300 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [July, 



4>. An Analysis of the remainder of the Kahgyur, by Mr. Wilson, was 

 also laid on the table. 



On the conclusion of the business of the evening the President rose, and 

 addressed the meeting (which was unusually numerous), in the following 

 words :— 



" Gentlemen, — The pleasure of meeting a more numerous body of the 

 Society than is usual, makes it impossible that I should find fault with my 

 friend Mr. James Prinsep, for having added to the notices of the meeting 

 an intimation that I should take my leave of you this evening. I regret 

 only that it may have caused an expectation that I should offer a more 

 complete tribute of gratitude than I am capable of expressing, or that 

 I should have prepared for the Society one of those comprehensive views 

 of the fields of literature, science, and art, which have been usual on simi- 

 lar occasions, and which generally are well adapted to them, but which I 

 do not think would be suited to that of my own departure. Having 

 never entered the vineyard as your fellow-labourer, I will not cull the fruits 

 produced by the labour of others, that I may claim a merit for merely laying 

 them before you, and arranging them. I feel, that there is little which it 

 would become me to say on this occasion, but to excuse myself for what 

 I have omitted to do. But it has always been known to you, that I neither 

 have nor ever pretended to have any acquirements in Oriental Literature: 

 and I should have almost thought it incumbent on me to decline even 

 the gratification of being elected your President, if I had not regarded it 

 as an honorary appointment, and known at the same time that as long as 

 Mr. Wilson continued to be your principal Secretary, the Society could 

 not suffer from any deficiencies of mine. — Gentlemen, he has really been 

 your President: and I rejoice, that his absence from Calcutta affords me the 

 opportunity of saying what I could not so well have said of him in his 

 presence. Whether you consider his unrivalled attainments in Sanscrit 

 Literature, or the many valuable works with which he has enriched your 

 Transactions, or which he has otherwise given to the world, or his indefati- 

 gable and most meritorious devotion of his time and talents to the establish- 

 ment of an extensive system of education for the native youth, or the many 

 amiable qualities which distinguish him in private life, you must all feel 

 that if you should lose him, of which there is at present some likelihood, you 

 will indeed sustain an irreparable loss : — yet a loss not to be deplored 

 by his friends, and least of all by me ; for it might afford me the hope of 

 meeting him soon amid other scenes, where the happiest portion of my youth 

 was passed, and which, now that I am turning homewards, rise upon my 

 waking memory with the vividness and imaginary beauty of a dream. This 

 would indeed be to me a source of infinite pleasure, if it was not qualified, 

 and if my mind was not divided, if I may use the expression, by the reflec- 

 tion that the event which would take Mr. Wilson to Oxford would leave in 

 India another distinguished member of your Society, my excellent friend Dr. 

 Mill, whose presence alone prevents me from expressing of himself praise as 



