TRINITY COLLEGE CHAPEL.
| WINDOW IN ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, GARDEN FRONT. | TOWER ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. |
Trinity College was founded in 1554 by Sir Thomas Pope. Its tower and chapel are Grecian, and the chapel has a most beautiful carved screen and altarpiece. The library contains a chalice that once belonged to St. Alban's Abbey. Kettel Hall, now a private dwelling, is a picturesque building in front of Trinity. On Broad Street, where Trinity stands, is also Balliol College, founded in the thirteenth century by John Balliol. None of the existing buildings are earlier than the fifteenth century, while the south front, with its massive tower, has just been rebuilt. It was here that the martyrs Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley were burned. A little farther along the same street is St. John's College, which Sir Thomas White founded in 1557. It is fronted by a terrace planted with fine elms. Its quadrangles and cloisters are much admired, especially the venerable oriel windows and quaint stone gables of the library. St. John's gardens are regarded as among the most attractive in Oxford. Opposite St. John's are the university galleries, with their display of the Pomfret Marbles and Raphael and Michel Angelo's paintings and drawings, and behind this building is Worcester College, founded in 1714 by Sir Thomas Cookes. Its gardens contain a lake. Pembroke College is opposite Christ Church, and was founded in 1624 in honor of the Earl of Pembroke, then the chancellor of the university. While its entrance-gateway and hall, recently built, are fine, the other buildings are not attractive. The chief remembrance of Pembroke is of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who occupied apartments over the original gateway, but was compelled by poverty to leave the college before taking his degree. This completes the description of the colleges, halls, and schools of the great university, which presents an array of institutions of learning unrivalled in any part of the world, and of which Englishmen are justly proud.
OXFORD CHURCHES AND CASTLE.
There are some fine churches in Oxford, notably the university church of St. Mary the Virgin, conspicuous from its Decorated spire rising one hundred and eighty-eight feet, which is a memorial of Queen Eleanor of Castile. A short distance to the westward is All Saints Church. Fronting Christ Church is St. Aldate's Church, also with a lofty spire and Decorated tower. Like most English towns, Oxford had a castle, but its remains are now reduced to a solitary tower, a few fragments of wall, and a high mound. This castle has long been the property of Christ Church, and was used for a prison, whence Cranmer and his fellow-martyrs went to the stake. The old tower was built in the days of William Rufus. Beneath the ruins is a crypt known as Maud's Chapel. In the centre of the mound is an octagonal vaulted chamber, approached by a long flight of steps, and containing a well. It was in this castle that the empress Maud was besieged by King Stephen in 1141, but escaped in the night, the castle surrendering next morning. The ground was covered with snow at the time, and the empress, with three attendants, clad in white, passed unnoticed through the lines of the besiegers and crossed the Thames on the ice. Just before this Maud escaped from the castle of Devizes as a dead body drawn on a hearse. The castle of Oxford has been in a dilapidated condition since Edward III.'s time. As an evidence of the change of opinion, the Martyrs' Memorial stands on St. Giles Street in honor of the martyrs who found the old tower of the castle their prison-house until the bigots of that day were ready to burn them at the stake in front of Balliol College.