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VIVIAN GREY.
223

and watches with great interest all "the plans, and plots" of this enlightened age. The only thing which he does not exactly comprehend, is the London University. This affair really puzzles the worthy gentleman, who could as easily fancy a county member not being a freeholder, as an University not being at Oxford or Cambridge. Indeed, to this hour the old gentleman believes that the whole business is "a damnationed hoax;" and if you tell him, that, far from the plan partaking of the visionary nature he conceives, there are actually four acres of very valuable land purchased near White Conduit House for the erection; and that there is little apprehension, that in the course of a century, the wooden poles which are now stuck about the ground, will be fair, and flourishing, as the most leafy bowers of New College gardens, the old gentleman looks up to heaven, as if determined not to be taken in, and leaning back in his chair, sends forth a