But it is the living activity of the college, not the sad memories of the street in front, that gives the interest to the picture.  The intellectual life of the Balliol men has been well described by Professor J. C. Shairp, whose verses on “Balliol Scholars” are likely to be remembered by Oxford in long days to come for their associations, if not for their poetic merits.  He describes what a privilege it is “to have passed,” with men who became famous afterwards,

          “The threshold of young life,
     Where the man meets, not yet absorbs, the boy,
     And ere descending to the dusky strife,
     Gazed from clear heights of intellectual joy
     That an undying image left enshrined.”

This will come home to many, as they think on their happy Oxford days when they had life all before them, even though their contemporaries have not become archbishops like Temple or poets like Matthew Arnold.

[Plate V. Balliol College, Broad Street Front]

MERTON COLLEGE

“I passed beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown.” 
Tennyson.

[Plate VI.  Merton College :  The Tower]

Merton is not only the oldest college in Oxford, it is also, as is claimed on the monument of the founder, Walter de Merton, in his Cathedral of Rochester, the model of “omnium quotquot extant collegiorum.”  Peterhouse, the first college at Cambridge, which was founded (1281) seven years later than Merton, had its statutes avowedly copied from those of its Oxford predecessor.

So important a new departure in education calls for special notice.  It is interesting to see how the English college system grew out of the long rivalry between the Regular and the Secular clergy which was so prominent in the mediaeval church.  The Secular clergy, who had in their ranks all the “professional men” of the day, civil servants, architects, physicians, as well as, those devoted to religious matters in the strict sense, were always jealous of the monks and the friars, who, living by a “rule” in their communities, were much less in sympathy with English national feelings than the Seculars, who lived among the laity.  Hence the growing influence of the Regular Orders, especially of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, in thirteenth-century Oxford, excited the alarm of a far-seeing prelate like Walter de Merton.  There was a real danger that the most prominent and best of the students might be drawn into the great new communities, which were rapidly adding to their learning and their piety the further attractions of great buildings and splendid ceremonial.

The founder of Merton had the same purpose as the founder of the College of the Sorbonne at Paris, a slightly earlier institution (1257).  He intended that his college should rival the houses of the Dominicans and the Franciscans.  These friaries were in the southern part of Oxford, and have completely perished, leaving behind only the names of two or three mean streets; but the college system which Walter de Merton founded has grown with the growth of Oxford and of England, and is to-day as vigorous and as useful as ever.