inartistic and inappropriate than "Jumbo's Joss House," which used to
rouse the scorn and anger of the late Professor of History, Edward A.
Freeman.

No Oxford colleges are in this picture, though a small part of
Exeter, one of Sir Gilbert Scott's least happy erections in Oxford,
appears on the right, and a little piece of Trinity on the left; the
last-named is the college of Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch,
better known as "Q," one of the most delightful of Oxford's minor
poets. The opening lines of his poem, "Alma Mater,"

"Know ye her secret none can utter,
Hers of the book, the tripled crown?
Still on the spire the pigeons flutter,
Still by the gateway flits the gown,
Still in the street from corbel and gutter
Faces of stone look down,"

may well have been inspired by this very scene in the Broad, for the
grim faces of stone that surround the Sheldonian are one of the
features and the puzzles of Oxford. Are they the Roman Emperors, or
the Greek Philosophers, or neither? It does not matter, for they are
unlike anything in heaven or in earth, and yet they are loved by all
true Oxford men for their uncompromising ugliness, which has been
familiar to so many generations.



BALLIOL COLLEGE