but the buildings which bound it on three sides were executed after the
destruction of the old edifice in the great civil wars from designs by Sir
Christopher Wren in 1688.

The Hall on the south side is ancient; we ascend to it by a flight of steps
under a handsome groined roof supported by a single pillar. The Hall is 115
feet long, 40 wide, and 50 high. The open roof of oak richly carved,
decorated with the arms of Wolsey and Henry VIII. Other carvings adorn the
fire-place and a fine bay window.

On the sides of the rooms are hung a series of 120 portraits of
ecclesiastics, poets, philosophers (these are few), statesmen, and noblemen,
representing distinguished students of the College.

The dinner hour, when the dean and chief officers sit in state on the dais,
masters and bachelors at the side tables, and undergraduates at the lower
end, is an impressive sight, recalling feudal times. The feeding is the
worst of any in Oxford, much to the advantage of the taverns and pastrycooks.

When in 1566 Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford, a play was performed before her
in this hall by the students, in the course of which, "a cry of hounds
belonging to themselves" having been counterfeited in the quadrangle, the
students were seized with a sudden transport; whereat her Majesty cried out,
"O excellent! these boys in very truth are ready to leap out of the window to
follow the hounds."

Amid the many changes of taste and opinion since the days of Queen Bess, the
love of hunting still prevails in Christchurch, not one of the least healthy
tastes, in an age of perpetual competing work; and the Christchurch drag is
one of the stock amusements anathematized toward the end and permitted at the