The view in Plate XX of the tower is taken from the front of
Pembroke, and must have been often admired by Oxford's devoted son,
Samuel Johnson, when, as a poor scholar of Pembroke, "he was
generally to be seen (says his friend. Bishop Percy) lounging at the
college gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was
entertaining with his wit and keeping from their studies."




ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE


[Plate XXI. St. John's College : Garden Front]

"An English home--gray twilight poured
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep, all things in order stored,
The haunt of ancient Peace."
TENNYSON, Palace of Art.

St. John's shares with Trinity and Hertford the distinction of having
been twice founded. As the Cistercian College of St. Bernard, it owed
its origin to Archbishop Chichele, the founder of All Souls', and it
continued to exist for a century as a monastic institution. At the
Reformation it was swept away with other monastic foundations by the
greed of Henry VIII, but it was almost immediately refounded, in the
reign of Mary, by Sir Thomas White, one of the greatest of London's
Lord Mayors. In all these respects it has an exact parallel in
Trinity, which had existed as a Benedictine foundation, being then