Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/300

Rh nition of his success by his countrymen, but is the mental and moral improvement that takes place within him.

There is one point more on which I wish to say a few words. You are perhaps acquainted with the sketch of the Clerk of Oxenford in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. After a graphic description of the Clerk's personal appearance, and a brief notice of his limited pecuniary success in life, which Chaucer explains by the following reference to his tastes,—

The Father of English Poetry gives his last touch to the portrait in the line,

That a student should "gladly lerne" is no more than every one would expect : but does a scholar always feel that his character is defective unless it can be said of him that he is also glad to "teche?" Irrespective of times and circumstances, it may be asserted that an individual should be ready and even anxious to communicate to others the knowledge which he has himself acquired. But if such, as a general rule, be the duty of every educated man, how much more is it your duty Co assist in spreading enlightenment among the population of the Madras Presidency. We all feel how odious a character he possesses, who, having his granaries full of corn, looks with an unpitying eye on his starving countrymen. Be assured, he who has imbibed knowledge himself, and feels its powerful influence in the juster appreciation of all events which his cultivated intellect bestows upon him, in the more elevated moral standard, that is the natural accompaniment of judicious training, and in the additional sources of happiness which are opened up to him, cannot refrain from endeavouring to impart these blessings to others without committing a gross dereliction of duty, and placing himself on a level with the selfish hoarder of grain, who thinks only of his own necessities. The most direct mode of assisting to dispel the ignorance and the concomitant prejudices which unhappily prevail to so great an extent in this country, is to become Teachers. The profession of a schoolmaster is that which has been adopted by the most successful* of this year's Bachelors, and I trust