Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/68

 new degree in Law, that of Licentiate in Law, has been asked by some of our undergraduates. It will, I presume, be the duty of the Faculty of Law to advise us, in the first instance at least, as to the disposal of this application. I hope that the Faculty of Civil Engineering will receive important accessions by the introduction into it of the eminent professional gentlemen just nominated members of our Senate by His Excellency the Governor in Council.

I would now, in conclusion, say a word on the progress of the higher education in Western India, during the forty-one years that I have been connected with this country, I may say that I witnessed its commencement, for when I arrived in this place there were only about eighty native boys learning the rudiments of English in the Native Education Society's school patronized by Government, and about the same number in private seminaries in the town and island. I remember hearing the gallant, generous, brave and learned soldier, and accomplished and successful political officer. Sir John Malcolm, encouraging the native gentlemen to persevere in the work thus feebly begun, that there might be a constituency for the Elphinstone Professors, selected from home, when they might arrive. I remember welcoming to Bombay the first Elphinstone professor. Dr. John Harkness, who was among my own fellow-students and friends at the University of Edinburgh, as were Mr. Eisdale, the first academical instructor in English and the Western sciences in Puna, and Dr. Morehead, the first Principal of our Grant Medical College. At his first lecture, which was an excellent one. Dr. Harkness had present, with others, only some half dozen of students, a couple of whom were lent to him for the occasion from the Mission Institution which I myself had before this been instrumental in founding. The original supply of students for the higher or Collegiate Department of the Elphinstone, or Government Institution, was principally the production of two most accomplished and devoted teachers from Scotland, Messrs. Bell and Henderson, afterwards constituted professors, and of whose success in teaching, united with that of Dr. Harkness and Mr. Orlebar, a Mathematical professor from Oxford, such men as Dr. Bhau Daji and Messrs. Dadoba Pandurang and Vinayak Vasudeva are the monuments, as Professor Keru Lakshuman Chhatre, one of the most accomplished and advanced Mathematicians in India, is of Mr. Eisdale's work at Puna, For what has followed all this, both in this presidency and the neighbouring States, by the multiplication of most able Collegiate instructors, I refer you,