With gilded turrets in the sunrise shining:
From sainted Magdalene's aerial tower
Sounds far aloof that ancient chant are singing,
And round the heart again those solemn memories bringing."
ISAAC WILLIAMS.

Macaulay was too good a Cambridge man to appreciate an Oxford college
at its full worth; but he devotes one of his finest purple patches to
the praise of Magdalen, ending, as is fitting, "with the spacious
gardens along the river side," which, by the way, are not "gardens."
Antony Wood praises Magdalen as "the most noble and rich structure in
the learned world," with its water walks as "delectable as the banks
of Eurotas, where Apollo himself was wont to walk." To go a century
further back, the Elizabethan, Sir John Davies, wrote:

"O honeyed Magdalen, sweete, past compare
Of all the blissful heavens on earth that are."

Such praises could be multiplied indefinitely, and they are all
deserved.

The good genius of Magdalen has been faithful to it throughout. The
old picturesque buildings on the High Street, taken over (1457) by
the Founder, William of Waynflete, from the already existing hospital
of St. John, were completed by his munificence in the most attractive
style of English fifteenth century domestic architecture; Chapel and
Hall, Cloisters and Founder's Tower, all alike are among the most
beautiful in Oxford. When classical taste prevailed, the
architectural purists of the eighteenth century were for sweeping
almost all this away, and had a plan prepared for making a great