your less fortunate countrymen. You will teach them to observe those great laws that cannot be broken with impunity. That for them to preserve their bodily health and escape the ravages of such relentless avengers as cholera or small-pox, attention must be paid to the sanitation and conservancy of their homes and villages; that the water to be used for food must not be that green filthy liquid taken from the little tank into which the sewage of the village runs or percolates; but it must be pure and clear, carrying with it refreshing and life, not decay and death. You will use your influence to dispel many of the prejudices that prevail amongst your countrymen, such for example as that against vaccination, so that many a home may not be left desolate, many a lovely face not disfigured by the scars of a loathsome disease. Your scientific knowledge should enable you to help the manufacturer to produce a higher quality of goods, and if as the latest writer maintains, the country plough is the best suited to the requirements of the land and the climate, you can at least impress upon the ryot the importance of a rotation of crops, and that land, if it is to be a bountiful giver, must be treated generously and liberally.

Students you have been, students you must continue to be, and students of more than books.

You are going out into the world and will come into living contact with living men. Your lot may probably be cast in times when great social and, it may be, religious questions will have to be considered and faced. It will require of you the utmost caution, the most careful study of the questions themselves and of their apparent adaptability to the times in which you live, and from your knowledge of the history of the human race and human institutions, from your study of the great movements that have convulsed nations, at one time hurling them into darkness and despair, at another time carrying them on to a brighter and happier and more glorious era than had ever previously dawned upon them, you will have to determine for yourselves whether things shall remain as they are, or whether customs, consecrated by a hoary antiquity, and deeply rooted in the hearts of an ancient people, shall not be changed or done away with. You will have to make up your mind as to whether, for example, infant marriage and enforced widowhood is to be perpetuated, and every year the lives of thousands of young, bright and tender hearts to be blasted and reduced to wretchedness. And with the light which you have received, if you are persuaded that such customs are detrimental to the happiness of your country, that they are contrary to human nature and

have no place in your ancient Faith, then you must have the courage of your convictions, and must make your voice heard and power felt. No more difficult duty lies before you. No duty more noble. You must therefore be brave, not in the

Be brave, with the bravery of conviction.

sense of what I am afraid we too frequently see in the present times, when young men mistake volubility for wisdom, and arrogance for manliness. But brave, with a bravery founded on conviction arrived at after the most careful study and reflection, a bravery that will be clothed with modesty, that will be free from selfish ends and untarnished by self-conceit.

But you are looking forward to taking a part in the politics of the day. Politics has become a popular subject. It is interesting. It is exciting. Above all, in this country, it is comparatively easy. Here you will have no national prejudices

to battle against. No institutions,

'Strong in possession, founded in old custom,
Fixed to the people's pious nursery faith,"

to lay irreverent hands upon.

You, however, hold an important position in this countrya position I might say almost unique in the history of the world. Twenty years ago one of the most cultured and most distinguished statesmen that ever ruled in this land, addressing the graduates on an occasion similar to the present, called on them to remember that they were the adopted children of European civilization, the interpreters between the stranger and the Indian, between the Government and the subject, between the great and the small, between the strong and the weak, and he asked them whether they would carry a faithful or a deceitful message. Your numbers then were small, your influence much less far reaching than now. The responsible position you occupy may well be placed before you again, and the same question may not inappropriately be asked you to-day.

Compare the past of your country with its present.

You have studied the history of your own country. You are acquainted with those dark days for this unhappy land, when the Afghan or the Mughal sweeping down on her fair plains converted her fertile fields into a desert, levelled her most sacred shrines with the dust, and brought death and dishonor into a hundred thousand homes. You are acquainted with the later Mughal rule which, while it has left an imperishable name in the wonderful works of its engineers and in its magnificent buildings had no room in its policy for religious toleration, no room in its administration for aliens to its faith, no room for

buildings such as that in which we are assembled to-day-fostering homes of light and learning. You will call to mind how even almost within the memory of the living, the quiet peaceful hamlet of your fathers might be roused from its slumbers by gangs of Pindari robbers, and the morning sun be a witness only to the desolation that had been made-the father dead— the children orphans-all property gone-nothing left for the survivors but misery and blank despair. These things you will call to mind and compare them with the condition of your country now, when every man has security in his possession, and the humble ryot may lay him down and sleep in peace and safety. Perfect freedom in religion, equality in the eyes of the Law, freedom of speech, and liberty of the Press such as few nations in the world possess. Education provided in the most generous spirit, and designedly intended to enable you to qualify yourselves for some of the highest judicial and administrative offices in the State, and, as time goes on, it may be, to enable you to have a larger share in the Government of your country. These and many more inestimable benefits you have had given to you with no grudging hand. What then, I would ask, is to be your message to your countrymen? Is it to be a message of peace and goodwill? Or is it to be a message of misrepresentation, of concealment, keeping out of view the many benefits you have received in the past, and presenting in false colours the work and intentions of the Government of your own day? Are you going to stir up hatred where there should be gratitude, distrust where there should be confidence? If so, better you had never been in the position you occupy to-day. You will be no true friends to your country. And while you must be the interpre

Interpret honestly between England and India.

ters of England's rule to your countrymen, you must no less be the exponents of your country's wants to England. And here your responsibility is no less weighty. The great democracy of England is waiting to learn the needs of this ancient people. Its heart beats with generous impulses, and if you are enabled to bring a real and genuine message from the millions in this land, you may rest assured it will meet with a generous response. But on the other hand, if for narrow class ends you try to mislead, you take a spurious message and, keeping out of view the needs and wishes of your less educated countrymen, you aim only at the aggrandisement of self, then I believe you will meet with that rebuke which you will well merit; and, again I say, you will be no true friends of your country. But, actuated by the purest patriotism, you will prove yourselves true interpreters between the Government and the people. The liberal power

that has enabled you to occupy that position you are in to-day expects it. The fair name and honor of your Alma Mater demand the culture and moral training you have received will impel you towards it. And great as is your responsibility, no less great will be your reward, if, as highly influential members of this great people, you are enabled to carry joy and gladness into a million homes, and become a potent means in helping on the regeneration of your country. Then it may be, that that dawn of a better day for India which is already gilding the hilltops of time shall, as the ages roll on, brighten into a glorious noon, when the Aryan of the West reunited with the Aryan of the East in a common brotherhood, with common high hopes and lofty aspirations, with truth, righteousness and peace as their watchwords shall carry their own life, and light and liberty into the remotest and darkest regions of the earth.

THIRTY-THIRD CONVOCATION.

(BY RAI BAHADUR P. RANGANADHA MUDALIYAR, M.A.)

My Lord Chancellor and Gentlemen,-The bye-laws governing the procedure at Convocation require that a Fellow of the Senate should make an address to those who have been admitted to the Degrees of the University, exhorting them to conduct themselves in a manner suitable to the academical position gained by them. This responsible duty has, on this occasion, been assigned to me by His Excellency the Chancellor, and while I owe it to him to say that I feel thankful to him for the honor he has conferred on me, I owe it to myself to add that I am keenly sensible of the difficulty of the task I have undertaken. Gentlemen, you who have just received degrees. You have this day been admitted into the honorable body of the Graduates of the University of Madras. Your admission was preceded by a period of probation during which you were subjected to a severe discipline. close of this period, you were examined by a body of experts who have declared that you have been weighed in the balance and that you have not been found wanting. And the University, before setting the seal of its approval on you, has wisely obtained from you solemn promises that you will so conduct yourselves in every relation of life as to be an honour to the University, and a blessing to the country that gave you birth. By taking these promises from you, and by deputing a member of the Senate to impress on you their full meaning and significance, the University wishes you to understand that it attaches no less importance to the social and political virtues, to character and conduct,

At the

than to intellectual power and literary or scientific knowledge. The ceremony you have gone through to-day is not a mere matter of form. Its purpose is to awaken in your minds a lively sense of what you owe to the University, and what you owe to yourselves. You are going into the world with the stamp of the University on you as sterling coin. The degrees you hold will enable you to attain a position of eminence in the community to which you belong. How can you better evince your grateful appreciation of the honor the University has conferred on you than to prove by the zeal and ability, the good sense and integrity with which you discharge your public and private duties that you are worthy sons of your Alma Mater; and that be the temptation to evil never so strong, you will not consciously stoop to do any thing that will cast the slightest slur on the fair reputation of the fraternity to which you will from this day forth belong?

In regard to the University to which you and I belong, and are, I trust, proud to belong, I may be permitted to say that humble as its aims and limited as its functions are, it has done the work it has set to itself with creditable success. It has indeed no monumental buildings, no ancestral trees, no galleries and museums, nothing of a romantic or picturesque character to captivate the imagination by, no proud reminiscences linking it with names illustrious in the past for genius or heroism. It has had but a brief existence. Its life has been peculiarly monotonous. Year after year, examinations have been held, results published and degrees conferred,—a work which falls very far short of what many Universities in Europe have done and are doing. But none-the-less, I venture to assert that a great deal of good has already been done, and that the foundations are being slowly but surely laid of good in the future sufficient to satisfy all reasonable expectation. It is no small thing that of those who graduated during the thirty-two years A Retrospect. from 1857 to 1889, there are at present on the rolls 1,974 Bachelors of Arts, 49 Masters of Arts, 317 Bachelors of Law, and 8 Masters of Law. The numbers that passed the examinations in Engineering and Medicine are less satisfactory, but even in this there is no ground for despair as the failure is in my opinion due not to a want of capacity on the part of the students, but to the absence of such a demand for Engineering and Medical Graduates as would ensure to them an honorable competence. The numbers of candidates for the Matriculation Examination and the First Examination in Arts have gone on increasing by leaps and bounds,-increasing of late years to such an extent that it was felt that the time had come for directing