Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/194

 University, and those that were affiliated before have been extending and enlarging and elevating their course of instruction. Even within the last year, the course of study for the Science degree has been revised and extended, and, I trust, very greatly improved by a committee, whose assiduity and devotion to duty in the performance of that arduous task claims the recognition of the members of the Senate especially, and of the members of the University at large. The study of French has been introduced into the University, and a prize has been instituted for ancient Palaeography as an optional subject in the higher degrees, which, I trust, may lead many gentlemen, who have laid the foundation of sound and good scholarship, to devote themselves and the ability they have thus acquired and cultivated to the acquisition and spread of a knowledge of that most useful and interesting subject—a subject which has a peculiar claim on the devotion and labours of Indian students, anxious for the renown and the welfare of their country, seeing that the present and the future are linked inevitably to the past, that everyone who throws additional light on the past furnishes a fresh interest and incentive to those who are intent on the progress of the present and the future. As for the French language and literature, I trust that those who are studying that language will come up in increased forces in future examinations. It is a study which is at present in its infancy, but I trust that it will make considerable progress, and that by-and-bye we shall have efficient teachers not only outside the colleges and the University, but within them,—Professors properly provided for by endowments in those colleges. If anything were "wanting to indicate the advanced position which the University has gained during the four years that elapsed since I addresed the Senate last, I think that this very meeting in which we are standing would afford a happy and a conclusive indication of the extension of the interest felt in it and of the importance of the institution. We see here assembled representatives of the chief classes of Bombay, and the interest which they manifest in this University is an ever-growing interest and one which extends to every section of the community.

But let me indicate by another sign the importance of the University. Its growing importance could in no way be more clearly manifested than by the list of gentlemen whom we have been very happy to receive for the first time on this occasion as new Fellows of the University. Amongst those gentlemen are to be found representatives of all the principal subjects of