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