SIR,--I perceived the other day in your columns a letter from a gentleman of the name of Brown, who, in the most cynical, sneering manner, thought fit, unjustly as I think, to run down all our modern improvements--I know you are impartial, and love to give upright adversaries fair play in your paper; I differ with Mr. Brown, and perhaps you will give me the opportunity of showing how and why. In the first place, the ridicule, which not only he, but, I am sorry to say, yourself and many others, think fit to cast upon the advancement of learning, and which you have nick-named the march of intellect, is entirely misplaced--you look at things politically, because politicians of a peculiar class have adopted the institution of societies, seminaries, and universities--this is wrong--considering the matter thus, and associating men and manners, you teach us to believe the march of intellect the "rogues' march," to which all the well-disposed middling classes are to go to destruction; but you should consider the matter differently; you should recollect that almost all the political supporters of these Mechanics' Institutes and London Universities have imbibed their political principles merely because they have had little or no education themselves, and that as for instilling pride or arrogance into the minds of the lower and middling classes of the people, by sending them to the London University, the very converse must be the fact, because there is nothing that I see to be derived from the institution at all likely to induce pride or self-satisfaction in any of its members. In the _Times_ of Tuesday, I perceive an advertisement from Mr. Dufief, stating that nearly 300 members of a class in the London Mechanics' Institute are learning French rapidly and critically. This, I conceive, so far from being an absurdity, to be one of the most beneficial events ever announced: consider what an improvement it will be for the common run of people who frequent public places of amusement, to find the lower order well grounded in French--in that language they will, for elegance sake, carry on their future conversations, and the ears of our wives and daughters be no longer disgusted with the coarseness to which they are now subject--for you are of course aware, that as the progress of learning exhibits itself amongst the _canaille_, the aristocracy will abandon the ground they assume, and our belles and beaux, in less than a dozen years, will whisper their soft nonsense in Hebrew, Sanscrit, Cingalese, or Malabar.