anything to disturb the minds of
kings, cabinets, or reviewers, or even of the musical critics. Pleasant
gentlemanly fellows, when they do get into parliament it is usually as the
advocates of deceased opinions. Had Joanna Southcote been genteel, the
fellows of All-Souls and some other colleges would have continued Joanna
Southcotians fifty years after her decease.

All-Souls, too, has its legend and its commemorative ceremony. The diggers
of the foundations found in an old drain a monstrous mallard, a sort of
alderman among wild ducks, thriving and growing fat amid filth. On being
cooked he was found first-rate, and, in memory of this treasure-trove and of
the foundation-day, annually on the 14th January the best mallard that can be
found is brought in in state, all the mallardians chanting--

O the swapping swapping mallard, etc.

From Queen's we proceed to New College, built in the palmiest days of Gothic
architecture by William of Wykeham, also architect of Windsor Castle and of
Winchester Cathedral, of which he was bishop, as well as Chancellor of
England under Edward III. He was indeed a learned, pious, earnest man. "A
worker-out of the glorious dreams he dreamed." According to his plan, a
certain number of poor boys, of origin as humble as his own, were to receive
a training in the best learning of the age; from these, the ablest were to be
selected annually and sent to New College, with the enjoyment of such an
income as would support them while studying philosophy and theology. At
present, after a year's probation, youths at eighteen or nineteen become
actual fellows, in enjoyment of an income varying from 190 to 250 pounds per
annum, until such time as they marry or are provided with a college living.

"Wykeham laid the first stone of his new college on the 5th March 1380. Being
finished, the first warden and fellows took possession of it April 14, 1386,
at three o'clock in the morning." The original buildings consist of the
principal quadrangle, containing the hall, chapel, and library, the
cloisters, and the tower. Additions, quite out of keeping with the rich
simplicity of the original design, were made by Sir Christopher Wren. The
chapel, first shorn of its ancient splendour by puritan zeal, and since
restored in mistaken taste, is still one of the most beautiful edifices of
the kind in England,--perhaps in Europe. Weeks of study will not satisfy or
exhaust the true student of Gothic arch