Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/461

 and sustain your energies. Eemember through life your teachers to whom you owe so much. Let your thought and action be always guided by a profound feeling of loyalty to our gracious Sovereign and to the British nation to whom you owe a debt of gratitude, which you can never adequately repay. Look to the past and compare it with the present, and say to what else you owe, if not to the British rule, the era of peace, of progress, of freedom and of material prosperity which has set in. Gentlemen, as surely as I stand here, the day will come, though you and I may not live to see it, when some one in this country will tell his grateful countrymen in prose or verse how the two branches of the Aryan race once dwelt together in their ancient Caspian home, how they separated, how centuries of separation enstranged them from each other, how each in its turn aided civilization, how they again met in India under Grod^s Providence, in what stirring words of Royal love and wisdom the Mission of England in India, viz., that she would not only rule India well but also raise her in civilization, was announced, what alternations of hope and fear chequered the path of progress, how the grandest of all spectacles, and the noblest of all triumphs, that of one nation raising another in civilization, was eventually realized and achieved by England in India. Meanwhile, gentlemen, toil on. Rely on yourselves for success in life. Let constant industry, honest devotion to duty, simplicity of character, and unflinching integrity of conduct and a modest estimate of your worth be your ladder to eminence. Take care, whether you are rich or poor, whether you are fortunate or otherwise, that you are always gentlemen, and remember for the sake of your own happiness both in prosperity and adversity that it is mind that makes " a Heaven of hell and a hell of Heaven." Never denationalize yourselves, never blush to own that you are Hindus, and never barter the influence which you possess among your countrymen and which you may exercise for their good, for the petty vanities of dress or taste. Remember what an eminent English statesman once said, 'Before all things and above all things I am an English gentleman." Be gentlemen, in the sense in which the great statesman used the word, and take with you as words of farewell the following advice of the greatest of English poets : "Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee; Corruption wins not more than honesty; Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues; be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aimst at be thy country's, Thy God's and truth's.