psed that the college was extended to the
other side of the river. This new court came into existence, together
with the delightful "Bridge of Sighs," between the years 1826 and
1831, when Thomas Rickman, an architect whose lectures and published
treatises had given him a wide reputation, was entrusted with the
work. The new buildings were not an artistic success, in spite of the
elaborate Gothic cloister, with its stupendous gateway and the
imposing scale of the whole pile. Their deficiencies might be masked
or at least diminished if ivy were allowed to cover the unpleasing
wall spaces, and perhaps if these lines are ever read by the proper
authority such a simple and inexpensive but highly desirable
improvement will come to pass.

The stranger approaching St. John's College for the first time might
be easily pardoned for mistaking the chapel for a parish church, and
those familiar with the buildings cannot by any mental process feel
that the aggressive bulk of Sir Gilbert Scott's ill-conceived edifice
is anything but a crude invasion. More than half a century has passed
since this great chapel replaced the Tudor building which had
unluckily come to be regarded as inadequate, but the ponderous Early
Decorated tower is scarcely less of an intrusion than when its masonry
stood forth in all its garish whiteness against the time-worn brick of
Lady Margaret Beaufort's court. A Perpendicular tower would have added
a culminating and satisfying feature to the whole cluster of courts,
and by this time would have been so toned down by the action of
weather that it would have fallen into place as naturally as the Tudor
Gothic of the Houses of Parliament has done in relation to Westminster
Abbey. Like Truro Cathedral, and other modern buildings imitating the
Early English style, the interior is more successful than the
exterior; the light, subdued and enriched by passing through the
stained glass of the large west window (by Clayton and Bell) and
others of less merit, tones down the appearance of newness and gives
to the masonry of 1869 a suggestion of the glamour of the Middle Ages.
Fortunately, some of the stalls with their "miserere" seats were
preserved when the former chapel was taken down, and these, with an
Early English piscina, are now in the chancel of the modern building.
The Tudor Gothic altar tomb of one of Lady Margaret's executors--Hugh
Ashton, Archdeacon of York--has also been preserved.

At the same time as the