Page:Fineartasketchi01wyatgoog.djvu/18

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Lecture I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Mr Vice-Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen,

In addressing you for the first time from this Chair it is natural that I should feel a certain amount of embarrassing emotions. Any such emotions are however but in a remote degree of a personal nature, since I regard myself simply as an instrument to carry out the wishes of the Founder of the Chair; and provided I bring to my duties (as I do) an earnest conviction of the importance to you of the subjects upon which I may have to address you, a zealous intention to communicate all I know, which may appear to me in any wise likely to be profitable to you, and in short a hearty goodwill to do my duties, my conscience will be relieved, and I may feel that you will give me credit for more perhaps even than may be the real value of what I may have to say to you.

My emotions rather arise from the fact that it is for the first time, I believe, in the annals of your University, that the Fine Arts will have received that consideration which I believe to be their due: a consideration which may I hope in time remove the reproach, that our leading Uni-

1

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.