Hence, undoubtedly, Balliol for a long time past has had a lion's share of Oxford's great men; two Archbishops of Canterbury, Tait and Temple, the present Archbishop of York, Cardinal Manning, a Prime Minister in Mr. Asquith, a Speaker in Lord. Peel, two Viceroys of India in Lord Lansdowne and Lord Curzon, poets like Clough, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne, these are only some of the more outstanding names. It is this which makes Balliol Hall so particularly interesting to the ordinary man; knowledge of present-day affairs, not of history, is all that is needed to appreciate its array of portraits. Nor has Balliol been unmindful of the social movements of our time. It is the chosen home of the Workers' Educational Association in Oxford, and in Arnold Toynbee it produced one of the pioneers and martyrs of modern social progress. Truly Balliol has much more to show to the visitor than its ultra-modern front on the Broad would promise. The street, on which Balliol looks out, is associated with the most famous scene of Oxford history; the stone with a cross in the middle of the road marks the traditional site of the burning of the bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, although their memorial has been erected 200 yards further north in St. Giles', and though antiquarians argue (probably correctly) that the actual pyre was a little further south, in fact, behind the present row of Broad Street houses. But it is the living activity of the college, not the sad memories of the street in front, that gives the interest to the picture. The intellectual life of the Balliol men has been well described by Professor J. C. Shairp, whose verses on "Balliol Scholars" are likely to be remembered by Oxford in long days to come for their associations, if not for their poetic merits. He describes what a privilege it is "to have passed," with men who became famous afterwards, "The threshold of young life, Where the man meets, not yet absorbs, the boy, And ere descending to the dusky strife, Gazed from clear heights of intellectual joy That an undying image left enshrined." This will come home to many, as they think on their happy Oxford days when they had life all before them, even though their contemporaries have not become archbishops like Temple or poets like Matthew Arnold. [Plate V. Balliol College, Broad Street Front] MERTON COLLEGE "I passed beside the reverend walls In which of old I wore the gown." TENNYSON. [Plate VI. Merton College : The Tower] Merton is not only the oldest college in Oxford, it is also, as is claimed on the monument of the founder, Walter de Merton, in his Cathedral of Rochester, the model of "omnium quotquot extant collegiorum." Peterhouse, the first college at Cambridge, which was founded (1281) seven years later than Merton, had its statutes avowedly copied from those of its Oxford predecessor.