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The learned Professor of Oxford, Dr. Kidd, naturally anxious to repel a charge which he considered individually unfair, and to vindicate his University from an aspersion which he felt to be generally unjust, published an animated, but at the same time, a cool and candid defence, to which I have much pleasure in referring you. With respect to the Sister University, my own Alma Mater, I feel that I should be the most ungrateful of her sons, were I, upon this occasion, to omit expressing similar sentiments with respect to the course of chemistry, and that of its collateral branches, which are annually delivered in the crouded schools at Cambridge. Is Mr. Brande acquainted with the discipline of our University?—Is he aware that the chemical chair has been successively filled by Bishop Watson—Milner—Wollaston^[113]—and the late lamented Mr. Tennant?—“Master Builders in the Science.” To say that such men have been the lecturers, is surely a sufficient testimony to shew that the science of chemistry heretofore could not “have been neglected, or what perhaps is still worse, imperfectly taught;” and the zeal and ability displayed by the present Professor, ought to have shielded him from any such attack. Is Mr. Brande aware that the eloquent appeal of Bishop Watson from the chair at Cambridge,^[114] on the general importance and utility of chemistry, gave the first impulse to that public taste for this science which so eminently distinguishes our Augustan age, and which has been the means of founding and supporting the Royal, and other Public Institutions in this Metropolis, as well as in the other towns of the British Empire?