Oxford and Her Colleges: A View from the Radcliffe Library

by Goldwin Smith

OXFORD AND HER COLLEGES.

o gain a view of Oxford from a central point, we mount to the top of the Radcliffe Library. We will hope that it is a fine summer day, that, as we come out upon the roof, the old city, with all its academical buildings lying among their gardens and groves, presents itself to view in its beauty, and that the sound of its bells, awakening the memories of the ages, is in the air. The city is seen lying on the spit of gravel between the Isis, as the Thames is here called, which is the scene of boat races, and the Cherwell, famed for water-lilies. It is doubtful whether the name means the ford of the oxen, or the ford of the river (oxen being a corruption of ousen). Flat, sometimes flooded, is the site. To ancient founders of cities, a river for water carriage and rich meads for kine were prime attractions. But beyond the flat we look to a lovely country, rolling and sylvan, from many points of which, Wytham, Hinksey, Bagley, Headington, Elsfield, Stowe Wood, are charming views, nearer or more distant, of the city. Turner's view is taken from Bagley, but it is rather a Turner poem than a simple picture of Oxford.

There is in Oxford much that is not as old as it looks. The buildings of the Bodleian Library, University College, Oriel, Exeter, and some others, mediæval or half mediæval in their style, are Stuart in date. In Oxford the Middle Ages lingered long. Yon cupola of Christ Church is the work of Wren, yon towers of All Souls' are the work of a still later hand. The Headington stone, quickly growing black and crumbling, gives the buildings a false hue of antiquity. An American visitor, misled by the blackness of University College, remarked to his host that the buildings must be immensely old. "No," replied his host, "their colour deceives you; their age is not more than two hundred years." It need not be said that Palladian edifices like Queen's, or the new buildings of Magdalen, are not the work of a Chaplain of Edward III., or a Chancellor of Henry VI. But of the University buildings, St. Mary's Church and the Divinity School, of the College buildings, the old quadrangles of Merton, New College, Magdalen, Brasenose, and detached pieces not a few are genuine Gothic of the Founders' age. Here are six centuries, if you choose to include the Norman castle, here are eight centuries, and, if you choose to include certain Saxon remnants in Christ Church Cathedral, here are ten centuries, chronicled in stone. Of the corporate lives of these Colleges, the threads have run unbroken through all the changes and revolutions, political, religious, and social, between the Barons' War and the present hour. The economist goes to their muniment rooms for the record of domestic management and expenditure during those ages. Till yesterday, the codes of statutes embodying their domestic law, though largely obsolete, remained unchanged. Nowhere else in England, at all events, unless it be at the sister University, can the eye and mind feed upon so much antiquity, certainly not upon so much antique beauty, as on the spot where we stand. That all does not belong to the same remote antiquity, adds to the interest and to the charm. This great home of learning, with its many architectures, has been handed from generation to generation, each generation making its own improvements, impressing its own tastes, embodying its own tendencies, down to the present hour. It is like a great family mansion, which owner after owner has enlarged or improved to meet his own needs or tastes, and which, thus chronicling successive phases of social and domestic life, is wanting in uniformity but not in living interest or beauty.

Oxford is a federation of Colleges. It had been strictly so for two centuries, and every student had been required to be a member of a College when, in 1856, non-collegiate students, of whom there are now a good many, were admitted. The University is the federal government. The Chancellor, its nominal head, is a non-resident grandee, usually a political leader whom the University delights to honour and whose protection it desires. Only on great state occasions does he appear in his gown richly embroidered with gold. The acting chief is the Vice-Chancellor, one of the heads of Colleges, who marches with the Bedel carrying the mace before him, and has been sometimes taken by strangers for the attendant of the Bedel. With him are the two Proctors, denoted by their velvet sleeves, named by the Colleges in turn, the guardians of University discipline. The University Legislature consists of three houses,—an elective Council, made up equally of heads of Colleges, professors, and Masters of Arts; the Congregation of residents, mostly teachers of the University or Colleges; and the Convocation, which consists of all Masters of Arts, resident or non-resident, if they are present to vote. Congregation numbers four hundred, Convocation nearly six thousand. Legislation is initiated by the Council, and has to make its way through Convocation and Congregation, with some chance of being wrecked between the academical Congregation, which is progressive, and the rural Convocation, which is conservative. The University regulates the general studies, holds all the examinations, except that at entrance, which is held by the Colleges, confers all the degrees and honours, and furnishes the police of the academical city. Its professors form the general and superior staff of teachers.

Each College, at the same time, is a little polity in itself. It has its own governing body, consisting of a Head (President, Master, Principal, Provost, or Warden) and a body of Fellows. It holds its own estates; noble estates, some of them are. It has its private staff of teachers or tutors, usually taken from the Fellows, though the subjects of teaching are those recognised by the University examinations. The relation between the tutors teaching and that of the professor is rather unsettled and debatable, varying in some measure with the subjects, since physical science can be taught only in the professor's lecture-room, while classics and mathematics can be taught in the class-room of the tutor. Before 1856 the professorial system of teaching had long lain in abeyance, and the tutorial system had prevailed alone. Each College administers its domestic discipline. The University Proctor, if he chases a student to the College gates, must there halt and apply to the College for extradition. To the College the student immediately belongs; it is responsible for his character and habits. The personal relations between him and his tutor are, or ought to be, close. Oxford life hitherto has been a College life. To his College the Oxford man has mainly looked back. Here his early friendships have been formed. In these societies the ruling class of England, the lay professions and landed gentry mingling with the clergy, has been bred. It is to the College, generally, that benefactions and bequests are given; with the College that the rich and munificent alumnus desires to unite his name; in the College Hall that he hopes his portrait will hang, to be seen with grateful eyes. The University, however, shares the attachment of the alumnus. Go to yonder river on an evening of the College boat races, or to yonder cricket ground when a College match is being played, and you will see the strength of College feeling. At a University race or match in London the Oxford or Cambridge sentiment appears. In an American University there is nothing like the College bond, unless it be that of the Secret, or, to speak more reasonably, the Greek Letter societies, which form inner social circles with a sentiment of their own.

DIVINITY SCHOOL, FROM EXETER GARDENS.

The buildings of the University lie mainly in the centre of the city close around us. There is the Convocation House, the hall of the University Legislature, where, in times of collision between theological parties, or between the party of the ancient system of education and that of the modern system, lively debates have been heard. In it, also, are conferred the ordinary degrees. They are still conferred in the religious form of words, handed down from the Middle Ages, the candidate kneeling down before the Vice-Chancellor in the posture of mediæval homage. Oxford is the classic ground of old forms and ceremonies. Before each degree is conferred, the Proctors march up and down the House to give any objector to the degree—an unsatisfied creditor, for example—the opportunity of entering a caveat by "plucking" the Proctor's sleeve. Adjoining the Convocation House is the Divinity School, the only building of the University, saving St. Mary's Church, which dates from the Middle Ages. A very beautiful relic of the Middle Ages it is when seen from the gardens of Exeter College. Here are held the examinations for degrees in theology, styled, in the Oxford of old, queen of the sciences, and long their tyrant. Here, again, is the Sheldonian Theatre, the gift of Archbishop Sheldon, a Primate of the Restoration period, and as readers of Pepys's "Diary" know, of Restoration character, but a patron of learning. University exercises used, during the Middle Ages, to be performed in St. Mary's Church. In those days the church was the public building for all purposes, that of a theatre among the rest. But the Anglican was more scrupulous in his use of the sacred edifice than the Roman Catholic. In the Sheldonian Theatre is held the annual commemoration of Founders and benefactors, the grand academical festival, at which the Doctorate appears in its pomp of scarlet, filing in to the sound of the organ, the prize poems and essays are read, and the honorary degrees are conferred in the presence of a gala crowd of visitors drawn by the summer beauty of Oxford and the pleasures that close the studious year. In former days the ceremony used to be enlivened and sometimes disgraced by the jests of the terræ filius, a licensed or tolerated buffoon whose personalities provoked the indignation of Evelyn, and in one case, at least, were visited with expulsion. It is now enlivened, and, as visitors think, sometimes disgraced, by the uproarious joking of the undergraduates' gallery. This modern license the authorities of the University are believed to have brought on themselves by encouraging political demonstrations. The Sheldonian Theatre is also the scene of grand receptions, and of the inauguration of the Chancellor. That flaunting portrait of George IV. in his royal robes, by Lawrence, with the military portraits of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia by which it is flanked and its gorgeousness is rebuked, mark the triumphs of the monarchs, whose cause had become that of European independence, over Napoleon. Perhaps the most singular ceremony witnessed by these walls was the inauguration of the Iron Duke as Chancellor of the University. This was the climax of Oxford devotion to the Tory party, and such was the gathering as to cause it to be said that if the roof of the Sheldonian Theatre had then fallen in, the party would have been extinguished. The Duke, as if to mark the incongruity, put on his academical cap with the wrong side in front, and in reading his Latin speech, lapsed into a thundering false quantity.