Page:An address delivered to the graduates admitted at the Convocation of the Senate of the University of Madras, held on Monday, April 5, 1878 (IA b22350172).pdf/5

 rays of the rising sun, as if Southern India greeted the Glorious God of day—fabled also of old as the God of Learning—with a building consecrated to his beloved pursuits. Let us hope the influence of this University may be as beneficent and lasting, and that, like the luminary whose advent it daily greets, it may shed a never-failing stream of intellectual light over the land, chasing away the darkness of ignorance and superstition.

Some twenty years ago when this University was first called into existence, and for years after, it was customary on these occasions to hold forth on the advantages and delights of learning as an inducement to the youths of this country to come forward and fill our Colleges. To do so now would be, I feel, an act of supererogation. There is no need for us now to go into the bye-ways and hedges for guests to fill our banquets. Each year sees an ever-increasing number of candidates for matriculation and graduation in Arts, but I fail to notice any increase for degrees in medicine—a matter, I see, on which our gallant and respected Director of Public Instruction touched upon in his address last year. In twenty years the faculty of medicine has produced three Doctors, half a dozen Bachelors, and one Licentiate in a population numbering some 50,000,000