dest of all the colleges. But alas! the front that it presents,
though respectable enough, is quite modern, and cannot be included
among the things that help to make Oxford lovely. Then, again, for
hundreds of years it remained an obscure place with no pretensions of
any kind. Since the Mastership of Dr. Jenkyn in comparatively recent
times it has managed, by throwing open its scholarships, to attract the
finest scholars from all over the country. It can now boast a world-wide
reputation; for the Balliol scholarship is known by all to be the chief
prize offered in the University.

[Illustration: BOTANIC GARDENS AND MAGDALEN TOWER]

Balliol has had many remarkable masters, but none more so than Dr.
Benjamin Jowett, a man of such wide sympathies that he attracted to the
College an extraordinary assortment of men. Not only were distinguished
men of learning to be found there, but a good sprinkling of the scions
of the noble houses of the country, while rooms were always found for
men of every colour and nationality--Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics.
As the men so the buildings present an extraordinary mixture. The
Library and the old Dining Hall are of fifteenth-century work. The new
Hall and the principal front (already mentioned) are by
Waterhouse--mid-Victorian; while, to crown all, the Chapel was erected
by Butterfield, whose confidence in his own creations prevented him from
being influenced by the great architectural beauties of Oxford, and
caused him to have no hesitation in setting up buildings, so
incongruous with the spirit of Oxford, as Balliol Chapel and Keble
College. It is, then, for its mental, rather than its physical beauty,
that Balliol claims attention. The inevitable mention of the College has
taken up space, which might well have been bestowed upon the many lovely
bits of ancient stonework that feast the eye in quiet corners and
retired quadrangles, each going to form that inner beauty which Oxford
wears within her robe of natural adornment.

But there are more secret treasures still. It is wonderful as one
contemplates the walls, the towers, the domes, the battlements, the
spires, that mark the position of this or that famous portion of the
University city, to try to realize the wealth of treasure that is hidden
there. The foreigner who comes in August and sits upon the steps of the
Clarendon Building while he studies Baedeker from beneath the shadow of
a tilted Panama, knows most about them. Most