Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/578

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1892.—Mr. H.B.Grigg.
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branches of the Service of which he was one of the highest ornaments. Mr. Maltby had placed the administration of the ancient States of Travancore and Cochin on a basis calculated to ensure solid progress in every branch of public life. His policy would however have proved for a time at least comparatively barren of good results had it not been grasped by the powerful and cultivated mind of Sir Madhava Rau, the most capable Hindu administrator of modern days. He organised the administration of Travancore, and later that of Baroda, on lines which combined many of the political and administrative ideas of Europe with those of an oriental country, and shewed to the "Rulers of this Empire that to an Indian administrator may safely be entrusted a portion of the fateful task of re-casting the administrative and political machinery of Native States, so that law may take the place of arbitrary power and the public weal be substituted for the advantage of the favoured classes. In Mr. Pogson the University has lost an Astronomer whose name will always be famous as the discoverer of several asteroids, as a patient and untiring worker in the fields of astral observation and as a faithful and discerning recorder of astronomical facts. Gentlemen, I would that his example might inspire some of you to make the study of the heavens the study of your lives—and that Madras may yet have the honor of giving to India the first scientific astronomer, a native of the laud, as it has already given to her the best Statesman of recent days. In Bishop Caldwell and Doctor Hay the country has lost two ripe Dravidian scholars, and two men who led noble lives—lives worthy of imitation. They showed to you that the true religious spirit is not egotistic and narrow, but altruistic and catholic. The work that these enlightened men have done for the modern Tamil and Telugu literatures is not their least claim to your gratitude, for they with other men of their school, European and Native, have done for these languages, probably more than their natural custodians. In Mr. Hanna the University mourns a scientific engineer whose counsel was of great value in the recent movements in the direction of improved engineering and industrial education, and this country a public-spirited citizen. Whilst in Dr. Mohideen Sheriff we have lost an experienced student of Medicine who did good work in bringing to light what was worthy of record in the indigenous systems of Medicine and in helping his coreligionists to understand that modern scientific Medicine is the true development of that art of healing, which their forefathers have the undying honour of having been the first to cultivate; for though crude and in its infancy, it was still in a manner scientific. It is also my sad duty to commemorate two Fellows,