Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/360



When evoked and trained, the contemplation of the beautiful in Nature and Art is one of the most elevating and pure of the pleasures enjoyable by man.

"Man," it has been well said, "is by nature and universally an artificer, an artizan, an artist"; and no where can this fact be more abundantly illustrated than here in India. In this as in many other respects the West is but the daughter of the East, though each retains her own marked individuality. The mother, however, has charms of her own, charms of antiquity, originality, grace and harmony of colour, which the daughter strives in vain to equal. Look at the textile, manual and mechanical arts of India; the "webs of woven air" spun by Arachne herself; the embroidered fabrics unequalled for delicacy and design. Look at the skill of the workmen of Shemoogah in carving in sandalwood, of those of Travancore in ivory, of the goldsmiths of Trichinopoly, the silversmiths of Cuttack. These and many other of the manufactures of this land exhibit remarkably that instinctive— let me add hereditary—artistic taste, and that artistic eye for form, ornament and bloom of colour which have gained for Indian arts the admiration of the world.

Such national industries you, as sons of India, should learn to appreciate and to cherish, for if you do not, they are little likely to remain your inheritance, or to be improved by Western taste or by Western science.

Never forget that India was a civilized, an artistic and an industrial nation when Abraham left his native Ur of the Chaldees, and that it is through you, gentlemen, and others deeply interested in this land, that the latent capabilities of its intelligent and teachable people are to be evoked, so that your native land may once more take her ancient and most distinguished position among the philosophic, the artistic and industrial nations of the world.

Other rational enjoyments for leisure hours there are, many and varied, but these I cannot now stop to consider. Pleasures of harmony, imagination, taste and genius. Pleasures, too, of wit and humour. "The man who cannot laugh," says the quaint author of Sartor Resartus, "is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and stratagem." Make not a business of mere recreation; enjoy it like men of sense and pass on:—

"Sicut canis ad Nilutn bibens et fugiens."