From the beautiful Magdalen cloisters came the men who launched Corpus Christi College, just after Erasmus had published the New Testament in Greek and the ancient Brasenose Hall had at last grown into a college. The founder gave copies of Homer, Herodotus, Plato, and Horace, which still survive. There was a public lecturer in Greek on the foundation. Erasmus himself applauded and prophesied liberally of its future. It was the “new college” of the Renaissance, as Wykeham’s had been of the Middle Ages. The readers were to be chosen from England or Greece or Italy. And among the first members of the college was the mystical Bavarian dialler, Nicholas Kratzer, who made a dial in Corpus garden, and that exquisite one for Wolsey, which is to be seen, in drawing, in the library. Wolsey’s own college was built over against St. Frideswide’s, part of which, together with one side of its cloisters, was destroyed to give it place. It contained the largest quadrangle and the most princely kitchen in Oxford. When Henry the Eighth spoiled the monasteries, the bells of Osney were carried to Christ Church; and one of them, over Wolsey’s gateway, does what it can to [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, MAGDALEN COLLEGE The Hall and Chapel of the College stretch nearly across the picture immediately in front of the spectator, the oriel window which lights the daïs of the Hall marking the division between the west end of the Hall and the east end of the Chapel. Farther west, and closely adjoining the Chapel, at the south-west angle of the Cloisters, rises the Founder’s Tower. A gateway under the Tower leads to the Quadrangle of St. John the Baptist and the entrance to the College. The figures above the buttresses of the Cloisters were probably not designed for their present position, but add to the picturesqueness of the Cloisters, which, it will be observed, project from the main body of the buildings. Above the gleaming roof of the Chapel appears the beautiful bell tower of the College, detached, and built at a different angle from the Hall and Chapel, which are continued in the same line. The tower is 145 feet high, and was completed about 1505. Men in Masters’ gowns walk and converse on the grass. The time is late afternoon.] call the undergraduates home at nine, with a deep voice, as if it spoke through its beard, which pretends to be B flat--“Bim-bom,” as the old leonine hexameter says. Hark! the bonny Christ Church bells--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-- They sound so wondrous great, so wondrous sweet, As they trowl so merrily, merrily. Oh! the first and second bell, That every day, at four and ten, cry, “Come, come, come to prayers!” And the verger troops before the Dean. Tinkle, tinkle, ting, goes the small bell at nine, To call the bearers home: But the devil a man Will leave his can Till he hears the mighty Tom.