Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/27

 important that I would say a few words regarding it, I allude to the study of your own classical languages.

Some discussion has arisen which must, I believe, bear useful fruit regarding the relative merits of the classical languages of this country as compared with the vernaculars, as objects of University study. I will not anticipate the results of this discussion. No one estimates more highly than I do the importance of vernacular education; no one has a higher estimate of the capabilities of some of our Indian vernacular languages; no one has higher hopes as to the space which they may one day fill in the literature of India. But I would remind you that the improvement of any vernacular language, which has but a scanty modern literature of its own, must depend mainly on the cultivation of classical languages. However great the natural capabilities of a language, it cannot become suited to the wants of a highly civilised people, except by the cultivation of those languages which already have a classical literature of their own. It was the men who learnt, and lectured, and examined in Latin and Greek, who matured the modern English and German, French and Italian, out of the illiterate dialects which served the purposes of our ruder ancestors, and it is only by a similar process that we can hope to see the vernacular languages of modern India occupy the same position of popular usefulness and permanence. You have now in this University, in the professors of Zend and Sanscrit, unrivalled facilities for the study of your own classical languages. I would beg you who value the usefulness of the University, to take good heed that the opportunity does not pass by unimproved.

I would in conclusion say to the graduates and under-graduates of this University that Government will every year look with increasing interest to the results of the University examinations, and I trust that we shall find in the tests here applied the same unerring touchstone by which to recognize who are likely to be fit for an impartial share in public offices.

The graduates of this University have now opened to them with a far better prospect of attainment than any other part of the educated youth of this country, the highest posts on the Judicial Bench, and an influential share in the most important functions of the public administration; but I need not remind you that no man who is indifferent to the advantages of a liberal education can hope to fill with dignity or efficiency a seat on the bench, which has been occupied by Macintosh or Sir William Jones. When