From these radical defects of the old foundations the London University is free. It cannot cry up one study or cry down another. It has no means of bribing one man to learn what it is of no use to him to know, or of exacting a mock attendance from another who learns nothing at all. To be prosperous, it must be useful. We would not be too sanguine. But there are signs of these times, and principles of human nature, to which we trust as firmly as ever any ancient astrologer trusted to the rules of his science. Judging from these, we will venture to cast the horoscope of the infant Institution. We predict, that the clamour by which it has been assailed will die away,--that it is destined to a long, a glorious, and a beneficent existence,--that, while the spirit of its system remains unchanged, the details will vary with the varying necessities and facilities of every age,--that it will be the model of many future establishments--that even those haughty foundations which now treat it with contempt, will in some degree feel its salutary influence,--and that the approbation of a great people, to whose wisdom, energy and virtue, its exertions will have largely contributed, will confer on it a dignity more imposing than any which it could derive from the most lucrative patronage, or the most splendid ceremonial. Even those who think our hopes extravagant, must own that no positive harm has been even suggested as likely to result from this Institution. All the imputed sins of its founders are sins of omission. Whatever may be thought of them, it is surely better that something should be omitted, than that nothing should be done. The Universities it can injure in one way only--by surpassing them. This danger no sincere admirer of these bodies can apprehend. As for those who, believing that the project really tends to the good of {360}the country, continue to throw obloquy upon it--and that there are such men we believe--to them we have nothing to say. We have no hope of converting them; no wish to revile them. Let them quibble, declaim, sneer, calumniate. Their punishment is to be what they are.