Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/298

Rh beside this, you are assisting to inaugurate a great change, and if in any way you give cause for reproach, your errors will be quoted as arguments against the propriety of that change.

Dr. Flynn, in speaking more immediately to you, I remember with pleasure the honorable testimony that has been borne to your merits by those best qualified to be judges. I feel it is almost unnecessary to call to your recollection that other qualifications are looked for in a medical man, beside the mere knowledge of his profession. The situation of a medical adviser is one of the most delicate and confidential in this world. Perfect uprightness, moral courage, kindness of heart and of demeanour, a readiness to sacrifice personal comfort, and other qualities of a similar stamp are all required to be united with knowledge, to constitute a genuine member of your noble profession. But then, what a reward attaches to the discharge of the duties of that profession! See the medical adviser enter the sick chamber to examine the state of his patient: see that patient's wife watching his every movement, and hanging breathless upon the words that are about to fall from his lips; see the children, too, partially ignorant perhaps of the condition of their father, but still looking upon the Doctor with silent awe! Now, after a careful examination, observe the visitor's cheerful eye anticipating his mouth in the announcement of the departure of all danger: and watch the silent, but how expressive gratitude of a whole family ! Surely the power thus to ease the overstrained heart is one of the most delightful possessions that man can have. Dr. Flynn, I will say no more than that I sincerely trust your future career will be as creditable as your past, that your success in your profession will be commensurate to your merits, and that you may often enjoy the heartfelt gratification which I have just endeavoured to describe.

As for you, gentlemen, who have this day been created Bachelors of Arts, I have to call your attention to the fact that your Degree is, in the phraseology of the middle ages, an imperfect one. Honorable as it is, you must regard it merely as the public acknowledgment of your having entered the outer court of the temple of knowledge, and not that you have penetrated into the inner chambers. At Oxford and Cambridge, and I believe at some other European Universities, Bachelors of Arts occupy a somewhat anomalous position: strictly speaking, they are, as it is termed, "in statu pupillari," i.e., they still