Section I. 



(LITERATURE AND FINE ARTS.) 

 Pbesident of the Section — R. H. Roe, M.A., Brisbane. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT. 



It is with much difiidence that I enter on the duties of the 

 office to which the Council of the Association, wisliing to pay 

 a conipHment to my colony, have graciously appointed me, and 

 this diffidence springs not only from my previous inexperience 

 of such gatherings as the present, but also from the feeling that 

 a sixteen years' sojourn away from the centres of productive 

 activity in literature and art is likely to render me an unfitting 

 exponent of the most prominent ideas now current in these 

 departments of human knowledge. 



I shall not presume, then, to attempt a survey of Austral- 

 asian art or Australasian literature, appropriate as such a sub- 

 ject would be in the hands of a chairman fully conversant with 

 either, but, realising that a man is most likely to have something 

 worth saying in connection with the problems with which he 

 has been brought face to face in his daily work during the best 

 years of his life, I shall take advantage of my position to-day 

 to ventilate my views as to the place which literature ought to 

 occupy in modern education. 



The subject is not new, but is one upon which all of us, 

 teachers and the general public alike, ought to hold definite 

 views unbiassed by the prejudices of early training or present 

 surroundings. 



Education ought to have two main aims — the development 

 of all our povv'ers of body, mind, and soul, and the supplying 

 of facts and accomplishments which may be useful for the 

 battle of life or for the full enjoyment of its leisure-hours. 



Personally, I feel that the most serious responsibility of 

 education is the development of character ; for it is character 

 that moulds the shape of our after-lives, making them deformed 

 or fair to look upon, and it is to character therefore that all 



