to existence matters nothing to them. Take for example the office of
Dean. In every college there is a Dean, to whom is committed the order
and discipline of the place. Should there be a bonfire in the quad, it
is he who comes out and frantically attempts to put it out. Should an
unlucky undergraduate oversleep himself more often in the week than
college rules allow, it is the Dean who sends for him and gates him,
that is to say, confines him within the college gates after sunset or
thereabouts. The Dean is looked upon as an "institution", not wholly
delightful but still a necessary bit of Oxford life; but very few
undergraduates are aware that one must go back to the times of Walter de
Merton to find out how he came into being. The life of a student in the
first college was planned to be lived in great simplicity. His fare was
to be of the plainest, and he was not to talk at dinner. He was never to
be noisy. The rules, indeed, went so far as to say that, if he wanted to
talk at any time, he must talk in Latin. It may be supposed that human
nature was much the same in the thirteenth century as in the twentieth,
and such a life must have proved difficult to some. In order to enforce
the rules one student in every ten was made a kind of "praefect", with
disciplinary power over the others. Hence the "decanus", and lo! the
first of all the Deans!

Merton had not existed for much more than a century when it became
possessed through the magnificence of Rede, Bishop of Chichester, of its
wonderful library, so that not only has it the oldest quadrangle, but
also the oldest mediaeval library in the kingdom. There is not a room in
Oxford so impressive with a sense of antiquity. Its lancet windows, its
rough desks sticking out from the bookcases, the chains which thwart the
project of the book-thief, all help to obliterate the ages; though the
decorations of the ceiling, and the stained-glass windows, tell of the
desire of later centuries to soften the original sternness of the room.
It is here that one must wait quietly as dusk begins to fall, if one
would see faint forms of those of whom Merton boasts as her noblest
sons. To all of them is this old room familiar, and to none more so than
to Henry Savile, lover of books and warden of the College just three
hundred years ago. He it was who induced Merton to give prompt and
generous aid to that other Fellow of the College, Sir Thomas Bodley,
when founding the great library that bear