The Charm of Oxford by Joseph Wells
page 88 of 102 (86%)
page 88 of 102 (86%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
planted them in the days of the French Revolution, and trees have
their time to fall at last, even though they long survive their planters. WADHAM COLLEGE (2) HISTORY "But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten. . . . Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore." /Ecclesiasticus/, xliv. 10, 14. The collection of pictures In Wadham Hall is probably the best of any college in Oxford--always, of course, excepting Christ Church. It has no single picture to be compared with the "Thomas Warton" at Trinity, or the "Dr. Johnson" at Pembroke (both excellent works of Reynolds), nor does it give so many fine examples of the work of recent artists as do Trinity or Balliol; but it makes up for these deficiencies by the number and the variety of its pictures. Two only of the men they represent can be said to attain to the first rank among England's worthies--Robert Blake, second as an admiral only to Nelson and Oxford's greatest fighting man until the present war, and Christopher Wren, "that prodigious young scholar" (as John Evelyn calls him), who, as has been well said, would have been second only to Newton among English mathematicians had he not chosen rather to be indisputably the first of British architects. It is interesting |
|