1018 CONSIDERING the unusual nature of the circumstances under which it had to be prepared, the Convocation address of Sir John Maynard must be pronounced a notable performance. It could, of course, be no substitute for the address to which the University and the public generally had looked forward, but which an accident, Sir John very appropriately began by regretting, deprived them of the profit and pleasure of hearing. Sir Ashutosh is, indeed, “a unique figure in Indian education,” and it is no disparagement of Sir John Maynard or any other member of the Civil Service, whether in this province or elsewhere, to say that he cannot speak on the subject with the first-hand knowledge, the personal experience or the unquestionable authority of one who has done more for University education in our time than any other living educationist, and whose great work, “has been the creation of a real University, engaged in teaching and in the research which is the inevitable accompaniment and condition of all higher teaching.” But if Sir John could not take the place of Sir Ashutosh, he did the next best thing, and dwelt upon that aspect of University education which lies nearest to Sir Ashutosh’s heart. Beginning with a statement of the circumstances under which medieval Universities started, how while all of them began as voluntary gatherings of scholars and sought to keep alive learning in a world which was busy with fighting, they evolved on different lines, how most of them took all knowledge for their province, how in medieval Oxford and in most of the great medieval Universities, there was no examination at all, the Vice-Chancellor went on to explain how the idea of examining Universities came into prominence, and for a time threatened to supplant the medieval type.