accepted if modified into the statement that Wadham is the most
complete and perfect example of the ordinary type of college. However
that may be, there are three points as to these buildings which are
indisputable, and which are also most interesting to any lover of
English architecture. They are:
(1) Wadham is less altered than any other college in Oxford.
(2) It is the finest illustration of the fact that the Gothic
style survived in Oxford when it was being rapidly superseded
elsewhere.
(3) No building in Oxford (very few buildings anywhere) owe their
effect so completely to their simplicity and their absence of
adornment.

These three points must be illustrated in detail.

Wadham is the youngest college in Oxford, for all those that have
been founded since are refoundations of older institutions (but, as
its first stone was laid in 1610, it has a respectable antiquity);
yet the Front Quad is completely unaltered in design, and of the
actual stonework, hardly any has had to be renewed. Could the
Foundress return to life, she would find the college, which was to
her as a son, completely familiar.

The second point is a more important one. In the reign of Elizabeth,
classical architecture was being rapidly introduced; Gothic was
giving way before the style of Palladio, even as the New Learning was
banishing the schoolmen from the schools. This change is markedly
seen in the Elizabethan buildings at Cambridge, especially in Dr.
Caius' work, so far as it has been allowed to survive in the college
that bears his name. But in Oxford the old style went on for half the