MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 459 



When at a later date tlie metapliysical, physical and ethical works 

 ■of Aristotle were discovered and studied, — these, with his Logic, read 

 no longer in translated abstracts but in the original Greek, had a 

 marked effect on the j^hilosophy and science of the universities, 

 expanding and elevating both, and purging both from several errors. 

 (Nevertheless, at the Reformation period, Holbein, in a well-known 

 picture, " Christus Yera Lux," represents Aristotle and Plato plung- 

 ing into a dark abyss, pope, cardinal, bishop and professor all following 

 them with closed eyes, each holding on to the other.) 



Oxford in 1264 was not the beautiful Oxford which is to be seen 

 to-day — a widespread city, rendered conspicuous from afar by dome 

 and turret and spire ; remarkable, when you enter it, for streets 

 exceeding fair and broad, traversing it in various directions, flanked 

 every here and there with long lines of collegiate buildings, reverend 

 and picturesque, each disclosing within its vaulted gateway, court and 

 cloister and velvety grass-plot, hall and chapel and library ; each, 

 provided in its farther recesses with a pleasaunce of its own, more or 

 less extensive, of lawns and gardens and groves, vocal with birds, 

 fragrant with sweet-scented shrubs and flowers ; tranquil paradises, 

 scenes of trim order and comeliness, kept ^^p from year to year with 

 minute, unremitting care. The Oxford of 1264 was, on the contrary, 

 a hard-featured walled town, with few contrivances for luxuiy or. 

 learned ease, its limited area chiefly filled with dingy hostels or lodging- 

 houses, in which, under the melancholy tutelage of friars of orders 

 and colours manifold, were herded at night the unkempt youth who 

 flocked to the place from all parts of the kingdom and from abroad, 

 and who during the day were to be seen hastening to and from the 

 lecture-rooms of the various doctor es ; to and from the services in the 

 several churches, thronging the naiTow streets and lanes, jostling 

 against each other and against the settled inhabitants of the place, 

 sometimes not without mischievous intent. Mingling with the mass 

 would doubtless be vagrants and charlatans innumerable, native and 

 foreigai, who seldom fail to find their way to places where inexpe- 

 rience and folly seem likely to yield a harvest. 



Here then it was, amidst surroundings, animate and inanimate, 

 such as these, that Walter de Merton commenced the great experi- 

 ment which finally developed into the modern English College or 

 University system. 



We shall not enter into the discussion relating to the foundation of 

 Fniversity College in Oxford, and Balliol, both of which in some 



