examination papers which have been set, and
to the numerous native students which it
has already attracted, we cannot doubt that
it will afford sufficient opportunities of a
sound education to enable those who
receive it to compete successfully with the
young men of this country in the examinations
for the Civil Service of India." In
the same report it was said: " They will
undoubtedly be at some disadvantage as
compared with natives of the United Kingdom
in respect of the ordinary subjects of
classical education; but this will be, in
part, compensated by the greater facilities
they possess as regards Sanskrit and
Arabic."

In the following year, there was the first
arrival from India. A Parsee came over
to compete: the limit of age for
competitors being then twenty-three, and he
in his twenty-third year. While he was
working in London for examination, the
limit of age was reduced to twenty-two,
and he became disqualified. It was not
until the year eighteen hundred and sixty-
three that the first of the expected Hindoo
candidates appeared in the examination-
room, in the persons of Mr. Satyendra
Nath Tagore and Mr. Manomohan Ghose.
In that year there were a hundred and
eighty-nine competitors. Mr. Tagore
offered himself for examination in six
subjects—English literature and history,
English composition, French, moral science,
Sanskrit and Arabic—got the highest
marks of his year in Sanskrit and Arabic,
passed a fair examination in his four other
subjects, and came out forty- third of the
selected fifty. The place of the other
Hindoo candidate was outside the border
line of the selected. Mr. Tagore was thus
the first, and for the next six years—in
fact, until last June—he was the only
native Indian who won his way into the
Indian Civil Service by success in open
competition. He won it in June, 'sixty-
three, and he did so because he could add
to a competent knowledge of four other
subjects, a very good knowledge of Sanskrit
and Arabic. In October of the same year,
the number of marks obtainable by Sanskrit
was reduced from five hundred to three
hundred and seventy-five!

In eighteen 'sixty-four there was a general
raising of the required minimum of
knowledge.

Mr. Ghose tried again once or twice and
failed, and then in 'sixty- five, the limit of
age was again reduced by a year, and
became—as it now is—twenty- one. This, of
course, put another difficulty in the way of
native Indian candidates; who have special
difficulties to overcome, in conquest of
domestic prejudices, before they can, at great
cost to themselves or their families, come
four thousand miles to the place of examination,
and there compete in a foreign
language with men born to it. No wonder
that a native Indian paper wrote, in January,
'sixty-six: " The impression is gaining
ground amongst the people of India that
the Civil Service examination is a delusion;
that the Queen's proclamation is destined
to remain a dead letter; and that it is
useless to send to England Indian youths
at enormous expense and trouble, for the
chances of their success are remote."

No more Indian candidates appeared. Mr.
Tagore was still the only Hindoo who had
passed.

This was the state of affairs when there
appeared, a few weeks ago, the list of fifty
candidates selected from among three
hundred and twenty-three for the Indian Civil
Service, in the open competition of June,
eighteen 'sixty-nine. There appeared in it
not merely the name of, at last, another
Hindoo, but the names of four Hindoos,
who, moreover, all stood in good places
among the fifty, and one of whom had the
distinguished position of third in the list.
It fortunately happens that this gentleman,
Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt, is not open to
the technical objection brought against the
other three, and adopted, by misjudgment
of the commissioners, for the discrediting of
one and the exclusion of two from the places
they so hardly and well earned.

Of the four Hindoos who took rank
among the selected candidates at the last
open competition for the Indian Civil
Service, three are from Calcutta, one is from
Bombay. The three from Calcutta are
Messrs. Dutt, Gupta, and Banerjea: who
passed third, fourteenth, and thirty-eighth
in the list of the selected fifty. The one
from Bombay, is Mr. Thakur, who passed
thirty-ninth. Messrs. Dutt and Gupta,
before they came to England, had been
studying for three years at Presidency
College, and had passed their first examination
in arts at the Calcutta University. Mr.
Banerjea had studied for four years at
Doveton College, and was B.A. of the Calcutta
University. These gentlemen reached
England in April, 'sixty-eight, entered
themselves at once to classes in University
College, London, and worked hard during
vacation with those professors and teachers
who had time to spare for them. Wherever