which the See of Oxford was removed from
Olney Abbey to St Frideswide's, which had already become a part of the
College. From that date the whole foundation, partly educational and
partly ecclesiastical in character, became one institution, and was then
and for ever after called Christ Church. It is an extraordinary story,
and, mixed up as it is with the rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey, lends
a great amount of human interest to the inspection of the College.

There is nothing else at all like it in existence. Collegiate and
ecclesiastical life are inextricably mixed up. There is a Dean: but
instead of being an official appointed to keep order among the
undergraduates, he is both Head of the College and Dean of the
Cathedral. The great quadrangle is partly like the quad of another
college, in containing certain sets of rooms in the occupation of
undergraduates, and partly like a cathedral close, inasmuch as therein
is the Deanery and the residences of an archdeacon and canons. The
Cathedral itself is, though small, a dignified and beautiful building of
true cathedral character. At the same time it is the College Chapel, and
the undergraduates who daily attend its services are privileged to
worship in a magnificent fane, but at the same time must lose that sense
of what, for want of a better word, must be called the home-like charm
which endears to so many their College Chapel. The scenes, too, that
the quadrangles witness are curiously varied. Now there is a procession
of divines wending their way to some diocesan function, with bishops and
chaplains bringing up the rear, and anon a crowd of undergraduates,
smarting beneath some fancied grievance, or merely celebrating some
success upon the river, noisily express their wish to paint the college
red.

But Christ Church is not the only unique college in Oxford. As there is
no other to be found in any university so curiously combined with the
cathedral and ecclesiastical dignitaries of a see, so is there no other,
in this country at all events, that has preserved its original
intention, as a college for Fellows only, as has All Souls. Here no
noisy undergraduate is allowed to disturb the calm. There are, indeed,
four Bible Clerks who are undergraduate members and reside within its
walls, but their very name is enough to guarantee their unobtrusive
respectability--if indeed they exist in the flesh at all, for it is said
that none except the Fellows of the College have eve