James Fergusson

“ Yet the Khassia looks down on these new forms of civilization unmoved. As a servant or a trader he must have been for centuries familiar with both: but he clings to his old faith, and erects his rude-stone monuments, as his forefathers had done from time immemorial, and it is doubtful whether either our soldiers or our missionaries will soon wean him from this strange form of adoration. ”

“ It is not, however, the art of these sculptures that makes the Kylas so wonderful so much as their quantity and variety; for after you have examined all those of the Temple itself, with its porches, and those of the stone bridges that connect one part with the other, there is still the cloister, and above this the beautiful Temple of Lanka and others cut in the rock on the sides of the pit, which make up together an exhibition of human labour and perseverance seldom surpassed. ”

“ They have indeed up to this time been rather prejudicial than otherwise, by leading people to believe that when they can distinguish between a flint or bronze or ironimplement they know the alpha and omega of the science, and that nothing further is required to determine the relative date of any given monument. It is as if we were to adopt the simple chemistry of the ancients, and divide all known substances into earth, water, fire, and air: a division not only convenient but practically so true that there is very little to be said against it. ”

“ But, gentlemen, in the history of a University we cannot always look for startling events. We must be contented in this, as in other phases of our career, to lay one more stone of the edifice which we hope to raise to solid and enduring usefulness. It is thus that in the little span of our lives, which seems to us important, but which is soon forgotten by our fellow-men, we must be satisfied that we have maintained the standard of the past and contributed something little to the cause in which we are all interested. ”

“ As an artistic design, nothing can be worse. The gateways, irregularly spaced in a great blank wall, lose half their dignity from their positions; and the bathos of their decreasing in size and elaboration, as they approach the sanctuary, is a mistake which nothing can redeem. We may admire beauty of detail, and be astonished at the elaboration and evidence of labour, if they are found in such a temple as this, but as an architectural design it is altogether detestable. ”

“ It is difficult, however, to believe that mankind were long content with so simple a mode of sepulture. To heap earth or stones on the body of the beloved departed so as to crush and deface it, must have seemed rude and harsh, and some sort of coffin was probably early devised for the protection of the corpse,—in well-wooded countries, this would be of wood, which, if the mound is old, has perished long ago—in stony countries, as probably of stone, forming the rude cists so commonly found in early graves. ”

“ If it had been the tomb of a king or chief of any native dynasty, similar sepulchres must have been as numerous as they were on the banks of the Boyne or Blackwater. There must have been a succession of them, some of greater, some of less magnificence. Nothing of the sort, however, occurs, and till more are found, the Stennis group cannot be ascribed to a dynasty that lasted longer than the seventy-six years just quoted. That brief dynasty must also have been the most splendid and the most powerful of all that reigned in these islands, as no tomb there approaches Maes-Howe in magnificence. ”

“ What does the study of science mean? Well, it means that in the operations of life in which we seek to turn to account the gifts of Divine Providence, we should be guided by the skill which rises out of knowledge, rather than by haphazard work or groping in the dark. It is not that we should work upon theory rather than common-sense and practice, but it means that we should ground our theory and practice upon ascertained laws. ”

“ Each of the main avenues among these trees has a canal along its centre studded with marble fountains, and each vista leads to some beautiful architectural object. With the Jumna in front, and this garden with its fountains and gateways behind; with its own purity of material and grace of form, the Taje may challenge comparison with any creation of the same sort in the whole world. Its beauty may not be of the highest class, but in its class it is unsurpassed. ”

“ Is it possible to conceive any savage Eastern race rushing across the Nile on its way westward, and carrying their rude arts with them, and continuing to practise them for four or five thousand years afterwards without change? Either it seems more probable to assume that the Egyptians would have turned them back, or if they had sojourned in their land like the Israelites, and then departed because they found the bondage intolerable, it is almost certain that they would have carried with them some of the arts and civilization of the people among whom they had dwelt. ”

“ Yet with all this we now know it for a fact that no stone building or monument of stone now exists in India that was erected before the time of Asoka, B.C. 250. But, besides negative proof, we have in the early caves, 150 to 200 B.C., such manifest proofs of the stone architecture being then a mere transcript of wooden forms that we know certainly that we have here reached the very incunabula of a style. Of course it does not follow from this that the cities before this time may not have been splendid or the palaces magnificent. ”

“ The University has the privilege of sitting high above the waves of faction. Those—and there may be some amongst us—who have taken part in the controversy of the past year never ought to carry it into their academical life. What occurs to me, gentlemen, is this. We have in such an institution as this a healing element which may go far to soothe the difficulties which political controversy has raised, because in this Senate sit men of different races and countries, actuated simply by the one common desire, to benefit the people of this country of whatever races in one and the same way. ”

“ When the eyes of a nation have been educated by a gradual succession of changes in any architectural object, persevered in through five or six centuries, the taste becomes so accustomed to believe the last fashion to be the best, the change has been so gradual, that people forget how far they are straying from the true path. The European, who has not been so educated, sees only the result, without having followed the steps by which it has been so reached, and is shocked to find how far it has deviated from the form of a true dome of construction, and, finding it also unfamiliar, condemns it. ”

“ So meagre and so scarce are they, that many well-informed persons doubt whether such a person as King Arthur ever lived; and scarcely one of his great actions is established by anything like satisfactory contemporary testimony. Yet, in all ages, and in all countries where histories either written or oral exist, they are filled with the exploits of favourite national heroes—as Arthur was—which, even where they are fullest and most diffuse, it is the rarest possible thing to find in them a record of the building of any temple or tomb. ”

“ It was in vain to expect that the hapless natives could maintain either the arts or the institutions with which Rome had endowed them. But it is natural to suppose that they would remember the evidences of her greatness and her power, and would hardly go back for their sepulchres to the unchambered mole-hill barrows of their forefathers, but attempt something in stone, though only in such rude fashion as the state of the arts among them enabled them to execute. ”