In the meanwhile, the duty I have at present—­which might be very pleasant, but which is quite the reverse, as you may fancy—­is to address some words to you on some subjects more or less cognate to the pursuits you are engaged in.  In fact, I had meant to throw out some loose observations—­loose in point of order, I mean—­in such a way as they may occur to me—­the truths I have in me about the business you are engaged in, the race you have started on, what kind of race it is you young gentlemen have begun, and what sort of arena you are likely to find in this world.  I ought, I believe, according to custom, to have written all that down on paper, and had it read out.  That would have been much handier for me at the present moment (a laugh), but when I attempted to write, I found that I was not accustomed to write speeches, and that I did not get on very well.  So I flung that away, and resolved to trust to the inspiration of the moment—­just to what came uppermost.  You will therefore have to accept what is readiest, what comes direct from the heart, and you must just take that in compensation for any good order of arrangement there might have been in it.

I will endeavour to say nothing that is not true, as far as I can manage, and that is pretty much all that I can engage for. (A laugh.) Advices, I believe, to young men—­and to all men—­are very seldom much valued.  There is a great deal of advising, and very little faithful performing.  And talk that does not end in any kind of action, is better suppressed altogether.  I would not, therefore, go much into advising; but there is one advice I must give you.  It is, in fact, the summary of all advices, and you have heard it a thousand times, I dare say; but I must, nevertheless, let you hear it the thousand and first time, for it is most intensely true, whether you will believe it at present or not—­namely, that above all things the interest of your own life depends upon being diligent now, while it is called to-day, in this place where you have come to get education.  Diligent!  That includes all virtues in it that a student can have; I mean to include in it all qualities that lead into the acquirement of real instruction and improvement in such a place.  If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life.  As you have heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life, in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you will arrive at indeed little; while in the course of years, when you come to look back, and if you have not done what you have heard from your advisers—­and among many counsellers there is wisdom—­you will bitterly repent when it is too late.  The habits of study acquired at Universities are of the highest importance in after-life.  At the season when you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it to form