Among these narrow, ugly and dirty streets, are tumbled in, as it were at random (for the whole place looks as if it had been dancing to Amphion's music, and he had left off in the middle of a very complicated figure) some of the most beautiful academical buildings in the world. However their style of architecture may vary, according to the period at which they were built or rebuilt, they agree in one essential feature: all the colleges are constructed in quadrangles or courts; and, as in course of years the population of every college except one [Downing], has outgrown the original quadrangle, new courts have been added, so that the larger foundations have three, and one (St. John's) has four courts. Sometimes the ‘old court’, or primitive part of the building presents a handsome front to the largest street near it; but frequently, as if to show its independence of, and contempt for, the town, it retires from the street altogether, showing the passer by only its ugliest wall, and smallest, shabbiest gate.