Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/503

 every single art, which Sir George Birdwood would say was thoroughly first-rate, thus fulfilling, and probably fulfilling much better, the function, which used to be performed more than it is now, by the various native courts.

A man who pays for the calling into existence of such a piece of ironwork as that elephant goad, which we have in the Museum here, does a positively virtuous action. In this field, as in many other fields, you have much to learn from other parts of India; above all from what is in some respects the most delightful part of a glorious country—Rajpootana.

I hope the time will come when there will be a great deal more migration within India, transfer of population from districts where it overflows to too-sparsely populated regions, transfer of customs and transfer of thought. These are all things which you should manage for yourselves without interference from Europeans, for you only can manage them well. All that the European can do is to point out where improvements can be made, where, for example, the graceful usages of one part of India may supersede with advantage the ungraceful usages of another, and so all advance by a process of indigenous growth, different from, but by no means necessarily inferior, nay often distinctly superior, to European works and ways.

You will have work to do, not only in advancing and regulating progress, but in taking care that you do not lose precious possessions, which you have received from your ancestors. No intelligent European can study your society without seeing that you have a great many things which other, and in some respects, much more advanced, societies, may well envy. I may instance your simplicity of life, your charity, your domestic union which dispenses with the necessary but outrageously clumsy Poor-law of England, the healthful and charming costume of your women, and, in many parts of the country, of your men also. These are only a few of many points in which you are superior, and which may well one day be menaced by an injudicious following of European models. I would have you, as to many of these things, be third-thoughted, rather than second-thoughted, to use a happy phrase of Coleridge's ; I would have you "prove all things" in your ancient traditions, but by all means likewise "hold fast that which is good."

When History has become really studied amongst you, and it is, after all, the highest of studies, you will, while rejecting the exaggerations and dreams of those who claim for the