REVIVAL OF GRESHAM COLLEGE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
3. Regent Srplare, 19th June 1839. SIR—In the very flattering notice of my late Gresham Lectures, which appeared in your paper of last week, you remark—" To what ex- tent the other Gresham Professors have been successful in creating an interest in their respective subjects, we are not in a condition to say." This information I am happy to be able to supply. The aggregate number of hearers at the lectures in Easter Term was 1662; and the aggregate number of bearers during the Trinity Term just closed was 3,046,—being an increase during a single term of 1384. The proportion of increase has not been the same in all the lectures, although in each it has been considerable. The largest addition has occurred on the delivery of the Astronomical course, by my able and accomplished col- league, Professor PULLEN.
Accident has this year given us the temporary occupation of s spacious lecture-room, and has thus enabled us to test the possible value and usefulness of Sir TitoslAs GRESHAM'S munificent endow- ment, and its adaptability to the existing state of society. The experi- ment is but in progress, but you have the result thus far. The ques- tion will soon have to be decided, whether the citizens of London are hereafter to enjoy the advantage which our founder bequeathed them, or not. Driven from their home—deprived of their College and their Lecture-hall, for seventy years theGresham Professors have been com- pelled to lecture in a small room in the Royal Exchange; and it re- mains with others to determine how far their power of usefulness shall henceforth be contracted or enlarged. The Royal Exchange is the endowment of Gresham College : in 1768 that College was pulled down, in consequence of an Act of Parliament, which decreed its de- molition and the erection of the Excise.office on its site. The Profes- sors have now stated the facts connected with this barbarous and wanton outrage to Parliament, praying that adequate reparation may be made for it by the provision of some suitable building, in which the patriotic and liberal designs of their founder may be carried into effect. You have correctly stated the object of their petition to be "the putting an end to their own sinecures."
As London is the only city in the empire in which such a course of gratuitous instruction is provided for its inhabitants, so England is the only civilized nation in the world whose Government has destroyed such an endowment, and is at this moment pocketing at least .5,006t a year at its expense. Will the Legislature, anxious as it professes to he for public instruc- tion, suffer this stigma to rest upon it ? Will the friends to the diffu- sion of knowledge not bestir themselves to restore to the public an ad- vantage of which they have been unjustly deprived, and which they have already shown themselves eager to repossess? The venerabl4 and admirable institution of GaEstiast is now in the crisis of its fate; and to all who have the control of it he has thus solemnly and empha- tically spoken- .. I require and charge my said Trustees, to procure and see the trusts coo- tained in my will to be done with circumspect diligence, as they will answer the same before Almighty God ; and as to so good purpose in the common- wealth no Prince nor Council will deny or defeat the same, the default thereof shall be to their reproach and condemnation." I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
EDWARD TAYLOR.
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