Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 5.djvu/37

 Author:Thomas Carlyle

ADDRESS AS LORD RECTOR OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

(1866)

enthusiasm toward me, I must admit, is in itself very beautiful, however undeserved it may be in regard to the object of it. It is a feeling honorable to all men, and one well known to myself when I was of an age like yours, nor is it yet quite gone. I can only hope that with you, too, it may endure to the end—this noble desire to honor those whom you think worthy of honor; and that you will come to be more and more select and discriminate in the choice of the object of it—for I can well understand that you will modify your opinions of me and of many things else, as you go on. It is now fifty-six years, gone last November, since I first