Pièce 97 - William Whewell to Julius Charles Hare

WW entirely agrees with JCH's reply to Milner on the subject of the application for a commission to inquire into the University: 'such an interference might do much harm but would not be likely to produce any good. As to Lyell [Charles Lyell], who is I believe one of the main movers in the business, I look upon him as the most bigoted of men in what relates to the Universities. You may judge of this from knowing that he holds the Universities to be entirely wrong in their arrangements, because the same persons lecture both in classics and in mathematics. This he has published in his Travels in America (by way of an appropriate channel) as the great evil of Cambridge and Oxford: and though I tried to set him right in my last book about our studies, he will not believe that the fad is otherwise'. WW has seen the first issue of 'Politics for the People' but does not yet 'catch the object or hopes of the conductors'.