NEW COLLEGE 225 



" These gardens of New College are indescribably beautiful 

 not gardens in the American sense, but lawns of the richest 

 green and soft velvet grass shadowed by ancient trees that 

 have lived a quiet life here for centuries, and have been 

 nursed and tended with such care, and so sheltered from 

 rude winds, that certainly they have been the happiest of all 

 trees " (Hawthorne's " English Note-book "). 



ALL SOULS COLLEGE can boast the tallest Rowan in Oxford, 

 a slender sapling as tall as the Codrington Library building. 

 The Sycamore, 7 ft. girth, overhangs, and is a great ornament 

 to the High Street. 



BRASENOSE COLLEGE. Hearne tells us that the quadrangle 

 "was once a garden, which was a delightful and pleasant 

 shade in summer-time, but was cut down by direction of the 

 Principal and some others, purely to turn it into a grass plot 

 and erect some silly statue there " [Cain and Abel]. 



" There was a garden, too, attached to our College, but 

 nothing was ever sown in it, save wild oats and exhausted 

 ' weeds ' ; and I can only remember a single window which 

 was beautified with flowering plants, and this ' because ' 

 (as I was assured on inquiry, though I was quite unable to 

 understand the inference) ' the occupier was going over to 

 Rome ' " (S. Reynolds Hole, " A Book about the Garden "). 

 S. R. H. was at Brasenose between 1840 and 1844. 



But although Brasenose College now owns no trees within 

 its walls, it is the proprietor of one of the finest small private 

 gardens in Oxford, at Grandpont. A list of dimensions of the 

 older trees is given on p. 248. 



EXETER COLLEGE has the joy and the responsibility of 

 having one side of the Bodleian Library in the garden. 



On the other hand, porers over Bodleian manuscripts can 

 rest their tired eyes on the restful green beneath them. Sir 

 Christopher Wren's massive but beautiful buttresses all covered 

 with ivy, and the fine Robinia (n ft. 6 in.) on the lawn, 

 compose a group of unique charm among garden views. 



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