Nov. 5, 1 8 74 J 



NATURE 



of working men to take advantage of instruction in science 

 when there is some guarantee that such instruction is 

 sound and earnest ; and it is a pity, when this is the case, 

 that any time shoukl be lost in devising some system of 

 scientific and technical education suited for the wants of 

 the whole country. At all events the pabulum provided 

 at Gresham College is a sad mockery of this wide- 

 spread craving for knowledge. Again, to quote the 

 writer in the Daily Neius : " While the West is thus 

 enlightened by modern science, in the East a phan- 

 tasm bedizened in the worn-out rags and tatters of 

 scholasticism provokes contemptuous laughter. In the 

 large lecture theatre which occupies the greater part of 

 the building at the corner of Gresham and Basinghall 

 streets, to an audience composed of perhaps half a dozen 

 persons, who have drifted in from mere idle curiosity, an 

 English divine will read a lecture on astrono r.y in the 

 Latin tongue, followed an hour later by an Ei glish lecture 

 but little better attended. This, with similar curious 

 exhibitions during Term time, is the outcome of Sir 

 Thomas Gresham's bequest, and the functions of those 

 who were once resident Professors have dwindled to the 

 delivery of these almost unattended lectures." The 

 writer then goes on to tell the melancholy history of the 

 Gresham Fund, and he tells it so well that we shall give 

 the story nearly in his own words. 



" The atrophy of Gresham College is well worthy of 

 notice. By the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, the great 

 merchant of Elizabeth's time, and the Founder of the 

 Royal Exchange, were bequeathed, in moieties to the City 

 and Corporation of London and to the Company of Mer- 

 cers, under certain conditions, 'the buildings in London 

 called the Royal Exchange, and all pawns and shops, 

 cellars, vaults, messuages and tenements, adjoyning to 

 the said Royal Exchange.' To the foundation of a col- 

 lege, 'myne now dwelling-house in the parish of St. 

 Helens in Bishopsgate and St. Peters the Poor ' was 

 devoted, and the 'Mayor and Commonalty' of the City 

 of London were charged with ' the sustentation, main- 

 tenance, and finding ' of four persons to read lectures on 

 Divinity, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry in the said 

 dwelling-house — a stately mansion. The Company of 

 Mercers was charged with the maintenance of three Pro- 

 fessors to lecture on Law, Physic, and Rhetoric, and on 

 both the City and the Company of Mercers was enjoined 

 the performance of sundry charitable duties towards 

 almsmen, poor prisoners, and the like. Celibacy was 

 pronounced an absolute condition of professorship, and 

 the seven lecturers were to reside in 'myne now dwelling- 

 house,' and were each to receive fifty pounds yearly — no 

 inconsiderable remuneration in the year of grace 1575, 

 when good Sir Thomas set his ' seal with the grass- 

 hopper ' to his last will and testament." For a considerable 

 period after the founder's death Gresham College appears to 

 have remained an important institution. Here, on Nov. 2S, 

 1660, the foundation of the Royal Society was decided 

 upon by a knot of philosophers who had assembled to 

 listen to a lecture on astronomy by Christopher Wren, at 

 that time a resident Professor in the old Gresham Man- 

 sion, where the chair of Geometry was filled by the cele- 

 brated Hooke. Escaping the Great Fire of London, 

 Gresham College, still a flourishing institution, served for 

 a while as Guildhall and Exchange to what was left of the 



City, but within the following forty years fell into that 

 decadence from which it has never since emerged. In 

 1706 a memorial was laid before the Lord Mayor and the 

 Court of Aldermen, setting forth grave causes of com- 

 plaint against the Professors. A dashing pamphleteer of 

 the period also declared that the Professors, albeit " gen- 

 tlemen of civility, ingenuity, and candour," yet seemed to 

 discover an " unwillingness and reluctancy to perform 

 their work, because it required some pains and attend- 

 ance, and were so far from the ambition of being crowded 

 with auditors that they seemed rather to desire to have 

 none at all." 



" This state of things was bad enough," continues 

 the writer in the Daily News, " but worse was to follow. 

 In 1768, with the consent of the Grand Committee of the 

 Gresham Trust — which consisted then, as now, of four 

 aldermen and eight commoners of the City of London, 

 and twelve commoners for the Company of Mercers — the 

 Gresham Mansion and the site on which it was built were 

 alienated to the Crown for the purpose of building a new 

 Excise Office. ' Myne dwelling-house ' had been scan- 

 dalously neglected, and allowed to fall into such a dilapi- 

 dated condition that its unworthy guardians parted with 

 it in consideration of the payment to the City and tlie 

 Mercers' Company of a perpetual rent of 500/. per annum, 

 the City and Company paying 1,800/. down towards the 

 cost of pulling down the ancient building and erecting 

 the new office. By this transaction an estate of great 

 value was sacrificed, the handsomest house in London 

 torn down, and the collegiate establishment entirely 

 subverted. A room at the Royal Exchange was set apart 

 for reading the lectures, celibacy was no longer made a 

 condition of professorship, and residence was dispensed 

 with as a matter of course — the lecturers being each 

 allowed 50/. yearly, in lieu of apartments, over and above 

 the original salary of 50/. Owing partly to the incapacity 

 of the Professors and partly to the inconvenient hours at 

 which the lectures were delivered, the attendance of the 

 public diminished, until between the years 1 800 and 1 820 

 the average number of the audience was only ten at each 

 English lecture and thirteen at all the Latin lectures for 

 the whole year. On the burning of the Royal E.xchange 

 Gresham College became a nomad institution, the lectures 

 being mumbled or gabbled over in any hole or corner, until 

 1 84 1 , when the Gresham Committee purchased the presen t 

 site, and erected on it a handsome lecture theatre at a cost 

 of 7,000/. On various occasions attempts have been made 

 to modify the constitution of Gresham College ; but 

 although it was found possible to entirely overturn the 

 provisions of the 'pious founder' in 1768, all subsequent 

 interference has been met by the most determ'n-d r jipo- 

 sition. It will hardly be credited that a prolonged struggle 

 ensued before the Professors could be brought to issue a 

 syllabus of the lectures to be delivered in each term. 

 Still greater difficulty was experienced in transferring the 

 hours of lecturing to the evening. This innovation 

 was firmly resisted, and it was only by waiting till the 

 tough old irreconcileables were gathered to their fathers 

 that it was at last carried out. 



" Very slight improvement has taken place under the 

 new order of things. Shortly before six o'clock on the 

 evenings designated in the syllabus the doors of Gresham 

 College are opened, and a superb beadle looks out to see 



