Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/339



dwelling on the reflections which have been suggested by a retrospect of the past history of education in Madras, to address to you those words of congratulation and of counsel which the University has commissioned me to speak. Gentlemen, the Senate bids me to welcome you on your admission as members of an honorable body, to offer to you their congratulations on the completion so far of your academic course, and in the words of the Bye-law, in obedience to which this address is delivered, "to exhort you to conduct yourselves suitably unto the position to which, by the degrees severally conferred upon you, you have attained."

It has been more than once pointed out that the examination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in an Indian University corresponds rather with the Honor Examinations, than with the mere Pass Examinations, of the great English Universities. It is considered that a place in the first class in the examination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in this University is fully equal in respect to the attainments which it represents to a second class in Honors either at Oxford or Cambridge.

Rama Rau Swaminatha Suba Rau, to this honorable position you have attained, and on behalf of the Senate I heartily congratulate you on your success.

I do not know whether any of you intend to compete for the still higher distinction which the University holds out in the degree of Master of Arts. You are probably aware that some of your fellow-students at Calcutta have already attained this honor, and I trust that this University will be in a position to enrol Masters of Arts among her graduates at no very distant date. But whatever may be your intentions on this point, the course of study which you have gone through has been sufficient to develop and strengthen your intellectual faculties, and has enabled you to pursue without further aid from teachers that system of self-education which it behoves every man to carry on, so far as circumstances may admit, throughout the whole period of life. It has rendered you more or less qualified to enter upon the study of any branch of Natural Philosophy or of Physical Science to which your tastes may lead you, and it has unsealed to you the copious, the inexhaustible stores of a literature, which in its variety, in its extent, and in its intrinsic value, surpasses all the literatures of the civilized world. It has, I would fain hope, reached your hearts as well as your minds, and has filled you with that love of truth, with that high sense of duty, for the absence, of which no amount of mental cultivation can make amends. But every