quadrangle, and Balliol, in place of its new buildings, has its old
delightful grove. As to the houses of the town, they are not unlike
the tottering and picturesque old roofs and gables of King Street.

To the Oxford of Elizabeth's reign, then, the founders and architects
of her successor added, chiefly, the Schools' quadrangle, with the
great gate of the five orders, a building beautiful, as it were, in
its own despite. They added a smaller curiosity of the same sort, at
Merton; they added Wadham, perhaps their most successful achievement.
Their taste was a medley of new and old: they made a not
uninteresting effort to combine the exquisiteness of Gothic
decoration with the proportions of Greek architecture. The tower of
the five orders reminds the spectator, in a manner, of the style of
Milton. It is rich and overloaded, yet its natural beauty is not
abated by the relics out of the great treasures of Greece and Rome,
which are built into the mass. The Ionic and Corinthian pillars are
like the Latinisms of Milton, the double-gilding which once covered
the figures and emblems of the upper part of the tower gave them the
splendour of Miltonic ornament. "When King James came from Woodstock
to see this quadrangular pile, he commanded the gilt figures to be
whitened over," because they were so dazzling, or, as Wood expresses
it, "so glorious and splendid that none, especially when the sun
shone, could behold them." How characteristic of James is this
anecdote! He was by no means le roi soleil, as courtiers called
Louis XIV., as divines called the pedantic Stuart. It is easy to
fancy the King issuing from the Library of Bodley, where he has been
turning over books of theology, prosing, and displaying his learning
for hours. The rheumy, blinking eyes are dazzled in the sunlight,
and he peevishly commands the gold work to be "whitened over."
Certainly the translators of the Bible were but ill-advised when they