"Have a duty for every time, and you will have time for every duty." Avoid dream-land, and correct without mercy that habit of indolence which compels some men to float through life "As idly as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

Under this earnest cultivation and discipline of the mind labour itself will be transmuted to pleasure, and the symbol of the curse will become the secret of the blessing :

"Labour is life! 'tis the still water faileth;

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;

Keep the watch wound, for the dark night assaileth;

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.

Labour is glory! The flying cloud lightens ;

Only the waying wing changes and brightens ;
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens ;

Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune."

Apollo, however, as we are told in classic song does not always keep his bow bent, and you too will require intervals of relaxation from professional studies and kindred pursuits. What your recreations ought to be I cannot attempt to define, but this I may say, that they should be selected as carefully and with as much self-introspection as your graver studies.

Games.

I wish I could indicate to you some manly exercise, not altogether foreign to your habits and customs, some noble game like that of cricket which elevates at once the moral and physical tone, which calls forth energy and promptitude, which, with muscular force develops judgment, watchfulness, endurance, courage, generous emulation, appreciation of the merits of others, manly acceptance of defeat and manly modesty of success. More battle fields than those of war have been gained on British cricket grounds. He who braces his muscles, braces his mind.

I gladly point out to you also the genuine pleasures which arise from the love and imitation of the beautiful in Nature and in Art. If we look abroad on this wondrous creation we cannot fail to recognize the beautiful in profusion around us. It is seen in the motions, forms and colours of the animal kingdom; in the variety, grace and delicacy of the vegetable world; in the massing, grouping and grandeur of the objects of inanimate creation. Beauty exists as an expression of the great Creator's mind and love, and would exist, even were there no human eye to welcome it.

Man, however, has been endowed with perceptions specially fitted for the contemplation, enjoyment and imitation of all this beauty; but as other powers of the mind require to be evoked and educated, so does the power of appreciating the beautiful.

When evoked and trained, the contemplation of the beautiful in Nature and Art is one of the most elevating and pure of the pleasures enjoyable by man.

West, daughter of the East.

"Man," it has been well said, "is by nature and universally an artificer, an artizan, an artist"; and no where can this fact be more abundantly illustrated than here in India. In this as in many other respects the West is but the daughter of the East, though each retains her own marked individuality. The mother, however, has charms of her own, charms of antiquity, originality, grace and harmony of colour, which the daughter strives in vain to equal. Look at the textile, manual and mechanical arts of India; the "webs of woven air" spun by Arachne herself; the embroidered fabrics unequalled for delicacy and design. Look at the skill of the workmen of Shemoogah in carving in sandalwood, of those of Travancore in ivory, of the goldsmiths of Trichinopoly, the silversmiths of Cuttack. These and many other of the manufactures of this land exhibit remarkably that instinctive-let me add hereditary-artistic taste, and that artistic eye for form, ornament and bloom of colour which have gained for Indian arts the admiration of the world.

Such national industries you, as sons of India, should learn to appreciate and to cherish, for if you do not, they are little likely to remain your inheritance, or to be improved by Western taste or by Western science.

The past condition of India.

Never forget that India was a civilized, an artistic and an industrial nation when Abraham left his native Ur of the Chaldees, and that it is through you, gentlemen, and others deeply interested in this land, that the latent capabilities of its intelligent and teachable people are to be evoked, so that your native land may once more take her ancient and most distinguished position among the philosophic, the artistic and industrial nations of the world.

Pleasures.

Other rational enjoyments for leisure hours there are, many and varied, but these I cannot now stop to consider. Pleasures of harmony, imagination, taste and genius. Pleasures, too, of wit and humour. "The man who cannot laugh," says the quaint author of Sartor Resartus, "is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and stratagem." Make not a business of mere recreation; enjoy it like men of sense and pass on :

the head.

Gentlemen, man has a heart as well as a head, moral principles as well as intellectual powers, and in The heart and forming the human character this fact ought never to be overlooked. Comment would only weaken the impression of the following suggestive passage from Bacon, which Lord Bolingbroke has pronounced to be one of the finest and deepest in his writings, and which Sir W. Hamilton has quoted with admiration; it is indeed full of significance and truth. "In forming the human character," remarks the great philosopher, "we must not proceed as a statuary does in forming a statue, who works sometimes on the face, sometimes on the limbs, sometimes on the folds of the drapery; but we must proceed (and it is in our power to proceed) as Nature does in forming a flower, or any other of her productions; she throws out altogether, and at once, the whole system of being, and the rudiments of all the parts."

temptations.

I must conclude. Many are the temptations which are likely to beset your path in life; temptations from Guard against without, temptations from within, to resist which will require the energetic action of all the better elements of your character. Walk therefore the path of life warily, wisely; recognize the weakness of self, and never for a moment forget the golden saying of the brave Duke John of Saxony, "the straight line is the shortest road.”

If your studies, imbued as they have been with high principles of honor and of truth, fail to make you men of honor, truthfulness and integrity, they have failed to influence for good your moral nature, however much they may have succeeded in sharpening your intellect, or in adding to the stores of your knowledge. Your Alma Mater will fail to recognize in you her own success, unless you exhibit to the world an incorruptible integrity, chivalrous honor, unswerving truth, genuine sympathy with your brother-man, and an enlarged mind free alike from pride, prejudice and selfishness.

Cultivate a tender con

science.

Cultivate then a tender conscience, a conscience which shall have power to rule alike your thoughts and actions. In one word, be gentlemen in all the feelings, principles and chivalry of gentlehood. Let the world see that with informed heads you have reformed hearts, and that your intellectual training has been no one-sided system which has done all that is possible to be done for the mind, while it has left untended and untrained the heart, whence are the very issues of moral life.

Good example is a language all can understand. There are footsteps and footsteps on the sea shore; footsteps which the returning tide sweeps away; footsteps which ocean's waves cannot efface. Let me point out to you the footprints on the sands of time of one who translated faithfully into daily life the "true and fest" of his princely shield; of one who lives alike in the hearts and memories of a grateful and sorrowing people, as the personification of all the courtesy, wisdom and nobleness of soul of the poet's ideal knight. Amid" that fierce light which beats upon a throne" he stood before a blot-seeking, blot-loving world, noble yet humble, wise yet gentle, learned yet modest, bearing on his breast "the white flower of a blameless life," and in his heart the love of all that is good, and true and beautiful. In your much narrower sphere of duty seek to imitate a gentle, true life like his; like him, strive to leave to your children that noblest of all burdens to carry, an unstained and honored name, and, above all, reverence, as he did, your conscience as your king.

In looking back, whether from the near or distant future, upon this eventful day of your lives, your satisfaction will be deepened by the reflection that your honors were conferred by one who bears a historic name, a name synonymous in the annals of Britain with promptitude and power, no less than with loyalty and duty; by the reflection also that your success has been witnessed by a sovereign Indian Prince, whose enlightened rule will be pointed to with admiration by generations unborn; and more than all, will your satisfaction be deepened by the remembrance that your much-coveted degrees have been proclaimed in the presence of a Prince of the Blood-Royal of England, whom with loyal hearts we welcome to our shores for his own sake, for the sake of Albert the Good, and for the sake of her, the gentle Lady, who reigns, not more by right of ancient descent over the persons, than by right of queenly love in the hearts of a free, a manly and a loyal people.

FOURTEENTH CONVOCATION.

(BY THE REV. WILLIAM MILLER, M.A.)

Gentlemen,-After long continued study, after trials through which you have passed successfully, and after promises which before so many witnesses you have deliberately made, you are now admitted to the honour of ranking while you live as members of the University of Madras. It devolves on me to exhort you, according to its statutes, "to conduct yourselves suitably unto the position to which, by the degree conferred upon you,

you have attained." It is but natural that before you pass finally from beneath her fostering care, your Alma Mater should wish to address to you some parting words of counsel. Some of you, it is true, are not yet to sever the tie that has so long bound you to her. Some of you-and I hope not a very few-will endeavour to obtain still higher honours at her hand after another period of submission to her guidance; but most of you in any case have completed the portion of your lives that you can afford to devote to academic pursuits, and even those who seek for a higher place in the rolls of the University must henceforth be much less than hitherto under her direct control. They must journey on, not indeed unguided but at least unwatched by her or by any of her delegates.

In greater or smaller measure, therefore, you all stand from this day forward in a new position. You pass from the toils of learning to those of life, from the acquisition of knowledge to the higher task of working into the texture of your history on earth, the knowledge that has been acquired, from being recipients of the influence of others to positions where your own influence must largely tell upon the generation to which you belong, and through it upon all the generations that shall follow. It is well becoming that, at such a stage, this University should tell you how she expects those to live whom she has stamped with her approval, and who are now her representatives to the world. And, therefore, as you listen to what I say, regard it not as the words of one who has little title to speak with authority in virtue of age, or experience, or learning. Rather in so far, but in so far only, as my words approve themselves to be words of truth and wisdom, regard them, I entreat you, as spoken to you by that University which has conferred on you so many benefits already, and towards which I trust that you will cherish while you live, feelings of mingled love and veneration.

The obligations of many kinds under which you lie are almost infinite in number; but great though the desire of this University is that you should be in all respects noble-hearted and well-conducted men, it is not of the whole round of duty that she calls me now to speak. Inasmuch as you are subjects, inasmuch as you are citizens, inasmuch as you are men, there are countless claims upon you such as you cannot safely or honourably neglect; but these lie beyond the scope of my present task, except in so far as all duty is from its very nature linked indissolubly together. It is the duties arising from your present position that I have to impress upon you-your duties as the sons of science-as those to whom has been entrusted the