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MERTON is in several respects the most interesting of the Colleges of Oxford. In the first place, it is the oldest; for though the original endowments of University and Balliol were bestowed a little earlier, Merton was the first College to have a corporate existence, regulated and defined by statute. With the granting of Merton's statutes in 1264, a new era of University life began. From being casual sojourners in lodgings and Halls, students from this date tended more and more to be gathered into organised, endowed, and dignified societies, where discipline was one of the factors of education.

Such is Oxford's debt to Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and Bishop of Rochester, who died by a fall from his horse in fording a river in his diocese, and was buried in Rochester Cathedral. His tomb there has twice been renovated by the piety of the College which he founded.

His statutes are preserved at Merton, and were consulted as precedents when other Colleges were founded, at Cambridge as well as at Oxford. "By the example which he set," runs the inscription on his tomb, "he is the founder of all existing Colleges."

Another great distinction of Merton is its Library (whose interior appears in Mrs. Walton's sketch), which was built in 1377, by William Rede, Bishop of Chichester, and is the oldest Library in the kingdom. In monasteries and other houses where learning took refuge, books had hitherto been kept in chests, an arrangement which must have had its drawbacks, considering the weight of the volumes of those days.

Mr. Matthison's first drawing shews the College as seen from Merton Street, with the imposing tower of the Chapel in the background. A very fine view of the buildings of Merton, in their full extent, is obtained from Christ Church Meadow.

To speak of them in detail, the Muniment Room is the oldest collegiate structure in Oxford, and possibly dates from the lifetime of the Founder. The Hall gateway, with its ancient oak door and enormous iron hinges, is of the same epoch. Of the three Quadrangles the small one to the north (which contains the Library) is the oldest. The front Quadrangle opens by a magnificent archway into the Inner, or Fellows' Court, built in 1610 in the late Gothic style, its south gate surmounted with pillars of the several Greek orders. The Common Room (1661) was the first room of the kind to be opened in Oxford.

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The beautiful Chapel has rather the appearance of a parish Church, which indeed it is. St. John the Baptist's parish, however, is so minute as hardly to need, in a city of many churches, a place of worship all to itself, and the building was assigned to Merton in the last decade of the thirteenth century, with the proviso that one of the chaplains should discharge such parochial duties as might arise. In the ante-chapel are the monuments of the famous Sir Thomas Bodley, Sir Henry Savile, once Master, and Antony Wood, greatest of Oxford antiquarians. Wood (who died in 1695) was associated with Merton all his life. He was born in the house opposite the College entrance, called Postmasters' Hall, and there he passed most of his days.

It is from him that we get a great deal of our information about early Oxford. Royalty has repeatedly enjoyed the hospitality of Merton, and here is Wood's account of a visit paid by Queen Catherine, wife of Henry VIII. "She vouchsafed to condescend so low as to dine with the Merton-ians, for the sake of the late Warden Rawlyns, at this time almoner to the king, notwithstanding she was expected by other Colleges." Elizabeth and her privy council were equally gracious, and were entertained after dinner with disputations performed by the Fellows. One would like to know what subjects were disputed, and what the queen thought of her entertainment. When Charles I.'s Court came to Oxford, Queen Henrietta Maria occupied the Warden's lodgings, which were again tenanted by Charles II.'s queen, when the Court fled from plague-stricken London.

Merton has had great men among her Fellows, but none greater than John Wycliffe; and among her postmasters (so the scholars are called here) no name captivates our sympathies more readily than that of Richard Steele, trooper and essayist, the friend of Addison and the husband of Prue.