THIRTY-SECOND CONVOCATION.
(By D. Sinclair, Esq., M.A.)
Graduates of the Year,—In accordance with the Bye-Laws of the University an address has now to be delivered to you by a member of the Senate exhorting you to conduct yourselves suitably unto the position to which by the degrees conferred upon you you have attained, and His Excellency the Chancellor has conferred on me the honour of discharging this duty to-day.
You have all of you for some years now been travelling along a straight and well-defined road, your intellectual horizon somewhat narrowed by text-books and syllabuses, and some-times I fear clouded by notes and annotations, compilations and compendiums; but though often brain-weary, often heart-heavy sometimes to some of you as I know, having the utmost difficulty in providing yourselves with the ordinary necessaries of life, you have struggled manfully on, and the end of this road you have reached to-day. In the name of the Senate I most heartily congratulate you. But you will have already discovered that this road along which you have been travelling, has but led you into an open country—the world; that you must still go on on life's journey, and as there may be in front of you pitfalls into which you may stumble, obstacles you will have to overcome, rivers you may have to wade through, hills you will have to climb, it is becoming that your Alma Mater, now that you are no longer to be under her immediate fostering care, should, in wishing you Godspeed, tender to you words of encouragement and counsel, it may be also of warning.
Fortunate have you been when compared with the great masses of your countrymen. Value of a knowledge of the English Language. Knowledge you have acquired of which they can form but little conception. Your acquaintance with the English language, has opened to you the treasury of English literature and the loftiest and noblest thoughts of England's greatest sons have become known to you. Her store-house of science has been unlocked for you and you have been taught and shown how to use the forces of nature for the relief and benefit of your fellow-countrymen. Through the English language you have learned something of the human race, how nations have risen to the highest eminence and the causes that led to their downfall. You have made the acquaintance of the heroes of the world, a Leonidas and a Washington,
- Whose every battle-field is holy ground.
