Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/200

 rich merchandise, but also to seek out learned men and to send home valuable manuscripts. There is an example for our citizens to follow. Again, I find at the same stage in the world's progress that a city like Bologna spent half of its municipal funds in the support of its University. Now I should like to go to the Municipal Council of Bombay, and ask them what they would say to expending fifteen lakhs per annum on the University of Bombay. In these days when there are so many calls on the funds of the municipality as on those of individuals, no one looks for such liberality as that. But something at least might be done, and certainly when we look to the history of great cities in the past, it can hardly be said to be an improper disposition of municipal funds, when at any rate within moderate limits they are expended on the advancement of learning and science. Padua, another great city, supported at one time thirty Professors in its University—Professors of Law and Medicine and General Literature. Now, if the Municipality of Bombay would undertake to support in this institution even one-half of that number, I am sure that the community would be extremely grateful, and this institution would derive the greatest possible benefit from such liberality. But at the same time that the municipalities of Italy at the period of the Renaissance were so liberal in their gifts in aid of learning, there was still a field left for the princes and nobles and chiefs of that country, and there is still a field left for the princes and nobles and chiefs of India to do a great deal for the University of Bombay. It will be familiar to those of you who have read history of that great period of the re-awakening of European life and knowledge that the new learning was but somewhat coldly received by the Universities themselves, which by that time after a period of three or four centuries of activity had already sunk pretty deep into the ruts of routine. It was in the courts of Popes and of the princes and nobles of Italy that the great scholars found means for carrying on their studies and the Universities, which were somewhat chary of receiving them, found to their cost after-wards that the wave of learning had in the long run passed them by and left them standing. Here is an example for the chiefs in India, and especially chiefs who have any relation to the Presidency of Bombay. Here is an institution which would be in no wise jealous of anything they can do for learning. It invites them to come into its arms and to go hand in hand along with them in the work of assisting and promoting learning, literature, and science. I suppose there are few chiefs of higher rank who would not give a lakh or even two