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obtain employment and remuneration for the services which they may render to Government or the community.

Prizes and

All our prizes and scholarships, we have reason to believe, have been salutary stimulants of study and exertion Scholarships. during the past year, a circumstance which must be pleasing to their liberal founders. The essay which gained the Manockjee Limjee Gold Medal for 1868 is a very creditable production. Though it is not an object with our University to give instruction in the more mechanical of the fine arts, for which we have in Bombay a separate school, founded and endowed by the Jamsetjee family, we have given encouragement to the study of architecture, in connection with engineering, by prescribing the subject of this essay.. We have done this, remembering the architectural achievements of India in past ages, and that still

"-ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros."

The physical geography of India, viewed in connection with its history, the subject of the essay for 1869, belongs to our course of instruction. Our Sanskrit scholarships, endowed by Mr. Bhagawandas Purushottamdas, and by Mr. Vinayakrao Jagannath Shankarshet, and our Latin scholarship endowed by Cowasji Jehangier Readymoney, c.s.I., have proved to be very. useful. So, doubtless, will be the prize in books established through the liberality of one of our European Fellows, the Honourable Mr. Ellis, who will be long remembered in the Bombay Presidency as a wise, faithful, and efficient administrator, and as the first successful advocate of an educational cess for this country.

The Sassoon endowment for a Hebrew scholarship was noticed at last Convocation. The regulations formed for that scholarship will, we hope, encourage the study of a most ancient language, on the highest grounds of undying importance.

Most gratifying to all our feelings is the commemoration through this University of the late Mr. James J. Berkley, one of our first Fellows. Looking to the Sahyadri Mountains (literally, the "Range of Difficulty") in our neighbourhood, with the courageous eye of true practical science, he determined to do his best to carry over them a pathway for our steam-carriages, acting perseveringly on the determined resolution,

"Inveniam viam aut faciam."

His efforts, through the aid of Providence, were crowned with the success which we all appreciate; and we now surmount, what at one time were the almost unpassable barrier-walls of

the Dakhan, in about an hour and a quarter, luxuriously seated in fleet conveyances, with nothing to do by ourselves but to look out from the windows of our convenient apartments, and admire in our ascent the sublimities of height added to height, and depth added to depth, and clothed with all the diversified vegetable drapery of the tropics. It is pleasing to remember the delight which Mr. Berkley took in the work of himself and his able associates as it advanced; and how eloquently and forcibly he descanted upon it in this hall before the Mechanics' Institution, of which he was the president and ornament, and before the public of Bombay.

With respect for the judicious liberality of the Chiefs of Junagadh and Navánagar, and with tender interest in the loss of the young but promising and brave officers Hebbert and LaTouche, who fell at the Tobar Hill, we must contemplate the endowment which their Highnesses have offered and we have accepted.

I hope that the regulations, now due, for the Gold Medal in Law, commemorative of the late Honourable Mr. Justice Forbes, one of the most accomplished members of our Civil Service, and the ingenious, inquisitive, and successful historian of Gujarat, who has done for that interesting and important province what Colonel Todd has done for Rajputana, will soon be submitted to the Senate.

Since I came into this room there has been put into my hands a gold medal denominated the Chancellor's Medal, and presented to us by Sir Seymour Fitzgerald. It is a very beautiful and massive medal, and reflects much credit on the Bombay Mint, where it was executed. I am sure it will be highly appreciated by the youth of this University, and I hope that when we meet here next year, the Chancellor himself will have it in his power to put into the hands of some successful student this token of his high regard for this University.

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To advert now to more general matters connected with our University I would say that the list of our Fellows and Fellows represents every class of the community, their qualificaEuropean and Native, able to do it service, including, besides those appointed jure dignitatis, gentlemen of University culture and training; of intimate acquaintance with the Oriental languages, manners, and customs; of legal, scientific, medical and engineering skill and experience; of special influence in large sections of the native community; of generous liberality to the University as an institution; of qualification as examiners of our entrants and candidates for

degrees; and of marked success in our own graduation, or of local academical distinction before this University was formed. Now, when we have obtained such an extended constituency as that which we possess, the annual appointments to the Senate need not perhaps be so large as they have been for some years past. It is a great mistake to appoint to our Fellowship gentlemen, whether Natives or Europeans, for the mere enhancement of their social position in the community.

Our bye-laws regulating our curriculum of study have been very carefully framed, and should not be interfered Curriculum with without much deliberate consideration, and of Studies. without being subjected to the test of experience.

I think that for our Matriculation Examination the prescription of a course of reading in general history in one or other of our most approved authors (as Fraser-Tytler, Dr. Schmitz, Dr. Taylor, and Dr. White) would be better, because more comprehensive and generalized, than the prescription by the Syndicate of the four select histories of Greece, Rome, England, and India, now in use. To this general history I think we should add, under the heading of "General Knowledge," some elementary knowledge of the classification of animals, and of the geological formations revealed in the crust of the earth. Dr. Oldham, the able and enterprising head of the Geological Survey of India, has justly complained to the Government of India of the want of even the most rudimental knowledge of natural history on the part of many who might otherwise find employment connected with that survey, profitable both to themselves and the State. Independently of the improvement of their observational powers, our young men, by such a study of the works of God as I now venture to recommend, would confer great advantages on their native land. We may be assured that the mineral resources of India will not be fully discovered and brought to light till the sons of India themselves receive at least such an amount of elementary instruction as that at which I have just hinted. I may venture to say, from personal knowledge, that His Excellency the Viceroy feels much interest in this matter, as he does in everything likely to call forth the natural resources of this great and marvellous country.

After our next examinations no cognizance, according to Vernacular our present bye-laws, will be taken of the vernacuversus Classical lar languages of India in connection with our languages. higher examinations. In common with some of our best linguists and educationists, European and Native, I personally regret this circumstance, though I cordially rejoice in

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The Persian language.

the signal success which has attended our introduction and extended use of the classical languages both of the West and of the East. Of these classical languages the best for style, and the simple, chaste, and appropriate expression of thought, are the Latin and Greek; the best for philological science and research is the Sanskrit; the best (as an ancient tongue) for elevation and sublimity, the Hebrew, with its cognates; and the best for richness, power and delicacy, and universality of application, the English, drawn from many sources. We deliberately include the English among the classical languages. Jacob Grimm has justly pronounced it one of the most noble ever used for human utterance. It contains wonderful and undying creations and compositions, such as those of our Shakespeare and Milton, which will be read and studied to the ends of the earth. I much regret that we have not yet included the Persian in the list of our prescribed classical languages. The proposal to put it in this position was lost in the Senate only by a single vote; and it may be yet renewed with the prospect of success, as some who voted against it are prepared to withdraw from it their opposition. Let all dubitants in this case listen to what Max Müller says of the Persian:-"As to Persian; this was long the language of the most civilized and most advanced nation in Asia. In the first centuries of the Islam, Persians were the teachers of Arabs, and among the early Arabic authors many names are found of Persian origin. Persian literature again was the only source whence, in the East, a taste for the more refined branches of poetry could be satisfied, whether through originals or by the medium of translations. In fact, Persian was for a long time the French of Asia, and it is still used there as the language of diplomatic correspondence. Hence many terms connected with literary subjects, or referring to other occupations of a society more advanced in civilization are of Persian, i.e., of Arian, origin. To this it has to be added, that the principal Muhammadan histories of India are in Persian; and that many Persian words are found in the Urdu, Kurdish, Turkish, and other Caucasian languages. It affords abundant scope for study, from the grand epic of Firdausi of the commencement of the eleventh century down to the latest authors of Ispahan and Teheran. It is through it that we have to arrive at the definite meaning of many Zend and Pehlvi words still but imperfectly understood.

Of our professional studies, legal, medical, and engineering,

Professional Studies.

modifications founded on experience will doubtless require from time to time to be made. A

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.

Progress of Higher Education in Bomay.

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. Bháu Dáji and Messrs, Dádobá Pándurang and Vinayak Vásudeva are the monuments, as Professor Keru Lakshuman Chhatré, 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,

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