is passed by the sight of one of the most beautiful of all
quadrangles, of which the chief adornment is the charming porch of the
hall, with its canopy and wide flight of steps. But Oriel is no longer
to rank as one of the moderate-sized colleges. Enriched by Mr. Rhodes it
has pushed its way into the High Street, and a new quadrangle is
beginning already to arise. The fame of the College has been great. It
has sent out an extraordinarily large number of prominent Churchmen, and
the place is also full of memories of such men as Sir Walter Raleigh,
Gilbert White, Tom Hughes, and that great provost and scholar Dr. Monro.
It must be hoped that its increase in size, and the publicity of its
buildings, will not detract from the excellence of the College, though
it must be allowed that, by joining the ranks of the larger colleges, it
loses something of its individuality and charm.

Among those larger foundations Balliol is perhaps the best known, and in
some ways the most remarkable. It has had a curious history. Founded
almost at the same time as Merton, it is by its own members held to be
the ol