I have already detained you too long, but perhaps I may be excused on this occasion, the last on which our present Chancellor will preside over our meetings, for stepping aside from the direct path of this exhortation, to say that we bid him farewell with great regret, and with a grateful sense of the active and liberal interest which he has manifested in the cause of education during the period of his Governorship. There is, I am persuaded, no man here who will join more heartily than he, in the wish with which I now conclude. May yours be that suavissima vita which consists mainly in the consciousness of daily growing better; and may the Almighty Ruler of the Universe so guide and prosper all our efforts that the plants of learning and of virtue which we plant may strike deep into the soil and become healthy and vigorous trees, stretching forth their branches in all directions over the length and breadth of the land, and yielding abundantly all manner of wholesome and pleasant fruit to a nation continually increasing in prosperity, and happiness, and wisdom.
ELEVENTH CONVOCATION.
(By The Honorable A. J. Arbuthnot.)
Gentlemen,—This is not the first occasion on which it has been my duty and my privilege to address the successful candidates for degrees at the annual Convocation of the University of Madras. Ten years ago, when this University was yet in its infancy, when its permanence was yet uncertain, and its success was a matter of speculation and of doubt, it devolved upon me, by the direction of our first Chancellor, to deliver the first address to the first graduates, to congratulate them on the honourable termination of their academic course, and to exhort them to conduct themselves worthily of the degrees which had been conferred upon them. At the period to which I refer, little more than eleven The dark days of the Mutiny.months had elapsed since the first outbreak of the great mutiny. Delhi had fallen, and Lucknow had been relieved; but the flames of rebellion were still unquenched. Central India was still overrun by Tantia Topee's levies. Rohilcund was still in revolt. The Talookdars of Oudh were still unsubdued. And in our own Presidency, although we had been mercifully spared from the horrors to which our brethren in Northern India had been exposed, there was in the minds of many a not unnatural feeling that the time was scarcely suited to educational experiments, that there were
