nations, the Northern and the Southern, which are always wrangling, and sometimes fight pitched battles with bows and arrows. The two Proctors, now the heads of University police, were appointed as tribunes of the two nations to settle elections and other matters between them without battle. Amusements as well as everything else were rude. Football and other rough games were played at Beaumont, a piece of ground to the north of the city; but there was nothing like that cricket field in the parks, nor like the sensation now created by the appearance of a renowned cricketer in his paddings before an admiring crowd, to display the fruit of his many years of assiduous practice in guarding his stumps. The Crown and local lords had to complain of a good deal of poaching in Bagley, Woodstock, Shotover, and Stowe Wood. * * * * * To this Oxford, with its crowd of youth thirsting for knowledge, its turbulence, its vice, its danger from monkish encroachment, came Walter de Merton, one of the same historic group as Grosseteste and Grosseteste's friend, Adam de Marisco, the man of the hour, with the right device in his mind. Merton had been Chancellor of Henry III. amidst the political storms of the time, from which he would gladly turn aside to a work of peaceful improvement. It was thus that violence in those ages paid with its left hand a tribute to civilisation. Merton's foundation is the first College, though University and Balliol come before it in the Calendar in deference to the priority of the benefactions out of which those Colleges grew. Yonder noble chapel in the Decorated style, with its tower and the old quadrangle beneath it, called, nobody knows why, Mob Quad, are the cradle of College life. Merton's plan was an academical brotherhood, which combined monastic order, discipline, and piety with the pursuit of knowledge. No monk or friar was ever to be admitted to his House. The members of the House are called in his statutes by the common name of Scholars, that of Fellows (_Socii_), which afterwards prevailed here and in all the other Colleges, denoting their union as an academical household. They were to live like monks in common; they were to take their meals together in the Refectory, and to study together in the common library, which may still be seen, dark and austere, with the chain by which a precious volume was attached to the desk. They had not a common dormitory, but they must have slept two or three in a room. Probably they were confined to their quadrangle, except when they were attending the Schools of the University, or allowed to leave it only with a companion as a safeguard. They were to elect their own Warden, and fill up by election vacancies in their own number. The Warden whom they had elected, they were to obey. They were to watch over each other's lives, and hold annual scrutinies into conduct. The Archbishop of Canterbury was to visit the College and see that the rule was kept.