Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/147

 limited course set before them, achieve it remarkably well. Native society must gain largely by the accessions of accomplished professional men whom it now annually receives from this and the sister institutions. The supply is in such cases likely to create or increase the want, and there is an almost unlimited field opening before those especially who adopt the medical profession, as old prejudices fade away, and sufferers relieved from pain spread confidence in the science which has restored them. You have heard, gentlemen, I am sure, with pleasure of the recognition by the University of the College at Baroda. It is thus not only at Poona or Ahmedabad within our own territories, but at places like Kolhapur and Baroda, that the University makes its presence felt, and determines the general scheme of instruction. Great results must in the end follow from this wide diffusion of the means of advanced education. The system is as yet in its infancy, but it is while young that an institution, like a human being, receives most readily a permanent impress of disposition and tendency. We must rejoice, therefore, that the college at Baroda has secured the services of men of real distinction in attainments and character. In Gujarat, as much as anywhere, we find the precocity, receptiveness, and mobility of the Hindu mind. Able and high-minded teachers may mould such materials to noble uses. On us it devolves to aid them and all similarly situated by our sympathy and our discipline. The responsibilities of the University in this respect are daily growing; but the faculties have hitherto known well where good workers were to be found, and the Syndicate, filled as it has been, will, I doubt not, deal successfully with every task that is thrown upon it, so far at any rate as University arrangements can suffice for the exigencies to which time must inevitably give birth.

The limitation by which candidates for Matriculation were formerly required to be sixteen years of age has in the past year been abolished. There are, no doubt, some branches of study for which a certain maturity apart from mere cleverness or scholarship is desirable. On this account different views may be taken of the expediency, in the abstract, of the change that has been made; but its practical justification lies in the fact that the old rule could not be maintained without a risk, or even certainty, of evasions which placed the really conscientious candidates at a disadvantage. The examination for Matriculation is of a kind that will generally exclude boys who are unprepared to benefit by a College course; and the example of some of the most eminent Englishmen shows that no harm, to say the least, arises in most cases from a reason-