MERTON COLLEGE CHAPEL.
ORIEL COLLEGE.
Corpus Christi College was founded by Bishop Fox of Winchester in 1516, and its quadrangle, which remains much as at the foundation, contains the founder's statue, and also a remarkable dial, in the centre of which is a perpetual calendar. This college is not very marked in architecture. It stands at the back of Christ Church, and adjoining it is Merton College, founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton. His idea was to forbid the students following in after life any other pursuit than that of parish priest. The chapel of Merton is one of the finest in Oxford, and its massive tower is a city landmark. The entrance-gateway, surmounted by a sculptured representation of St. John the Baptist, is attractive, and the two college quadrangles are picturesque, the "Mob Quad," or library quadrangle, being five hundred years old, with the Treasury and its high-pitched ashlar roof and dormer windows above one of the entrance-passages. St. Alban Hall, built about 1230, adjoins Merton, and is a Gothic structure with a curious old bell-tower. Oriel College stands opposite Corpus Christi, but the ancient buildings of the foundation in 1324-26 have all been superseded by comparatively modern structures of the seventeenth century: though without any striking architectural merits, the hall and chapel of this college are extremely picturesque. Its fame is not so much from its buildings as from some of its fellows, Whately, Keble, Wilberforce, Newman, Pusey, and Arnold having been among them. St. Mary's Hall, an offshoot founded in the fourteenth century, stands near this college. All Souls College is on the High Street, and was founded in 1437, its buildings being, however, modern, excepting one quadrangle. In the chapel is a magnificent reredos, presented by Lord Bathurst, who was a fellow of All Souls, and containing figures representing most of the fellows of his time: in the library are Wren's original designs for building St. Paul's. This college was founded by Archbishop Chichele for "the hele of his soul" and of the souls of all those who perished in the French wars of King Henry V.; hence its name. We are told that the good archbishop was much troubled where to locate his college, and there appeared to him in a dream a "right godly personage," who advised him to build it on the High Street, and at a certain spot where he would be sure in digging to find a "mallard, imprisoned but well fattened, in the sewer." He hesitated, but all whom he consulted advised him to make the trial, and accordingly, on a fixed day after mass, with due solemnity the digging began. They had not dug long, the story relates, before they heard "amid the earth horrid strugglings and flutterings and violent quackings of the distressed mallard." When he was brought out he was as big as an ostrich, and "much wonder was thereat, for the lycke had not been seen in this londe nor in onie odir." The Festival of the Mallard was long held in commemoration of this event, at which was sung the "Merry Song of the All Souls Mallard," beginning—
"Griffin, bustard, turkey, capon,
Let other hungry mortals gape on,
And on the bones their stomach fill hard;
But let All Souls men have their mallard.
Oh, by the blood of King Edward,
It was a wopping, wopping mallard!"
While the festival has passed away, the song is still sung at Oxford, and the tale has given rise to much literature, there having been vigorous contests waged over the authenticity of the mallard.
University College, also on the High Street, though the earliest founded, now has no building older than the seventeenth century. It has an imposing Gothic front with two tower-gateways, while the recently constructed New Building is an elegant structure erected in 1850. Queen's College, founded in 1341 by Queen Philippa's confessor, and hence its name, is a modern building by Wren and his pupils. St. Edmund Hall, opposite Queen's College, is a plain building, but with magnificent ivy on its walls.