FROM FIELDS.

Merton's plan, meeting the need of the hour, found acceptance. His College became the pattern for others both at Oxford and Cambridge. University, Balliol, Exeter, Oriel, and Queen's were modelled after it, and monastic Orders seem to have taken the hint in founding Houses for their novices at Oxford. University College grew out of the benefaction of William of Durham, an ecclesiastic who had studied at Paris, and left the University a sum of money for the maintenance of students of divinity. The University lodged them in a Hall styled the Great Hall of the University, which is still the proper corporate name of the College. In after days, this Hall, having grown into a College, wished to slip its neck out of the visitorial yoke of the University, and on the strength of its being the oldest foundation at Oxford, claimed as founder Alfred, to whom the foundation of the University was ascribed by fable, asserting that as a royal foundation it was under the visitorship of the Crown. Courts of law recognised the claim; a Hanoverian court of law probably recognised it with pleasure, as transferring power from a Tory University to the King; and thus was consecrated a fiction in palliation of which it can only be said, that the earliest of our literary houses may not improperly be dedicated to the restorer of English learning. Oriel was founded by a court Almoner, Adam de Brome, who displayed his courtliness by allowing his Scholars to speak French as well as Latin. Queen's was founded by a court Chaplain, Robert Egglesfield, and dedicated to the honour of his royal mistress, Queen Philippa. It was for a Provost and twelve Fellows who were to represent the number of Christ and his disciples, to sit at a table as Egglesfield had seen in a picture the Thirteen sitting at the Last Supper, though in crimson robes. Egglesfield's building has been swept away to make room for the Palladian palace on its site. But his name is kept in mind by the quaint custom of giving, on his day, a needle (aiguille) to each member of the foundation, with the injunction, Take that and be thrifty. Yonder stone eagles too on the building recall it. Exeter College was the work of a political Bishop who met his death in a London insurrection.

As the fashion of founding Colleges grew, that of founding Monasteries decreased, and the more as the mediæval faith declined, and the great change drew near. That change was heralded by the appearance of Wycliffe, a genuine off-spring of the University, for while he was the great religious reformer, he was also the great scholastic philosopher of his day. To what College or Hall his name and fame belong is a moot point among antiquaries. We would fain imagine him in his meditations pacing the old Mob Quadrangle of Merton. His teaching took strong and long hold of the University. His reforming company of "poor priests" drew with it the spiritual aspiration and energy of Oxford youth. But if his movement has left any traces in the shape of foundations, it is in the shape of foundations produced by the reaction against it, and destined for its overthrow.

NEW COLLEGE, CLOISTERS AND TOWER.

Yonder rises the bell tower of New College over a famous group of buildings, with ample quadrangle, rich religious chapel, a noble Hall and range of tranquil cloisters, defaced only by the addition of a modern upper story to the quadrangle and Vandalic adaptation of the upper windows to modern convenience. This pile was the work of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, a typical character of the Middle Ages, prelate, statesman, and court architect in one, who negotiated the peace of Bretigny and built Windsor Castle. The eye of the great architect as well as of the pious Founder must have ranged with delight over his fair creation. It is likely that New College, as a foundation highly religious in its character, was intended to counteract Wycliffism as well as to replenish the clergy which had been decimated by the Black Death. Wykeham was a reformer in his way, and one of the party headed by the Black Prince which strove to correct the abuses of the court in the dark decline of Edward III. But he was a conservative, religious after the orthodox fashion, and devoted to the worship of the Virgin, to whom his College was dedicated, after whom it was named, and whose image surmounts its gate. The College of St. Mary of Winton his foundation was entitled. In its day it might well be called New College. New it was in its scale, having seventy Fellows and Scholars besides ten Chaplains, three Clerks, and sixteen Choristers for the services of the Chapel, which is still famous for its choir. New it was in the extent and magnificence of its buildings. New it was in the provision made for solemn services in its Chapel, for religious processions round its cloisters, for the daily orisons of all its members. New it was in the state assigned to its Warden, who was not to be like the Warden of Merton, only the first among his humble peers, living with them at the common board, but to resemble more a great Abbot with a separate establishment of his own, keeping a sumptuous hospitality and drawn by six horses when he went abroad. New it was in having undergraduates as well as graduates on the foundation, and providing for the training of the youth during the whole interval between school and the highest University degree. Even further back than the time of admittance to the University, stretched the care of the reformer of education. The most important novelty of all, perhaps, in his creation, was the connection between his College and the school which he founded at Winchester, his cathedral city, to feed his College with a constant supply of model Scholars. This was the first of those great Public Schools which have largely moulded the character of the ruling class in England. The example was followed by Henry VI. in connecting King's College, Cambridge, with Eton, and would have been followed by Wolsey had he carried out his design of connecting Cardinal College with his school at Ipswich. From the admission of an undergraduate element into the College it naturally followed that there should be instruction of the juniors by the seniors, and superintendence of study within the College walls. This was yet another novelty, and Wykeham seems to have had an additional motive for adopting it in the low condition of the University Schools, from the exercises of which attention had perhaps been diverted by the religious movement. In the careful provision for the study of Grammatica, that is, the elements of Latin, we perhaps see a gleam of the Renaissance, as the style of the buildings belonging to the last order of mediæval architecture indicates that the Middle Age was hastening to its close. But it was one of Wykeham's objects to strengthen the orthodox priesthood in a time of revolutionary peril. Ten of his Fellows were assigned to the study of civil, ten to that of canon, law. Two were permitted to study medicine. All the rest were to be theologians. The Founder was false to his own generous design in giving a paramount and perpetual preference in the election of Fellows to his own kin, who, being