and other institutions for the good of their fellow-countrymen, and I trust that the memory of their good deeds will last as long as the memory of Dr. Cain's. But why should Madras be behind the sister Presidency in the race of good works? You are no doubt aware that the Government have proposed to erect for the University a Hall for Examinations, Lectures, and Meetings such as the present; and this proposal was hailed by the Senate with lively satisfaction; but that satisfaction I need hardly say would have been greatly enhanced, if the offer had come from a wealthy and enlightened native gentlemen; for what we desire above everything else is, to see the natives of this country taking the work and cost of education more and more into their own hands and depending less and less upon the assistance of the State.
And now let me say in conclusion a few words on what I may call duties to yourselves. Avoid contentment in learning. It is a duty you owe to yourselves as well as a duty you owe to your Creator, not to suffer to lie unimproved the talents committed to your charge. Standing on the threshold of life, standing, let me remind you, still only on the threshold of knowledge, it is your bounden duty to neglect no opportunity of self-culture and self-improvement. Busy men you may and I hope will be, but intervals of business there will be which you can turn to good account, and even your ordinary occupations may if rightly understood, be a discipline both to the mind and to the heart. Never then be contented with past acquisitions.
Strive day by day to add to your store of knowledge, and to enlighten and quicken your moral sense; Be true to yourself. cultivate a spirit of truthfulness, cultivate, aye, and with the greatest care, for it is a tender plant, cultivate a nice sense of honour: beware of everything that is mean, beware of aught that may impair your self-respect. As you travel along the road of life, the University which now bids you a hearty fare-well will anxiously watch your progress; to me personally who have been so intimately connected with many of you, your future career will be a source of the deepest solicitude. We hope then, as I said before, that you will quit yourselves like men in the great battle of the world, advancing from strength to strength, not presumptuously indeed, but in a proper spirit of self-reliance. Farewell—and in connection with what I have just been saying about your duties to yourselves, take with you as farewell words these noble lines of England's noblest poet:
To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
