There is something in these classical Oxford chapels which lends a curious and distinct savour to the offices of religion. It has been said that Gothic represents the aspiration of man to God, classical architecture the tabernacling of God with men. There is a species of truth in the statement. But it would perhaps be truer to say that in Gothic one sees the uncultivated instinct for beauty feeling its way out of barbarism into a certain ecclesiastical and traditional grace. But the classical enshrinement of religious worship seems to hint at a desire to bring the older and loftier triumphs of the human mind, the Greek and Roman spirit, into the service of the sanctuary. Gothic seems to depict the untutored spirit of man, nurtured on nature and religion, working out a wild and native grace in intricacy of tracery and ornament. But the classical setting brings with it a sober and settled air, a wider and larger range of human interests, a certain antiquity of mental culture. Pater’s own rooms are approached by a staircase in the south-east corner of the first court, which leads to a little thick-walled panelled parlour, now white, then painted a delicate yellow, with black doors; an old-fashioned scroll round the mantelpiece was picked out in gold. The deeply recessed oriel window looks out upon the Radcliffe. Some trace of Pater’s dainty ways lingers in the pretty and fantastic ironwork of the doors, brought by him from Brittany. The room was always furnished with a certain seemly austerity and simplicity, never crowded with ornament. His only luxury was a bowl of dried rose-leaves. He had little desire to possess intrinsically valuable objects, and a few engravings served rather to remind him of the noble originals than to represent them. Thus there exists, now in the possession of the Principal of Brasenose, a little tray of copies of beautiful Greek coins, bearing large heads with smooth and liberal curves, and other dainty devices, on which Pater loved to feast his eyes. Mr. Humphry Ward writes:— “I well remember my first visit to his rooms—small, freshly painted in greenish white, and hung with three or four line-engravings. All dons had line-engravings then, but they were all after Raphael. Pater had something more characteristic: the ‘Three Fates,’ attributed to M. Angelo; a head after Correggio; and I think something of Ingres—a new name to Oxford! The clean, clear table, the stained border round the matting and Eastern carpet, and the scanty, bright chintz curtains, were a novelty and a contrast to the oaken respectability and heaviness of all other dons’ rooms at that day. The effect was in keeping with his own clear-cut view of life, and made, in a small way, ‘the colours freshen on this threadbare world.’”