victory at
Salamis over the Persian king, that, when invited to name the two
most deserving commanders, they each put their own name first, and
then one and all put the Athenian Themistocles second. If a vote, on
these principles, were taken in Oxford as to which was the best
college, there is little doubt that Balliol would secure most of the
second votes.

It is one of the three oldest colleges, and actually has been in
occupation of its present site longer than any other of our Oxford
foundations--for more than six centuries and a half. Yet its
greatness is but a thing of yesterday compared to the antiquity of
Oxford, and it is fitting that a college which has come to the front
in the nineteenth century should be mainly housed in nineteenth
century buildings.

Balliol has indeed ceased to be the "most satisfactory pile and range
of old lowered and gabled edifices," which Nathaniel Hawthorne saw in
the "fifties" of the last century. The painful imitation of a French
chateau, the work of Sir Alfred Waterhouse, which forms the main part
of our picture, was put up about 1868 (mainly by the munificence of
Miss Hannah Brackenbury), and only the old hall and the library,
which lie behind, remain of Pre-Reformation Balliol.

In the background of our picture (Plate V) can be seen the Fisher
Building, known to all Balliol men for the still existing
inscription, "Verbum non amplius Fisher," which tradition says was
put up at the dying request of the eighteenth-century benefactor.

While it is true that the pre-eminence of Balliol is a growth of the
nineteenth century, yet the college can count among its worthies one
of the greatest names in English mediaeval history, that of John
Wycliffe. He was probably a scholar of Balliol, and certainly Master
for some years about 1360. But he left the college for a country
living, and his time at Balliol is not associated with either of his
most important works--his translation of the Bible or his order of
"Poor Preachers." While at Balliol, he was rather "the last of the
Schoolmen" than "the first of the Reformers."

The modern greatness of Balliol is due to the fact that the college
awoke more rapidly from the sleep of the eighteenth century than most
of Oxford, and as early as 1828 threw open its scholarships to free
competition. Hence even as early as the time of Dr. Arnold at Rugby,
a "Balliol scholarship" had become "the blue riband of public-school
education." It has now pas