To an outsider, attempting to review the earlier history of physical education in England, it seems that apart from her outdoor sports, in the form they have assumed at the public schools and universities, her greatest contribution has been made through the teaching and writings of Archibald Maclaren, for many years proprietor of a gymnasium at Oxford. He was born in 1819 or 1820[157] at Alloa, a seaport on the north bank of the Forth, in Scotland. His daughter writes that she believes his father was the minister of a neighboring kirk, and the boy was brought up a Presbyterian. At the age of sixteen or a little older he went to Paris, and for some years was a student of fencing and gymnastics there. He also studied medicine; but was most interested in physical training, and determined to reform gymnastics, make a real science of it, and put it on a plane where it belonged as a part of education. He therefore settled in Oxford, and opened a fencing school in Oriel Lane, afterwards converting it into a gymnasium. In 1858 he erected a building of his own, the University Gymnasium, on Alfred Street at the corner of Bear Lane.[158] [Illustration: FIG. 52.—Archibald Maclaren (C. 1820-1884). Copied from a portrait made about six years before his death.] An interesting sidelight on Maclaren’s qualities of mind and heart is afforded by certain events which belong to this period. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, poet- and painter-to-be, entered Exeter College, at Oxford, in January of 1853, and both young men soon began to frequent the fencing rooms on Oriel Lane. J. W. Mackail[159] recalls how “between them and Maclaren himself, a man in the prime of life, cultivated and full of enthusiasm, a mutual intimacy and liking sprang up, and grew into a warm friendship. Three or four times in the term they would go and dine with him in Summertown....” And Lady Burne-Jones[160] speaks of Maclaren as a “man of the highest character and with warmth and tenderness underlying reserve of manner. His home at Summertown, then a small village separated by a stretch of country road from Oxford, was a sanctuary seldom opened to the outer world.”[161] She calls him one of the truest friends her husband ever had, and one whose eyes discerned his pupil’s genius from the first.[162] [Illustration: FIG. 53.—Maclaren’s Oxford Gymnasium (From frontispiece to his “A System of Physical Education,” 1869).]