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ever your course may lie, the best and most enduring gift that a University can bestowthe company of great thoughts, the inspiration of great ideals, the example of great achievements, the consolation of great failures. So equipped, you can face, without perturbation, the buffets of circumstance, the caprice of fortune, all the inscrutable vicissitudes of life. Nor can you do better than take as your motto the famous words which I read over the portals of this College when I came here to-day : They have said. What say they? Let them say."

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THE SPADE AND THE PEN

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THE SPADE AND THE PEN 1

THAT it is my privilege as President for the year of the Classical Association to deliver my address to its members assembled in the Town Hall of Birmingham may be regarded, I think, as a striking illustration of the interdependence in this country of culture and practice.

Birmingham, among all English towns, is perhaps the one most associated in popular thought and speech with the strenuous interests of business and politics. I myself, for a long time past, have been compelled to spend my waking hours if I may use an ancient phrase without offence-non in Platonis republica sed in Romuli faece. But Birmingham has set up a University -which of us does not feel to-night the gap on our platform due to the much-regretted absence of its illustrious Chancellor, Mr. Chamberlain ? -a University with a Faculty of Arts, and a Professor of Greek and Latin in the person of

1 Presidential Address delivered before the Classical Association, Town Hall, Birmingham, October 9, 1908.

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