We know indeed that there are many to whom knowledge is hateful for its own sake,--owl-like beings, creatures of darkness, and rapine, and evil omen, who are sensible that their organs fit them only for the night,--and that, as soon as the day arises, they shall be pecked back to their nooks by those on whom they now prey with impunity. By the arts of those, enemies of mankind, a large and influential party has been led to look with suspicion, if not with horror, on all schemes of education, and to doubt whether the ignorance of the people be not the best security for its virtue and repose. We will not at present attack the principles of these persons, because we think that, even on those principles, they are bound to support the London University. If indeed it were possible to bring back, in all their ancient loveliness, the times of venerable absurdities and good old nuisances--if we could hope that gentlemen might again put their marks to deeds without blushing--that it might again be thought a miracle if any body in a parish could read, except the Vicar, or if the Vicar were to read any thing but the Service,--that all the literature of the multitude might again be comprised in a ballad or a prayer,--that the Bishop of Norwich might be burned for a heretic, and Sir Humphry Davy hanged for a conjurer,--that the Chancellor of the Exchequer might negotiate loans with Mr. Rothschild, by extracting {333}one of his teeth daily till he brought him to term--then indeed the case would be different. But, alas! who can venture to anticipate such a millennium of stupidity? The zealots of ignorance will therefore do well to consider, whether, since the evils of knowledge cannot be altogether excluded, it may not be desirable to set them in array against each other. The best state of things, we will concede to them, would be that in which all men should be dunces together. That might be called the age of gold. The silver age would be that in which no man should be taught to spell, unless he could produce letters of ordination, or, like a candidate for a German order of knighthood, prove his sixty-four quarters. Next in the scale would stand a community in which the higher and middling orders should be well educated, and the labouring people utterly uninformed. But the iron age would be that in which the lower classes should be rising in intelligence, while no corresponding improvement was taking, place in the rank immediately above them.