chapel was rebuilt, Sir Gilbert Scott rebuilt
parts of the first and second courts. He demolished the Master's
Lodge, added two bays to the Hall in keeping with the other parts of
the structure, and built a new staircase and lobby for the Combination
Room, which is considered without a rival in Cambridge or Oxford. It
is a long panelled room occupying all the upper floor of the north
side of the second court and with its richly ornamented plaster
ceiling, its long row of windows looking into the beautiful
Elizabethan court, its portraits of certain of the college's
distinguished sons in solemn gold frames, it would be hard to find
more pleasing surroundings for the leisured discussion of subjects
which the fellows find in keeping with their after-dinner port. There
is an inner room at one end, and continuing in the same line and
opening into it, so that a gallery of great length is formed, is the
splendid library, built nearly three centuries ago and unchanged in
the passing of all those years.

The library of St. John's is rich in examples of early printing by
Caxton and others whose books come under the heading of incunabula,
but it would have been vastly richer in such early literature had
Bishop Fisher's splendid collection--"the notablest library of books
in all England, two long galleries full"--been allowed to come where
the good prelate had intended. When he was deprived, attainted, and
finally beheaded in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry as supreme head
of the Church, his library was confiscated, and what became of it I do
not know. Over the high table in the hall, a long and rather narrow
structure with a dim light owing to its dark panelling, hangs a
portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the foundress of the college, and
on either side of this pale Tudor lady are paintings of Archbishop
Williams, who built the library, and Sir Ralph Hare. The most
interesting portraits are, however, in the master's lodge, rebuilt by
Sir Gilbert Scott on a new site north of the library.

[Illustration]

It was through no sudden or isolated emotion that Lady Margaret was
led to found this college in 1509, the year of her death, for she had
four years earlier re-established the languishing grammar college,
called God's House, under the new name of Christ's College, and had
been a benefactress to Oxford as well. On the outer gateways of both
her colleges, therefore, we see the great antelopes of the Beauforts
supporting the ar