“He may be a very clever young gentleman, but, bless me, it is not the Greek that makes the scholar. There was the old President, who never looked at his book, and was all for horses;--but he had a way with him; he would swear just so, so; he was a scholar, if ever a man was. But the new ones are just all book or all play. They came in about the same time as bicycles and steam ploughs and such nonsense. And there’s too much lady about the college now; and such ladies! they are so dressed that it is hard to tell which of them is quite respectable....” And so he went on, a little less reverent than he looked. But it was only a crimson heat of old age, and soon passed. What a fine, decent figure he was. He was clothed in a dull black suit, with black tie, and an old-shaped hat, and wore his gloves. He had unquestionably a professional mien, and could not have been a gardener or groom. He was something old, settled in the land and known to the stars, traditional. His sorrow was nothing less dignified than disestablishment. It was time to be going. The enemy was in possession and insulting. He had been in the Balliol fellows’ garden ages ago, and knew what a line the old buildings made against the sky, and what the scene is now. He would walk about, hoping to express a volley of scorn by his silence to persons with no ear for silence. He never went into Tom quad at Christ Church without missing the figure of Mercury--perhaps a copy from John of Bologna, and taken down early last century--which used to preside over the fountain, still known as [Illustration: THE TOM QUADRANGLE, CHRIST CHURCH, FROM THE SOUTH ENTRANCE This Quadrangle was formerly cloistered. The springers, the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the bases of the buttresses may be seen on the two sides of the Quadrangle shown in the picture. The Great Hall and tower founded by Cardinal Wolsey are on the right or southern side, whilst opposite, over the eastern buildings, rise the tower and spire of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.” Part of the basin of the fountain is seen on the left. The time is late afternoon in summer. ] “Mercury,” and used as a water ordeal or court of ultimate appeal by undergraduates. “That old pagan fellow,” he used to say, “told you more about the size of that quadrangle than the guide-books do”; and certainly nothing short of that or a playing fountain would so pleasantly expound the spaciousness of Wolsey’s square. When some one proposed burning in effigy certain officials at the time of Edward VII.’s coronation, he “did not remember that such things were done at George’s.”